January 6, 2025 • 35 mins
Explore how identity, privilege, and perception influence our everyday interactions and personal growth in this thought-provoking discussion. Learn how insights from different cultural perspectives can challenge and reshape our habitual ways of thinking, helping us to redefine success and break through invisible barriers. Using the 'gnat analogy' from 'The Slight Edge,' we illustrate how subtle forces continue to affect us even when obvious obstacles are removed. Start your day motivated to recognize and act upon these insights, transforming them into positive change in your life.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Good morning or good afternoon or good evening or good night.
(00:24):
This is Morning Motivation with GoGo.
And Natasha.
Yes.
I just want to hop in here and say welcome.
I'm so glad we're here.
But I wanted to also point out something.
Our show is called Morning Motivation, but we don't know when y'all listening to this.
And we didn't necessarily record this in the morning.
(00:44):
We didn't, but we might have.
We might have.
I don't know.
I don't even know what time zone we're in right now.
I'm not even sure we are in.
We might be in the metaverse.
Where's Mark?
Mark, get out here.
Mark's my PA.
I'm Zuckerberg.
He's my PA.
This is a whole different podcast.
Wait, hang on, hang on.
(01:06):
Jeff, Jeff, where are you at?
Jeff Bezos is mine.
No, he's on the moon right now, so he's in Espos.
Don't get us started.
Let's get it started.
Let's get it started.
Elon!
My egg right here.
First of all, I want to hop into it.
(01:32):
Welcome everybody.
I'm just excited to be here.
We have a bombshell topic today.
Oh boy, do we.
Oh boy.
The topic of today is processing your privilege.
Did someone else feel that mic drop?
Processing your privilege.
(01:54):
Natasha, what is privilege to you?
Honestly, privilege is sometimes something you're not even aware that you have.
That's real privilege.
It's so a part of your life, the way everything flows for you, around you.
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It's happening.
It's so easy.
It's easy to just not notice that this is actually something that not everyone has access
to.
That's privilege.
Wow.
Wow.
Wow.
Wow.
I'm taking that in.
(02:41):
What came to me as soon as you said that was it is your birthright to succeed.
Nice.
Yes.
It just hit me.
We're just having a conversation because this is not where we was going to go, but this
is where we're going right now.
If you just knew that as your truth, it is my birthright to succeed.
(03:09):
What success is, as a conversation you can have for days, that's totally whatever you
want it to be, but it is your birthright.
You were born to be a success at whatever level that looks like for you.
Right.
Right.
Exactly.
I love that.
I love that, especially because everyone does have a different and unique definition of
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what success is for them, but I think it is still important to explore what we're talking
about, the privilege aspect of that.
Even though you might have a different definition of success, you might not even be aware of
what you can be successful at based on what you're exposed to.
(03:55):
You just hitting so much right now.
I believe it was in the book Slide Edge, and they talked about these gnats that they put
inside of little glass box or whatever.
The gnats would be jumping and hitting the top of the glass box, and they would keep
(04:17):
hitting the top.
As they would reproduce, the gnats of that next generation of gnats, they would jump,
but they wouldn't hit the top.
They would come right up close, but they would never hit the top.
Then they removed the glass top.
The gnats kept going to that same level, and they would never exceed where that glass box
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ceiling was, even though there was no longer a barrier there.
It was ingrained in them.
That's where that barrier was, but the barrier had been removed.
They were not aware of their freedom because of culture, situation, and circumstance.
(04:59):
That was with gnats.
Oh my gosh.
If you could see my face right now, our audio listeners, I felt that viscerally, that story,
the insidiousness of programmed limitation.
Programmed.
(05:21):
It's been programmed into their DNA.
They're not even aware why they cannot rise above a certain level because it's already
programmed into their DNA.
What would it take for them to rise above that level?
A paradigm shifting experience.
(05:43):
That's what it takes for a lot of humans to where someone or something or a circumstance
has now shown you, oh, there's more, or I can do more.
This is not just it.
That changes the game completely.
Yes.
Let's get back to privilege.
Let's get back to that because I think this all does tie in.
(06:06):
Yeah, 100%.
It all ties in.
When I think about privilege, when I thought about what privilege meant to me is having
something that others don't have access to.
There's perceived privilege, and then there's also processed privilege, which are different
P words that just came from the ether.
(06:27):
Let's talk about those perceived versus processed.
Yes, perceived privilege versus processed privilege.
People, when they see you based on what they see, there's a perception of privilege just
based on what you look like and how you present to the world.
(06:47):
When I throw my trench coat, black trench coat, there's a level of processed privilege
that people are now assuming with my trench coat on just because I put that cloth on me.
Those little things.
Processed privilege is what has been processed in you and what you have, privileges you are
aware of because certain privileges we're not aware of and certain ones we are.
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Or we're made aware of it based on how people are perceiving us.
You don't really process a privilege until you talk to someone that doesn't have that
privilege.
What do you have to compare it to?
The big homogenous societies, people that are all in the same bubble, they never know
that they are of a certain privilege because everyone around them in that same bubble has
that same level.
(07:31):
It is not until they step out of that into a world, into a situation, into a circumstance
that then is revealed, oh, I have something that someone else doesn't have.
And that is when you process the privilege.
And sometimes you have to step outside of your comfort zone to process the things that
were just given to you just because you were born into a certain family or into a certain
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state or to a certain country or into a certain color.
Yes.
When you asked me for my definition of what is privilege at the beginning of our discussion
this morning on this beautiful morning, evening, night, wherever you are, I think that's immediately
what I was like, I was tapping into that processed side of it more immediately because it is
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something that if you're surrounded in an environment with certain things where you
just come to expect it, I expect this to be, this is the norm for me.
For example, the here's a privilege, I'm in a process right now.
It's a normal thing for me to walk from here to my kitchen sink and turn on the tap and
have clean flowing water coming out of that tap.
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I can use that to wash my hands.
I can use that to fill up my kettle and have a hot cup of tea.
I can drink that water.
I can cook my food with that water and it flows all day long from morning to night,
whatever time of day I want.
That is a privilege that I normally don't have to process because that's the norm for
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everyone around me.
That's expected.
That's the bare minimum level of privilege.
So my question to you is when did you realize that that was a privilege?
I realized it was a privilege when it was brought to my attention by various programming.
I chose to watch on different television shows or news or discussions about what's happening
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in the world globally in different nations.
But even here in the United States, in I believe Michigan, where there's been an issue with
water being polluted by lead and other toxins in a specific area and nothing is being done
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about it and then realizing, wow, withholding basic rights.
This is a basic human right, by the way, to have access to clean drinking water.
It's listed as one of the top human basic rights from the UN, United Nations, I believe.
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Because I looked it up and I was like, because this isn't right.
You should have access to clean drinking water like everyone else here in the United States.
And that is a privilege we all expect.
You're in the United States.
You should have clean drinking water.
But in this particular area, this particular city, it's just been an ongoing battle at
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this proportion where you have a child growing up and just fighting for people to notice.
I found out about it on social media.
This young girl talking about, hey, we don't have clean drinking water.
It was so disturbing that a child has to stand before us all and wake us up.
(11:04):
That, hey, no.
So that's how I found out about it.
And that's how I realized, hey, this is actually not guaranteed in the United States for everyone.
Yeah.
Wow.
I had heard about areas when I was younger of different countries that didn't have clean
drinking water.
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And as a child, when you hear about it, okay, I learned about it.
This thing is happening somewhere that I'm not.
So I've learned about it.
And then I just move on with my life.
It really didn't hit me until I went to another country when I was 14.
And I went to Nigeria and I went into the village where my father grew up.
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And I was told that you cannot drink the water because it will affect you.
And so when we shower, we had to shower.
They had to go and boil the water to bring to us.
There was not water flowing into the actual house.
My father was working to get that happening, getting a water pump, all these things that
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he had to do.
Like he would get water.
And the neighbor could possibly not have water as well.
But you had to build your own water pump to make it happen for yourself.
So while I was there, I had to drink bottles of water.
I was brushing my teeth with bottled water because there was no water in the sink for
me to even turn on.
But I know I couldn't use that water even if it was coming out at the time.
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And so having that experience and actually experiencing it, then I was able to then realize
what a gift it was to be from the US.
And at that time, everyone had clean drinking water.
And again, what had happened in Michigan had not happened yet.
But now it's a whole different situation.
But I came back from the trip knowing that I have an opportunity to do really amazing
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things with my life because of this opportunity of just having water here.
There's no excuse for me not to pursue the things that I want to do because I have the
opportunity to do that.
And that is a privilege that made me grateful for my situation because I have this privilege.
I'm going to use it to benefit myself so I can benefit others.
Let me push myself to the next level so that I can help others that are coming behind me
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that wanted to do similar things in my particular career path.
Having that experience really changed me for sure, 100%.
Yeah, I have the actual definition of privilege.
I want to read it out to everyone.
Great.
I'd love to hear it.
Privilege, a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular
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person or group.
And then it says education is a right, not a privilege.
That's one of the examples that it gives.
And that's a whole, that just opened up a whole nother.
A whole can of worms just all showed up.
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Right.
Privilege can be broken up to just a single person.
There are people that have certain privileges that they just have.
This made me think about the eldest child of Beyonce and Jay-Z.
That couple's considered one of the most powerful couples in the US, especially in the music
business.
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And everyone knows the privilege that all their children have, but especially their
eldest.
And everyone openly processes that person's privilege because they're public figures.
And it's very easy to pinpoint and say, oh, this child is their privilege.
And I thought about the other side of it as sometimes with privilege does come pressure.
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What pressure would it be, born into a family where your mom is Beyonce, your dad's Jay-Z,
you're expected to do something amazing with your life?
I didn't grow up with that mindset of, no, I have these really great parents that have
done world-changing things in their industry.
And now I'm their offspring and there's expectation of greatness that is put on me.
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And a lot of children feel that.
And you see a lot of different privileged people's children dealing with drugs, dealing
with depression, dealing with all these different things that come with that level of privilege.
Now, I don't know how that would feel to be a child in that situation.
I didn't grow up in that situation as well as you didn't, from what I understand.
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We both had what would be considered the normal average experience of the most in America.
But maybe there's, and this is where we, Coco and I were talking about this before we came
up with the episode, actually, Gogo, of course, came up with this amazing episode title, but
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it's just realizing, hey, what is normal for us?
Maybe that's actually a privilege that we aren't aware of because everyone around us
had the same privilege.
Right?
Right.
And so our conversation is taking that moment of introspection to realize where you are
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in the world.
We had a conversation weeks ago about the mental mindset is a privilege.
Oh, yes.
And for me, I came into this world with a pretty positive mental mindset because of
my parents.
It took me until my adult life to fully understand that everyone didn't have as readily access
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to this mindset as I did because of their upbringing.
Yeah, let's talk about that.
What did your parents provide in your mindset?
One of the things that my mom told me, and shout out to my mom, I'm sure she's listening
to the podcast right now.
She said, when I was carrying you, God said he was going to make your name great.
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And she told me this as a child and continued to tell me as I've grown up.
So for me, I never thought that I wasn't going to be a success.
I believed her.
Tell a child something enough times, they're going to believe it.
Okay, cool.
Guys make my name great.
So that's the level that I'm going in this direction.
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What that created for me, I had a fear of success.
That's a whole different topic.
But what it also created for me is I saw things differently.
I saw things in this positive light and this positive view because of how I was brought
up.
When I became an adult and realized there's certain people that didn't have that, that
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their mom wasn't telling them that.
Their mom might've been telling them the opposite or you're worthless.
You're nothing.
You know, all those things.
Or not telling them anything at all.
Right.
Letting the world tell them, letting the TV tell them.
All those different places of getting influence, I had to then take a step and realize that,
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oh, it's not as easy for certain people to just step into this mindset of positivity
because of the ancestral baggage and also the baggage of present day.
That was tough for me because I literally, I was able to ignore certain things.
Something happened negatively.
But all right, cool, that's fine.
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I could just let it go.
You could let it slide off your back like water off of the duck.
Because I knew where my destiny was because my mom had told me I was going to make my
name great.
So if I knew that as my end result, it didn't matter what was happening from here to there
because I already knew where I was going.
This is just a part of the process, part of the journey.
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That was already ingrained in me.
You had an inner mantra that was beating like a drum.
I'm going to be great.
My name is great.
Right.
My name means great things.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
It was just hitting over and over again in the background.
And no matter what other things tried to come at you from this angle, that angle, this lie,
that lie, my name is great.
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I'm going to be great.
You cannot beat that internal drum out of existence.
If it's already beating, you can't turn it off, it would take a lot, a lot, a lot of
negativity to turn that off because the power source that it came from was the original
source, your mother.
That is a powerful source to receive positive information.
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So yes.
And then what you're hitting on right there, your parents are powerful source of motivation
or lack thereof.
If you don't have that and then now you enter into this world where you have to have anger
to protect you, to get you through the situation you're in.
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Like if you have abusive parents and you have to have a hard exterior to survive, because
that is the survival mindset you've had to have to get out of that.
And then once you're out of that, the mindset is still there.
So then there's other programming you have to input in you to transition to that next
level.
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And that transition is a task.
And I had to understand that I didn't have that.
I didn't have to have that transition.
So I have to give people grace for those that are going through that transition.
They made out of childhood, no longer in that same situation, but their mindset is still
there.
And so when I come across them, I have to have compassion for the people.
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They didn't have my mother, they didn't have my father.
And that's what we have to extend.
If you have a privilege, you need to extend compassion to people that don't have that.
That might be a goal for them to get to that particular mindset, to get that particular
income status or whatever it is.
It is for the people of privilege at whatever level to extend a helping hand in whatever
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way you can.
This is my personal opinion.
I feel that is a duty if you are in a place of privilege to help others to move on to
the next level, whatever level that is for them.
But hang on, let me respond to some of this.
As you were saying that, it just struck me.
We all have privileges.
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Each one of us as human beings, each has a privilege.
It may not be observant to the human eye or straight off what that privilege might be.
Like you were saying, you were born into this positive mindset.
This frame of mind is positive.
That was just your circumstance.
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That was a wonderful circumstance to be born into.
It's like it's something else that's intangible.
It's not even about having something material.
We're not necessarily talking about... and that's why I'm so glad you brought up mindset
because it's not always about the physical, tangible objects.
We normally equate the word privilege with money or objects, things that have to do with
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your socioeconomic background.
I think one of my great privileges is words.
My connection with words, it started very early for me because similar to you, I had
a parent and I'm so grateful for my mom.
People have seen previous iteration of our talk show.
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We actually had our mothers on to talk with the people.
So you can go back and look for that.
That was a great interview.
Amazing.
Shout out to Mama Sonia as well.
So words came through the introduction that my mom gave to me with books and reading.
By age 18 months, I was reading, reading, not pretending to read, not going goo goo gaga.
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I was reading books and I was taken to see a specialist.
They had specialists at that time.
I'm from England originally.
So that's a whole other thing.
I'm an immigrant who got to move here and that's another privilege, right?
Because moving to the United States is a huge privilege and I still consider it to be one.
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I'm very, very grateful to be a citizen of this country.
That's a whole other thing.
But this reading, they wanted to test, see they do these different tests with young children.
And the specialist who is saying, okay, so we're going to see what her learning capacity
is or whatever it was.
And they ended up handing me a book.
Okay, go ahead and read this because my mom told them I could read.
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And I was not four years old yet.
And I just started reading, reading just casually, reading everything that's on the page.
How is this possible?
And she gave me another book and I started reading that.
Do you realize you have a genius?
You have a genius here.
Like what are you doing?
You people, that's what she said to my mom, you people, you people don't know how to...
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And my mom cut her off right there and said, hang on a minute, you don't have the right.
I'd have to ask her all the words, but she wasn't having that.
But she was aware that she had a very gifted child and she continued to push me to excel.
And that's what I did throughout my learning.
It put me at an advantage.
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I didn't realize until I reached kindergarten.
And I was in class with my other classmates who were around five years old and they weren't
able to read.
I was showing, hey, look, this is easy.
And I'm reading these books and the teacher had to pull me away and say, look, you can't
do that.
They're not reading yet.
They won't be reading until next year.
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So I had to pull everything and scale it all the way back.
And so being in a public school situation, it helped me to have also compassion that
I think that is when we're homeschooling and I'm not going to get into all of that topic,
but I think it was an important lesson for me to learn being socialized around children
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who were learning at different speeds, different levels.
It's okay.
We're not all going to learn in the same way.
We're not going to all be Excel at different topics.
I just happened to Excel at reading because I enjoyed it.
Maybe they would be excelling in something science or math.
They were exposed to these different things.
We can figure out, okay, I have this privilege by being in an environment around people who
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are learning in a different way.
You learned that, okay, I'm different.
I'm in this situation because of my upbringing and then you can appreciate it later on in
life as you look back on it like, wow, I really was, that's amazing.
And that's the whole point is just processing whatever privilege that you have and also
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seeing that the privilege of being on this earth, the privilege of still being able to
breathe, the privilege of still being able to walk, being able to talk, being able to
see.
My friends that have 2020 vision, yeah, it's a privilege.
Okay.
Listen.
And there's so many different ways you can break it down, being able to be grateful for
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where you are.
And that's really what the goal is.
And this topic of, I came up with these two different, why did I come up with these two
different terms?
I put them together, white privilege versus black camaraderie.
This might be a part two.
Welcome to part two.
Welcome to part two.
Part two.
Part two.
I was talking to one of my white female friends and I asked her, I said, oh, when you see
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other white females, do you just get excited and greet them like with the energy of, hey,
it's good to see you?
She's like, no, I don't.
And I was like, oh, well, I do when I see another black male in a social situation.
One particular story, I was in Charleston, South Carolina.
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I was at this pool party and there were the majority of the people there were white.
And I saw a couple of black men there and I went over, I greeted him and just, you know,
say hello, dap them up.
How you doing?
We had a look.
We had a change.
So I went back over to my friend and she said to me, she said, did you go over and say hi
(27:50):
to the black guy because he's black?
I said, absolutely.
Yes, I did.
I said, yeah, I went over to let him know that if something goes down, I got your back.
Like I'm here for you.
You were here for me.
I said it in jest in a place of comedy, but it really comes from a place of protection
of hey, I'm looking out for you because there's only one, two of us here and I am telling
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you if something happens, I'm going to look out for you.
And that's that black camaraderie that has been established because if you were the majority
in the situation, you wouldn't necessarily feel that same inkling to do so because I
don't feel that there's a bunch of black people.
I'm not about to greet every single one of them.
Say, hey, hey, hey, God, no.
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It's not necessary.
I don't feel that need because there's a privilege of being in the majority.
And that's really what white privilege is in this context.
It can be broken down to so many different levels from that, the foundational of, hey,
I see you and I support you.
When you are the majority, there is an energetic support that just happens naturally.
(29:01):
Right.
You don't even have to address.
It's just there.
Right, right, right.
So, yeah.
So interesting.
So, so interesting.
And I say that also, as I mentioned, I'm an immigrant, came to this country at age four
and a half and I'm a naturalized citizen.
So that's also another privilege that I have to recognize.
(29:23):
I didn't go through any process of hardship in trying to get my citizenship.
It came through my parents.
So that's a whole thing.
But from my background, being two parents that are not only from two different, I guess,
ethnic identities, but they're from two different countries.
But they were from countries that were within the British Commonwealth.
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So I was raised with a sense of identity that was not American.
Right.
But outwardly, I appear to be a person who is brown.
And I am brown and I'm very proud of being a brown person.
And on a surface level, when I'm perceived by, say, white people or black people here,
(30:09):
I'm perceived based on my color first.
Right.
That's the first thing that presents and that will lead people into knowing where to fit
you.
Okay.
You're either white or you're black.
Well, you're, I'm kind of in between.
So you're black.
All right.
Fine.
Okay.
So I am within the black community here, the black community does not perceive me as being
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a black American either.
I'm still a foreigner.
There's something about me that presents as other, that's because I'm an immigrant.
And growing up, I grew up in an area where most of the people around me were Caucasian.
There were some mixture, but for the most part, I grew up around Caucasian people.
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And I never thought about it.
I was always an outsider.
I was always different.
I was always an other.
So there was never a sense of any sort of connection to anybody.
And when I did see brown people, whether they were African American or whether they were
(31:17):
brown people from other nations, or say they were other immigrants from other places, I
would just feel an affinity for seeing other people who were brown.
Or, you know, so I'm like, okay, I see some people who are look, look similarly to I do,
or I feel like they understand what it is to be other.
(31:39):
I connect on the level of otherness.
And even people who are Caucasian who identify as other in some aspect of their mindset or
mentality, their approach to life, I connect with them.
It goes in so many ways.
I think it's important to sort of touch on just from what you were saying, connecting
(32:01):
with people and seeing, hey, I see you.
And that's a privilege I don't feel I'll ever have because I feel like an other here in
the United States in every room.
And being able to process the privilege that you'll never have in that way.
I'll never feel what it's like to be white, you know, as neither will I.
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So there's certain, there's certain things that we will not experience.
And you have to process that as well.
And you have to just eventually just kind of move on because this is just what it is.
I remember getting made fun of because I have a big nose.
And of course, now you can change your nose if you want to.
But I remember embracing that, which I hope you don't please don't change your nose, go
(32:48):
go.
Yeah, I'm not changing my nose.
It fits my face.
I remember processing that.
I saw it as a privilege of having a big nose because what I would do growing up, I would
say, I would tell people, you know, I can fit a quarter in my nose long way.
(33:08):
And I would tell them, I said, give me a quarter.
Give me a quarter and I will put it in my nose long ways.
And then they wouldn't want that quarter back.
I just made 25 cents.
All right.
The hustle started at a young age.
Okay.
Making a profit off of that.
Okay.
I'm profiting off my nose privilege.
(33:30):
Okay.
And you can breathe and you can really breathe.
I can take a deep breath out of both nostrils at the same time.
Even in that little small moment of being able to take what people would perceive as
not a privilege, you know, oh, you got a big nose.
That's not good.
(33:50):
And then I'm going to take that.
Oh, no, no, it is good.
And watch what I'm going to do with it.
Now that's a very like broken down scenario.
Watch what I'm going to do with it.
Watch what I do with it.
You know?
Watch me work.
You have to take ownership of all of you.
(34:11):
And that's what's good.
Yes.
But it's not your present.
You take ownership of it and you use that to propel you to the next level.
Where does you want to go?
And we've been around.
We've been around the world.
We've been around the globe.
We've been around all these different topics around privilege today.
It's been an amazing conversation.
(34:32):
We're hitting that mark.
It's almost time to go grab that second cup of coffee, that breakfast, that late night
dinner snack that you want to get whatever time it is, as we said, whatever time in the
morning, because it's always it's always morning in the mindset.
Oh, yes.
(34:53):
Farewell for now from our amazing podcast, Morning Motivation with GoGo and Natasha.
Good morning or good afternoon or good evening or good night.
(00:24):
This is Morning Motivation with GoGo.
And Natasha.
Yes.
I just want to hop in here and say welcome.
I'm so glad we're here.
But I wanted to also point out something.
Our show is called Morning Motivation, but we don't know when y'all listening to this.
And we didn't necessarily record this in the morning.
(00:44):
We didn't, but we might have.
We might have.
I don't know.
I don't even know what time zone we're in right now.
I'm not even sure we are in.
We might be in the metaverse.
Where's Mark?
Mark, get out here.
Mark's my PA.
I'm Zuckerberg.
He's my PA.
This is a whole different podcast.
Wait, hang on, hang on.
(01:06):
Jeff, Jeff, where are you at?
Jeff Bezos is mine.
No, he's on the moon right now, so he's in Espos.
Don't get us started.
Let's get it started.
Let's get it started.
Elon!
My egg right here.
First of all, I want to hop into it.
(01:32):
Welcome everybody.
I'm just excited to be here.
We have a bombshell topic today.
Oh boy, do we.
Oh boy.
The topic of today is processing your privilege.
Did someone else feel that mic drop?
Processing your privilege.
(01:54):
Natasha, what is privilege to you?
Honestly, privilege is sometimes something you're not even aware that you have.
That's real privilege.
It's so a part of your life, the way everything flows for you, around you.
(02:19):
It's happening.
It's so easy.
It's easy to just not notice that this is actually something that not everyone has access
to.
That's privilege.
Wow.
Wow.
Wow.
Wow.
I'm taking that in.
(02:41):
What came to me as soon as you said that was it is your birthright to succeed.
Nice.
Yes.
It just hit me.
We're just having a conversation because this is not where we was going to go, but this
is where we're going right now.
If you just knew that as your truth, it is my birthright to succeed.
(03:09):
What success is, as a conversation you can have for days, that's totally whatever you
want it to be, but it is your birthright.
You were born to be a success at whatever level that looks like for you.
Right.
Right.
Exactly.
I love that.
I love that, especially because everyone does have a different and unique definition of
(03:32):
what success is for them, but I think it is still important to explore what we're talking
about, the privilege aspect of that.
Even though you might have a different definition of success, you might not even be aware of
what you can be successful at based on what you're exposed to.
(03:55):
You just hitting so much right now.
I believe it was in the book Slide Edge, and they talked about these gnats that they put
inside of little glass box or whatever.
The gnats would be jumping and hitting the top of the glass box, and they would keep
(04:17):
hitting the top.
As they would reproduce, the gnats of that next generation of gnats, they would jump,
but they wouldn't hit the top.
They would come right up close, but they would never hit the top.
Then they removed the glass top.
The gnats kept going to that same level, and they would never exceed where that glass box
(04:38):
ceiling was, even though there was no longer a barrier there.
It was ingrained in them.
That's where that barrier was, but the barrier had been removed.
They were not aware of their freedom because of culture, situation, and circumstance.
(04:59):
That was with gnats.
Oh my gosh.
If you could see my face right now, our audio listeners, I felt that viscerally, that story,
the insidiousness of programmed limitation.
Programmed.
(05:21):
It's been programmed into their DNA.
They're not even aware why they cannot rise above a certain level because it's already
programmed into their DNA.
What would it take for them to rise above that level?
A paradigm shifting experience.
(05:43):
That's what it takes for a lot of humans to where someone or something or a circumstance
has now shown you, oh, there's more, or I can do more.
This is not just it.
That changes the game completely.
Yes.
Let's get back to privilege.
Let's get back to that because I think this all does tie in.
(06:06):
Yeah, 100%.
It all ties in.
When I think about privilege, when I thought about what privilege meant to me is having
something that others don't have access to.
There's perceived privilege, and then there's also processed privilege, which are different
P words that just came from the ether.
(06:27):
Let's talk about those perceived versus processed.
Yes, perceived privilege versus processed privilege.
People, when they see you based on what they see, there's a perception of privilege just
based on what you look like and how you present to the world.
(06:47):
When I throw my trench coat, black trench coat, there's a level of processed privilege
that people are now assuming with my trench coat on just because I put that cloth on me.
Those little things.
Processed privilege is what has been processed in you and what you have, privileges you are
aware of because certain privileges we're not aware of and certain ones we are.
(07:10):
Or we're made aware of it based on how people are perceiving us.
You don't really process a privilege until you talk to someone that doesn't have that
privilege.
What do you have to compare it to?
The big homogenous societies, people that are all in the same bubble, they never know
that they are of a certain privilege because everyone around them in that same bubble has
that same level.
(07:31):
It is not until they step out of that into a world, into a situation, into a circumstance
that then is revealed, oh, I have something that someone else doesn't have.
And that is when you process the privilege.
And sometimes you have to step outside of your comfort zone to process the things that
were just given to you just because you were born into a certain family or into a certain
(07:55):
state or to a certain country or into a certain color.
Yes.
When you asked me for my definition of what is privilege at the beginning of our discussion
this morning on this beautiful morning, evening, night, wherever you are, I think that's immediately
what I was like, I was tapping into that processed side of it more immediately because it is
(08:19):
something that if you're surrounded in an environment with certain things where you
just come to expect it, I expect this to be, this is the norm for me.
For example, the here's a privilege, I'm in a process right now.
It's a normal thing for me to walk from here to my kitchen sink and turn on the tap and
have clean flowing water coming out of that tap.
(08:45):
I can use that to wash my hands.
I can use that to fill up my kettle and have a hot cup of tea.
I can drink that water.
I can cook my food with that water and it flows all day long from morning to night,
whatever time of day I want.
That is a privilege that I normally don't have to process because that's the norm for
(09:12):
everyone around me.
That's expected.
That's the bare minimum level of privilege.
So my question to you is when did you realize that that was a privilege?
I realized it was a privilege when it was brought to my attention by various programming.
I chose to watch on different television shows or news or discussions about what's happening
(09:38):
in the world globally in different nations.
But even here in the United States, in I believe Michigan, where there's been an issue with
water being polluted by lead and other toxins in a specific area and nothing is being done
(09:59):
about it and then realizing, wow, withholding basic rights.
This is a basic human right, by the way, to have access to clean drinking water.
It's listed as one of the top human basic rights from the UN, United Nations, I believe.
(10:21):
Because I looked it up and I was like, because this isn't right.
You should have access to clean drinking water like everyone else here in the United States.
And that is a privilege we all expect.
You're in the United States.
You should have clean drinking water.
But in this particular area, this particular city, it's just been an ongoing battle at
(10:44):
this proportion where you have a child growing up and just fighting for people to notice.
I found out about it on social media.
This young girl talking about, hey, we don't have clean drinking water.
It was so disturbing that a child has to stand before us all and wake us up.
(11:04):
That, hey, no.
So that's how I found out about it.
And that's how I realized, hey, this is actually not guaranteed in the United States for everyone.
Yeah.
Wow.
I had heard about areas when I was younger of different countries that didn't have clean
drinking water.
(11:25):
And as a child, when you hear about it, okay, I learned about it.
This thing is happening somewhere that I'm not.
So I've learned about it.
And then I just move on with my life.
It really didn't hit me until I went to another country when I was 14.
And I went to Nigeria and I went into the village where my father grew up.
(11:49):
And I was told that you cannot drink the water because it will affect you.
And so when we shower, we had to shower.
They had to go and boil the water to bring to us.
There was not water flowing into the actual house.
My father was working to get that happening, getting a water pump, all these things that
(12:10):
he had to do.
Like he would get water.
And the neighbor could possibly not have water as well.
But you had to build your own water pump to make it happen for yourself.
So while I was there, I had to drink bottles of water.
I was brushing my teeth with bottled water because there was no water in the sink for
me to even turn on.
But I know I couldn't use that water even if it was coming out at the time.
(12:32):
And so having that experience and actually experiencing it, then I was able to then realize
what a gift it was to be from the US.
And at that time, everyone had clean drinking water.
And again, what had happened in Michigan had not happened yet.
But now it's a whole different situation.
But I came back from the trip knowing that I have an opportunity to do really amazing
(12:57):
things with my life because of this opportunity of just having water here.
There's no excuse for me not to pursue the things that I want to do because I have the
opportunity to do that.
And that is a privilege that made me grateful for my situation because I have this privilege.
I'm going to use it to benefit myself so I can benefit others.
Let me push myself to the next level so that I can help others that are coming behind me
(13:21):
that wanted to do similar things in my particular career path.
Having that experience really changed me for sure, 100%.
Yeah, I have the actual definition of privilege.
I want to read it out to everyone.
Great.
I'd love to hear it.
Privilege, a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular
(13:48):
person or group.
And then it says education is a right, not a privilege.
That's one of the examples that it gives.
And that's a whole, that just opened up a whole nother.
A whole can of worms just all showed up.
(14:11):
Right.
Privilege can be broken up to just a single person.
There are people that have certain privileges that they just have.
This made me think about the eldest child of Beyonce and Jay-Z.
That couple's considered one of the most powerful couples in the US, especially in the music
business.
(14:31):
And everyone knows the privilege that all their children have, but especially their
eldest.
And everyone openly processes that person's privilege because they're public figures.
And it's very easy to pinpoint and say, oh, this child is their privilege.
And I thought about the other side of it as sometimes with privilege does come pressure.
(14:52):
What pressure would it be, born into a family where your mom is Beyonce, your dad's Jay-Z,
you're expected to do something amazing with your life?
I didn't grow up with that mindset of, no, I have these really great parents that have
done world-changing things in their industry.
And now I'm their offspring and there's expectation of greatness that is put on me.
(15:16):
And a lot of children feel that.
And you see a lot of different privileged people's children dealing with drugs, dealing
with depression, dealing with all these different things that come with that level of privilege.
Now, I don't know how that would feel to be a child in that situation.
I didn't grow up in that situation as well as you didn't, from what I understand.
(15:42):
We both had what would be considered the normal average experience of the most in America.
But maybe there's, and this is where we, Coco and I were talking about this before we came
up with the episode, actually, Gogo, of course, came up with this amazing episode title, but
(16:04):
it's just realizing, hey, what is normal for us?
Maybe that's actually a privilege that we aren't aware of because everyone around us
had the same privilege.
Right?
Right.
And so our conversation is taking that moment of introspection to realize where you are
(16:29):
in the world.
We had a conversation weeks ago about the mental mindset is a privilege.
Oh, yes.
And for me, I came into this world with a pretty positive mental mindset because of
my parents.
It took me until my adult life to fully understand that everyone didn't have as readily access
(16:58):
to this mindset as I did because of their upbringing.
Yeah, let's talk about that.
What did your parents provide in your mindset?
One of the things that my mom told me, and shout out to my mom, I'm sure she's listening
to the podcast right now.
She said, when I was carrying you, God said he was going to make your name great.
(17:21):
And she told me this as a child and continued to tell me as I've grown up.
So for me, I never thought that I wasn't going to be a success.
I believed her.
Tell a child something enough times, they're going to believe it.
Okay, cool.
Guys make my name great.
So that's the level that I'm going in this direction.
(17:43):
What that created for me, I had a fear of success.
That's a whole different topic.
But what it also created for me is I saw things differently.
I saw things in this positive light and this positive view because of how I was brought
up.
When I became an adult and realized there's certain people that didn't have that, that
(18:04):
their mom wasn't telling them that.
Their mom might've been telling them the opposite or you're worthless.
You're nothing.
You know, all those things.
Or not telling them anything at all.
Right.
Letting the world tell them, letting the TV tell them.
All those different places of getting influence, I had to then take a step and realize that,
(18:25):
oh, it's not as easy for certain people to just step into this mindset of positivity
because of the ancestral baggage and also the baggage of present day.
That was tough for me because I literally, I was able to ignore certain things.
Something happened negatively.
But all right, cool, that's fine.
(18:47):
I could just let it go.
You could let it slide off your back like water off of the duck.
Because I knew where my destiny was because my mom had told me I was going to make my
name great.
So if I knew that as my end result, it didn't matter what was happening from here to there
because I already knew where I was going.
This is just a part of the process, part of the journey.
(19:08):
That was already ingrained in me.
You had an inner mantra that was beating like a drum.
I'm going to be great.
My name is great.
Right.
My name means great things.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
It was just hitting over and over again in the background.
And no matter what other things tried to come at you from this angle, that angle, this lie,
that lie, my name is great.
(19:28):
I'm going to be great.
You cannot beat that internal drum out of existence.
If it's already beating, you can't turn it off, it would take a lot, a lot, a lot of
negativity to turn that off because the power source that it came from was the original
source, your mother.
That is a powerful source to receive positive information.
(19:52):
So yes.
And then what you're hitting on right there, your parents are powerful source of motivation
or lack thereof.
If you don't have that and then now you enter into this world where you have to have anger
to protect you, to get you through the situation you're in.
(20:13):
Like if you have abusive parents and you have to have a hard exterior to survive, because
that is the survival mindset you've had to have to get out of that.
And then once you're out of that, the mindset is still there.
So then there's other programming you have to input in you to transition to that next
level.
(20:33):
And that transition is a task.
And I had to understand that I didn't have that.
I didn't have to have that transition.
So I have to give people grace for those that are going through that transition.
They made out of childhood, no longer in that same situation, but their mindset is still
there.
And so when I come across them, I have to have compassion for the people.
(20:54):
They didn't have my mother, they didn't have my father.
And that's what we have to extend.
If you have a privilege, you need to extend compassion to people that don't have that.
That might be a goal for them to get to that particular mindset, to get that particular
income status or whatever it is.
It is for the people of privilege at whatever level to extend a helping hand in whatever
(21:15):
way you can.
This is my personal opinion.
I feel that is a duty if you are in a place of privilege to help others to move on to
the next level, whatever level that is for them.
But hang on, let me respond to some of this.
As you were saying that, it just struck me.
We all have privileges.
(21:36):
Each one of us as human beings, each has a privilege.
It may not be observant to the human eye or straight off what that privilege might be.
Like you were saying, you were born into this positive mindset.
This frame of mind is positive.
That was just your circumstance.
(21:57):
That was a wonderful circumstance to be born into.
It's like it's something else that's intangible.
It's not even about having something material.
We're not necessarily talking about... and that's why I'm so glad you brought up mindset
because it's not always about the physical, tangible objects.
We normally equate the word privilege with money or objects, things that have to do with
(22:20):
your socioeconomic background.
I think one of my great privileges is words.
My connection with words, it started very early for me because similar to you, I had
a parent and I'm so grateful for my mom.
People have seen previous iteration of our talk show.
(22:42):
We actually had our mothers on to talk with the people.
So you can go back and look for that.
That was a great interview.
Amazing.
Shout out to Mama Sonia as well.
So words came through the introduction that my mom gave to me with books and reading.
By age 18 months, I was reading, reading, not pretending to read, not going goo goo gaga.
(23:09):
I was reading books and I was taken to see a specialist.
They had specialists at that time.
I'm from England originally.
So that's a whole other thing.
I'm an immigrant who got to move here and that's another privilege, right?
Because moving to the United States is a huge privilege and I still consider it to be one.
(23:31):
I'm very, very grateful to be a citizen of this country.
That's a whole other thing.
But this reading, they wanted to test, see they do these different tests with young children.
And the specialist who is saying, okay, so we're going to see what her learning capacity
is or whatever it was.
And they ended up handing me a book.
Okay, go ahead and read this because my mom told them I could read.
(23:53):
And I was not four years old yet.
And I just started reading, reading just casually, reading everything that's on the page.
How is this possible?
And she gave me another book and I started reading that.
Do you realize you have a genius?
You have a genius here.
Like what are you doing?
You people, that's what she said to my mom, you people, you people don't know how to...
(24:19):
And my mom cut her off right there and said, hang on a minute, you don't have the right.
I'd have to ask her all the words, but she wasn't having that.
But she was aware that she had a very gifted child and she continued to push me to excel.
And that's what I did throughout my learning.
It put me at an advantage.
(24:40):
I didn't realize until I reached kindergarten.
And I was in class with my other classmates who were around five years old and they weren't
able to read.
I was showing, hey, look, this is easy.
And I'm reading these books and the teacher had to pull me away and say, look, you can't
do that.
They're not reading yet.
They won't be reading until next year.
(25:02):
So I had to pull everything and scale it all the way back.
And so being in a public school situation, it helped me to have also compassion that
I think that is when we're homeschooling and I'm not going to get into all of that topic,
but I think it was an important lesson for me to learn being socialized around children
(25:25):
who were learning at different speeds, different levels.
It's okay.
We're not all going to learn in the same way.
We're not going to all be Excel at different topics.
I just happened to Excel at reading because I enjoyed it.
Maybe they would be excelling in something science or math.
They were exposed to these different things.
We can figure out, okay, I have this privilege by being in an environment around people who
(25:51):
are learning in a different way.
You learned that, okay, I'm different.
I'm in this situation because of my upbringing and then you can appreciate it later on in
life as you look back on it like, wow, I really was, that's amazing.
And that's the whole point is just processing whatever privilege that you have and also
(26:16):
seeing that the privilege of being on this earth, the privilege of still being able to
breathe, the privilege of still being able to walk, being able to talk, being able to
see.
My friends that have 2020 vision, yeah, it's a privilege.
Okay.
Listen.
And there's so many different ways you can break it down, being able to be grateful for
(26:39):
where you are.
And that's really what the goal is.
And this topic of, I came up with these two different, why did I come up with these two
different terms?
I put them together, white privilege versus black camaraderie.
This might be a part two.
Welcome to part two.
Welcome to part two.
Part two.
Part two.
I was talking to one of my white female friends and I asked her, I said, oh, when you see
(27:07):
other white females, do you just get excited and greet them like with the energy of, hey,
it's good to see you?
She's like, no, I don't.
And I was like, oh, well, I do when I see another black male in a social situation.
One particular story, I was in Charleston, South Carolina.
(27:28):
I was at this pool party and there were the majority of the people there were white.
And I saw a couple of black men there and I went over, I greeted him and just, you know,
say hello, dap them up.
How you doing?
We had a look.
We had a change.
So I went back over to my friend and she said to me, she said, did you go over and say hi
(27:50):
to the black guy because he's black?
I said, absolutely.
Yes, I did.
I said, yeah, I went over to let him know that if something goes down, I got your back.
Like I'm here for you.
You were here for me.
I said it in jest in a place of comedy, but it really comes from a place of protection
of hey, I'm looking out for you because there's only one, two of us here and I am telling
(28:18):
you if something happens, I'm going to look out for you.
And that's that black camaraderie that has been established because if you were the majority
in the situation, you wouldn't necessarily feel that same inkling to do so because I
don't feel that there's a bunch of black people.
I'm not about to greet every single one of them.
Say, hey, hey, hey, God, no.
(28:39):
It's not necessary.
I don't feel that need because there's a privilege of being in the majority.
And that's really what white privilege is in this context.
It can be broken down to so many different levels from that, the foundational of, hey,
I see you and I support you.
When you are the majority, there is an energetic support that just happens naturally.
(29:01):
Right.
You don't even have to address.
It's just there.
Right, right, right.
So, yeah.
So interesting.
So, so interesting.
And I say that also, as I mentioned, I'm an immigrant, came to this country at age four
and a half and I'm a naturalized citizen.
So that's also another privilege that I have to recognize.
(29:23):
I didn't go through any process of hardship in trying to get my citizenship.
It came through my parents.
So that's a whole thing.
But from my background, being two parents that are not only from two different, I guess,
ethnic identities, but they're from two different countries.
But they were from countries that were within the British Commonwealth.
(29:47):
So I was raised with a sense of identity that was not American.
Right.
But outwardly, I appear to be a person who is brown.
And I am brown and I'm very proud of being a brown person.
And on a surface level, when I'm perceived by, say, white people or black people here,
(30:09):
I'm perceived based on my color first.
Right.
That's the first thing that presents and that will lead people into knowing where to fit
you.
Okay.
You're either white or you're black.
Well, you're, I'm kind of in between.
So you're black.
All right.
Fine.
Okay.
So I am within the black community here, the black community does not perceive me as being
(30:33):
a black American either.
I'm still a foreigner.
There's something about me that presents as other, that's because I'm an immigrant.
And growing up, I grew up in an area where most of the people around me were Caucasian.
There were some mixture, but for the most part, I grew up around Caucasian people.
(30:56):
And I never thought about it.
I was always an outsider.
I was always different.
I was always an other.
So there was never a sense of any sort of connection to anybody.
And when I did see brown people, whether they were African American or whether they were
(31:17):
brown people from other nations, or say they were other immigrants from other places, I
would just feel an affinity for seeing other people who were brown.
Or, you know, so I'm like, okay, I see some people who are look, look similarly to I do,
or I feel like they understand what it is to be other.
(31:39):
I connect on the level of otherness.
And even people who are Caucasian who identify as other in some aspect of their mindset or
mentality, their approach to life, I connect with them.
It goes in so many ways.
I think it's important to sort of touch on just from what you were saying, connecting
(32:01):
with people and seeing, hey, I see you.
And that's a privilege I don't feel I'll ever have because I feel like an other here in
the United States in every room.
And being able to process the privilege that you'll never have in that way.
I'll never feel what it's like to be white, you know, as neither will I.
(32:26):
So there's certain, there's certain things that we will not experience.
And you have to process that as well.
And you have to just eventually just kind of move on because this is just what it is.
I remember getting made fun of because I have a big nose.
And of course, now you can change your nose if you want to.
But I remember embracing that, which I hope you don't please don't change your nose, go
(32:48):
go.
Yeah, I'm not changing my nose.
It fits my face.
I remember processing that.
I saw it as a privilege of having a big nose because what I would do growing up, I would
say, I would tell people, you know, I can fit a quarter in my nose long way.
(33:08):
And I would tell them, I said, give me a quarter.
Give me a quarter and I will put it in my nose long ways.
And then they wouldn't want that quarter back.
I just made 25 cents.
All right.
The hustle started at a young age.
Okay.
Making a profit off of that.
Okay.
I'm profiting off my nose privilege.
(33:30):
Okay.
And you can breathe and you can really breathe.
I can take a deep breath out of both nostrils at the same time.
Even in that little small moment of being able to take what people would perceive as
not a privilege, you know, oh, you got a big nose.
That's not good.
(33:50):
And then I'm going to take that.
Oh, no, no, it is good.
And watch what I'm going to do with it.
Now that's a very like broken down scenario.
Watch what I'm going to do with it.
Watch what I do with it.
You know?
Watch me work.
You have to take ownership of all of you.
(34:11):
And that's what's good.
Yes.
But it's not your present.
You take ownership of it and you use that to propel you to the next level.
Where does you want to go?
And we've been around.
We've been around the world.
We've been around the globe.
We've been around all these different topics around privilege today.
It's been an amazing conversation.
(34:32):
We're hitting that mark.
It's almost time to go grab that second cup of coffee, that breakfast, that late night
dinner snack that you want to get whatever time it is, as we said, whatever time in the
morning, because it's always it's always morning in the mindset.
Oh, yes.
(34:53):
Farewell for now from our amazing podcast, Morning Motivation with GoGo and Natasha.
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