Legos!
Who played here with Legos as a child?
And you women, did they play?
As you can see, I do not.
And all I wanted was to be able to play with educational games
that would allow me to build anything
that books taught me to dream.
I am an extremely synaesthetic person.
I like to put my hand in the dough.
I like to cook, I like to build, to assemble puzzle.
The other day I bought a set of table and chair back home, and it comes dismantled.
And I said, “I’ll ride!”
It took me two days,
at the end of the second day I could not close the hand of both screwing,
but I think the most, when the people come to the house, I say: “See, I set it up.”
And nobody has fallen, until today!
But, unfortunately, we still live in a society that divides:
blue for boys
and pink for girls.
And at Christmas, only my brother would win Legos.
At that time, I still did not know what privilege was.
By the way,
Have you stopped to reflect?
on the existence or non-existence
of the privileges in your life?
And how does this reflect in your daily life?
and the people around you?
Let’s do this?
I have a proposal for a quick joke to do with you.
Please, take everything that is close, that I will ask you, I mean …
one of the instructions is to stand up.
So if you could take the tables off.
It will be very fast and I promise it will not hurt.
I’ll ask you some questions.
If the answer to that question is yes,
I ask that you please stand.
There you sit and so on …
Who has health insurance?
Please stand.
You can sit down.
Who studies or studies here in private schools?
Please stand.
You can sit down.
Who here ever won a car from their parents?
Please stand.
Thanks.
And finally, just for reflection,
who here today would be in this event,
if it were not for his privileges?
I certainly would not be.
But this certainty that I have today, here
and I’m sharing with you, now,
it cost me to get there.
I remember that in 2011,
in my last semester of law school at CESUSC,
a private college in Florianópolis,
I realized that although I was not born in a golden crib,
throughout my career, I have had access to opportunities
that several people in my family circle,
my circle of friends, of colleagues,
had no.
And I remember talking.
with a classmate,
someone whom I have always admired very much for his determination,
by their willpower,
for being an extraordinary student
and because, just as I do, have a very great desire to change the world,
to build and leave a positive legacy for society.
At that time, I was part of an international organization,
managed only by young people,
whose mission is nothing more than to change the world and seek peace.
I thought it was great to be part of that organization.
and have the opportunity to travel the world and get to know other countries, other cultures;
conduct international exchanges,
cultural, corporate and voluntary.
And I remember coming to this colleague, talking to her and saying:
“Dude, why do not you sign up for this program?
You have exactly the profile they are looking for.
You are intelligent, determined, you have a giant heart.
You want to volunteer in Africa, do not you?
Come on, sign up.
I’ll talk, I’ll talk about you
and I’m sure you will pass without problem in this selection process. “
And then I remember that she looked at me with a look of indifference, and she said:
“Yeah, Alanna, I’d love to do volunteer work.
Only volunteer work takes time.
I do two stages, one in the morning and one in the afternoon,
to help pay the bills at the end of the month,
and we have classes at night.
And I still have to make time to study,
to ensure that I will reach my average,
which, by the way, is higher than the average college, because I am a scholar.
And I can not afford to lose my purse. “
At that moment, my world fell!
And fell because I learned and realized
that changing the world requires more than goodwill and good heart.
Changing the world demands resources like time and money,
which were never distributed on an equal footing.
There I made a commitment to myself.
To seek more about what privilege is.
To be more aware of my privileges
and what I do with them.
For a long time I even felt guilty.
for being a privileged person, living in a world so painfully unequal.
But I went after answers,
of concepts, of stories,
of examples of privilege and “desprivilege”.
Supported and encouraged by my mentor,
by my friends and my colleagues,
I started to research about it and, whenever I had the opportunity,
to begin this discussion wherever I went.
Last year, I was living in the United States.
and I was part of an international organization, too,
which gave me the opportunity to have access to an international network of contacts
extremely diverse.
People from all over the world,
of different cultures, religions,
ethnicity, schooling.
And I saw, on that opportunity, the perfect possibility
to talk to these people about what is a privilege.
And I invited you to a dynamic known as …
you may have already seen on the internet,
called the “walk of privilege”.
Something very much like what I did to you, not long ago.
It’s like a race
in which everyone starts on an equal footing.
After all, we’re all born the same, are not we?
But as you might imagine,
some are easier to get to the end of this race than others.
The statement is simple.
I ask a question, depending on your answer you go forward
or you go back.
After this dynamic, I sat down with the crew
and we talked about their experiences.
And the conversation was so delicious and so rich,
that gave me an even greater curiosity.
And I wanted to make even greater profit,
of my network of contacts,
that now it was not just those people who participated in that activity.
They were also the people these people knew.
And then I created a very simple digital form
and distributed through my online network of contacts:
Facebook, Email, WhatsApp,
and so on.
This survey had 101 respondents,
of 22 different countries,
77% of respondents were women and 23% were men.
One of the curiosities of this research was:
I did not limit the type of response.
All the questions I asked,
I left it open for people to respond how they feel,
as they identify themselves,
how they feel represented.
So, for example: in terms of sexual orientation,
instead of simply
put the options that we are accustomed to see by society:
heterosexual,
homosexual, gay or lesbian,
and bisexual,
had a colorful universe, of all possibilities.
And I have learned that 2% of people consider themselves, simply,
“fluid” or “open mind.”
And I thought it was beautiful!
As for the ethnicity, by also leaving open,
I realized how diverse,
and again, beautiful,
is the universe in which we live,
When we do not label people
and decreases these labels, as at the time of enrolling the college entrance examination
among whites, blacks, mestizos and Indians; maybe that’s what you’ll find.
These were the people who participated.
The respondent profiles of this survey.
When asked if
have already found themselves in a situation of deprivation,
56% said yes.
And then I isolated this group
to analyze each of your answers.
And I began to search for the words,
the most recurrent situations
in those people who have already been underprivileged.
And I have learned that the greatest situations of deprivation,
according to this group of people,
were listed, in order:
gender, economic, financial or social status and ethnicity.
I confess this was not a surprise to me.
As it was not a surprise either.
perceive that 8% of these respondents
do not consider themselves privileged people.
Guys, we live in an unequal society full of injustice.
Believing that everyone is privileged
or that everyone considers themselves privileged
it would be my illusion or naivete.
The surprise came when I started reading the responses of those people who say
not privileged.
Some, it was easy to understand,
when I associated with their profiles.
But others have made me curious.
There were those who spoke of privilege as meritocracy.
“I’m not a privileged person.
I was not born in a cradle of gold
and all that I have, I have earned. “
Me too! I, Alanna.
But I am aware that if it were not for my privileges,
I would not have had access to the same opportunity I had
and brought me here today.
A concept, or a privilege answer that caught my attention,
It was the next one, and I’m going to beg leave to read to you.
The privilege, for this respondent,
“is a leftist term,
used to divert attention from the substance of arguments
of its immediate origin. “
This is the world we live in!
There are those who believe that privilege does not exist.
But, finally, I’m here talking about privilege, bringing data,
and at no time did I establish a base, did I?
After all, that’s what I was looking for with my research
and that I seek until today because I keep talking about this subject.
After all, what is privilege?
The Aurelian dictionary will tell us
that the privilege is the “right or advantage granted to someone,
to the exclusion of others “.
Based on the research responses,
I created this so-called “word cloud”, a cloud of words,
and the words that you see bigger are the words that have appeared the most
in people’s responses.
So I thought:
“Well, according to these people,
the privilege is something very similar to what Aurelio says:
‘The privilege presupposes a relationship between at least two persons
or two different groups.
A relationship of equation,
on the basis of inequality,
which often results in injustice. ‘
In my conversations,
I learned from Isabel,
a friend of mine, young, white,
American, middle class,
that for her, privilege is the fact that it is as I have already described it,
power actually go out on the street wearing
a sweatshirt with a hood on the head.
And be considered, at best, sloppy.
This is not the reality of his brother, Habmatu, adopted brother, from Ethiopia,
who, being black, wear a hoodie with a hood on his head,
for many people, especially in the neighborhood where they live,
a mostly white neighborhood,
can be seen as a sign of threat.
I keep looking
answers about privilege; concepts, definitions.
I keep talking to people about it.
But of all the answers,
of all definitions,
the greatest learning I’ve had until today,
came up in a conversation at a business meeting,
in which one of my bosses,
who is also a teacher
and he debates a lot about privilege with his students, there in the United States,
said:
“It matters little the concept of privilege.
What matters is what we do with it. “
For Daniel, or Danny, as we usually say,
“the greatest privilege of all is to know when it is convenient or not
let us use our privileges. “
My name is Alanna Sousa.
and I am a privileged person.
And I came here today to make an invitation to you.
For you to look and reflect upon privileges in a different way.
What privilege is no longer synonymous with inequality and social injustice.
May you see your privileges
How’s that Lego pie?
that each of you has received.
You did not choose to receive this piece.
You did not even know they were going to get that piece.
You did not have the opportunity to choose your size, color, model.
You simply received it.
And you can do whatever you want with it.
Even denying its existence or simply throwing it away
at the end of the event.
Or you, as with Lego, can build whatever they want.
I leave this invitation.
Build.
Build the dreams you have learned to dream
with the books you read in childhood.
Build Safe Spaces
so that we can have meaningful conversations,
where we can learn more with each other,
and teach us to be more tolerant and respectful of our differences.
Build means of transport that take us from our comfort zone
to the comfort zone of the other.
Build bridges
that allow us to cross the barriers of social inequality,
prejudice and discrimination.
Build schools, build parks, build hospitals.
Build our future!
Just do not build walls.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Live)
”
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