Good Leadership: Power and Privilege

When people speak of privilege it is often synonymous with White privilege. However, in addition to this, people need to be aware of the relativity of privilege. The relativity of privilege is dependent on the environment in which one finds oneself. An individual might find himself/herself more privileged in one context, and then less privileged in another. The reason for this being the power relations which exists to create a privileged position. My understanding is that power in this context refers to the ability of a person relative to another/other people. From this conception of power it becomes clear that there exists a level of inequality between what people can and cannot do, i.e. abilities. If one understands privilege from this position one can begin to extend the notion beyond just White privilege and see that everyone has a degree of privilege in some respect.

Sometimes You’re a Caterpillar (see video above) also shows how ability, power and privilege are related. The snail is inable to wriggle under the fence because of  its shell unlike the caterpillar who does so with ease. The point, however, is not to merely understand privilege but be aware of it and determine your response to it. Being aware of one’s position of privilege should spur one on to the struggles of other less privileged individuals. This takes a conscious effort to dismiss unproductive feelings of guilt and use your privileged position to “even the playing ground” and balance out the power relations. In my personal experience, this often proves to be the challenge.

In light of this,  good leadership identifies positions of privilege in a particular environment and makes an effort to decrease the level of power inequality in that environment. This requires good leaders to be concious of privilege – a practice not often praised. Practically, this would mean that good leaders create opportunities where both the privileged and the less privileged are in positions of relative equality. I say relative equality because the reality of world history dictates that there will always be a group of people who have more abilities than others. And so, good leadership does not ignore this phenomonon but uses it to create a less inequal environment – large scale and small scale.