Shoba Narayan is the author of five books. As a journalist and columnist, she writes about health, relationships, travel, food and culture for global publications, winning a James Beard award and Pulitzer Fellowship. She has taught and lectured at universities in India (IIM-B and IISc) and abroad. She is the host and anchor of Bird Podcast: about birds and nature. She enjoys wine, studies Jung and is a gadget geek. Her lifelong mission is to get fit without exercising and lose weight without dieting.
How to Balance Privilege and Intersectionality
If you are reading this, you are likely a high-functioning super-bright person, which means, at least according to your kids, that you are also “judgey” or judgemental.
Pity those of us with grown children in their 20s or teenage grandchildren. No matter what we say or do, it seems, we are wrong. We are either “privileged” or “patriarchal” or “regressive” or not “intersectional enough.” It was that last phrase that prompted this column.
It began with a fairly innocuous phone call during Diwali. I told my kids that I had been to a flea market in Bengaluru called “Namma Maya Bazaar,” which showcased artists, creators, entrepreneurs, and performers from India’s LGBTQA+ and other marginalised communities. “It was spectacular to see how inclusive a mela can be,” I enthused. “I mean, there were straight people and gay people all interacting with each other.”
That’s when my daughter asked in a silky, casual voice, “Ma, do you know what intersectionality means?”
I braced myself. Now, I consider myself fairly open and tolerant. I have my biases but am working through them. The tone of my daughter’s voice told me that once more, I had said something wrong. Worse, I knew nothing.
Turns out intersectionality is something that we all experience in India. The basic idea is that all discrimination and oppression are linked (or intersectional). If you are an upper-caste man with a disability, the discrimination you will experience is different from a lower-caste able-bodied man who is wealthy. For women too, discrimination based on skin colour, good looks, caste, class, age, and sexual orientation are all different. In other words, we all feel oppression and discrimination in some fashion or the other — even white men, who are often considered the epitome of ‘male privilege.’
Got it, I told my daughter. I goofed, yet again; didn’t know what I was talking about. The question is, what was one to do about it? As always, she forwarded me lots of articles and reading material. Since when did my kids become my teachers, I thought to myself peevishly. In my generation, we wouldn’t dare to correct our elders, I told my daughter. “Don’t be passive-aggressive,” was her response.
The good news, at least for those above 50, is that many of the things my daughter was talking about could be addressed by a simple practice: listening more, speaking less. As you age, there is a tendency to pontificate, particularly to younger folks. They may know a lot more about AI, dark-verse, and intersectionality, but you have ‘lived’ more than they have, and therefore the assumption is that you know more. In India, it is part of the cultural norm. Elders are allowed to speak. They are given airtime in family gatherings while the youngsters either sit silently with bored faces or check their phones. This is very apparent during festive family gatherings for Diwali or Christmas.
But intersectionality, as my daughter explained it, helped me this Diwali season in one specific way. I did four things in all our family gatherings where the ages ranged from 10 to 90. I watched my language – which we all do these days. I became aware of what it meant to have a “privileged position.” Skin colour, education, able-bodied, Cis-gender, middle-to-upper class. All of this played into my identity and what I said. The only difference was that I became aware of how this played out in my behaviour. The last thing was to listen with a learning attitude. I asked questions. I didn’t presume to know. I tried not to make obnoxious jokes about “youngsters these days.”
Guess what? My world expanded as a result. I became “cool” with the kids. They wanted to hang out with me. I learned how complex their worlds are and how tricky it was to navigate. My respect for their intelligence and worldview grew. I still think they are thin-skinned, but that may be my “age privilege” speaking.
All of us have intersectionalities in our identity. Before you dismiss it as one more fad, you might want to pay attention to yours. Oh, and check your privilege while you are at it too.
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