Welcome to The Laverne Cox Show, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show. My name is Laverne Cox. I've been thinking a lot lately about privilege, and it's such a interesting, tricky conversation to have.
These days.
You can see people online saying check your privilege, and in people getting into fights around privilege and not feeling privileged because they've had struggles in their lives. You know, when we talk about something like white privilege, for example, there are a lot of working class white people who don't feel privileged because they've had to struggle in their lives and they're still struggling. A lot of men, when we talk about male privilege, they're going through struggles and
they don't feel particularly privileged. And the way I like to think about privilege is that privilege does not mean that you have not struggled. It just means that there are some things that you don't have to think about.
So you could be the most privileged.
Person in one room and change rooms and be the least privileged person in that room. And when I talk about a privilege, I love telling this story I was giving a lecture in South Carolina around twenty fourteen, and before the lecture, I got to meet with a group of students from the university and they had sat themselves in a semicircle in this sort of conference room. And I go around and I want to meet the students and I ask them, you know who they are?
And they were all sort of student leaders.
They were representing different organizations and I am meeting. To my left was the president of the LGBTQ Student Alliance. And I go around the table and the students hit sat themselves in an interesting way where they the students were like white to Asian to Latino or Hispanic to black.
That's how the students were seated.
And so as the students went around, they told me who they were, and I asked them some things they may have been struggling with around identity or you know, education or whatever they might have been struggling with at the university. And I remember getting to the last student who was who was a black student. He talked about being black and gay and that as a member of the Black student Union, he's often felt like he's had
to choose between being black and gay. When he's in black spaces and when he's at the lgbt Alliance in that group, that he has to sort of leave his blackness behind and that he can't bring both those identities into the queer space, or can he bring both those identities into the black space. And so having the president of the LGBTQ Student Alliance sitting right next to me, I turned to the to the president and said, well, what do you think about what he said? And he's like,
I don't know, I've never thought about it. And I was like, that's this is privilege. I was like, this is a privilege. It is not like he was a bad person. This, this kid who's the president of you know, LGBTQ Student Alliance, is not a bad person because he's never thought about this.
It's just it's a privilege to.
Not have to think about leaving parts of yourself behind when you go into a room because you inhabit multiple, you know, sort of marginalized identities, and privilege just means there's something that you don't have to think about and it is not an indictment on you to have privilege. I am a black, transgender woman from a working class background, right like all of those identity categories aren't necessarily thought of as privilege. Yet I sit here in a lot
of privilege. I sit here in quite a bit of class privilege. And the class privilege is recent, you know, over the past, you know, within the past decade. And I'm fifty years old, so most of my adult life I've been working class, working poor, however you want to describe it, but still fly and now I'm sitting in a lot of class privilege. Being famous and a public
figure is a tremendous privilege. Fame mitigates so many of the struggles of being black and trans and a woman doesn't mitigate all of them, but it mitigates some of them.
Education.
Having a mother that was a teacher was a tremendous privilege of mine. Having a mother who corrected my grammar and wanted to make sure that I spoke properly. That I went to Bethel ami Church or Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church was a tremendous privilege because every Sunday I summarized the Sunday School lesson, so weekly I was standing up in front of a room full of people speaking, and that would serve me later in my work as a public speaker, going to the Abams School of Fine Arts.
Education is a huge privilege. So there's different kinds of privileges. And all those privileges did not mean that I have not had a life of struggle. It just means that, like those privileges were things I didn't have to think about and gave me entree into spaces that I maybe wouldn't have gotten entree into if I didn't speak a certain way and if I didn't have the education that
I have. And so, what I would love to invite people to think about when they think about privilege and ultimately when they think about racism or transphobia or sexism is so I think so two things. When we think about our own levels of privilege and the ways in which we're privileged, it does not mean that we are necessarily an open right. Being able to critically engage with our privilege doesn't mean that we're a bad person and that we're like oppressing someone. And I think that we
have to understand that ourselves. And then when we talk about other people's privilege, we should be careful not to paint them as an oppressor because they have maybe not thought critically about their privileged or quote unquote checked their privilege. Right, So just because someone is privileged doesn't mean that they are a bad person. And maybe if they haven't thought critically about their privilege doesn't mean they're a bad person. All of this should be an invitation. We all grow
up in a world where we internalize certain ideas. And I've said this many many times, if I can be I'm a black transfer to woman from Mobile, Alabama, I internalized negative ideas about black people, and I'm a black person, I internalize white supremacist, racist ideas about my own people and myself that because we live in a white supremacist, anti black world, I internalized negative ideas about myself based on class. We had an episode in the last US
season of the podcast about class shaming. I internalized negative ideas about myself as a trans person. Because we live in an anti trans world. I had to unlearn all of those negative things about myself. And so if I can internalize negative things about myself as a black person, as a trans person, as a woman, as a person from a working class background, because we live and what Bellhus calls imperialists, white supremacists, capitalist patriarchy, we live in a system that.
Is racist, that is sexist, that is cis.
Noormative, heteronormative. So then we all internalize these things. And so if I'm internalizing it, even if you're a cis gender person or a white person or a man, if you likely internalize those things too. And so we're all in the same boat. So calling someone racist, it's like not it's not even really useful, I think anymore, because we're all racist. We've all been sort of you know, God, indoctrination is such a loaded word right now, but we've all sort of internalized.
We've all been raised in a world.
That devalues blackness, whether you're black or not, we all live in a world that this celebrates on a systemic level whiteness over other things that like devalues womanhood, femininity, that devalues trans people and LGBTQ plus people, and we
all have to unlearn that. And so if we can begin to envision a world where we're all in the same boat, it's like the transphobia thing or the racist thing, like even calling someone I think the problem with just saying, oh, this person is racist doesn't allow the space for transformation, and the conversation about Bell Hooks with Darnell and Inmani we talked about creating space for transformation, and when we just say that someone is racist and that becomes their identity,
that doesn't open up space for transformation. Now, some people are not interested in being transformed. Some people are not interested in, like you know, interrogating the ways in which they've internalized racism.
It's very uncomfortable.
It's been very uncomfortable for me to sit with the uncomfortable feelings of like how I've internalized racist ideas about myself and about my people, the internalized transphobia.
Oh my goodness.
I don't know if I've told the story on this podcast, but there was a moment when I was working at Lucky Chang's, which is a drag queen restaurant in New York City, which was and there was a woman named Verra who had a school called Miss Vera's School for Girls who want to be Boys, sort of a charm school for cross dressers, and most of her clients were straight identified CIS gender men who enjoyed cross dressing and
a sort of itishistic way. They were often married to women, and they would go to Miss Vere's charm School and get lessons in femininity, and then sort of their graduation would be getting dressed up on film and going out for a night on the town. And often she would
bring them to Lucky Changs. And so one night, some of the students from Mis Severe School that come into Lucky Chang's and some of the girls who work at Chang's found themselves so sort of saying really disparaging things about the students from Miss Vera School who were very obviously cross dressed men and who weren't the most feminine
or elegant or whatever. And I found myself joining in with these other queens who I worked with, some of whom were trans women, and then I had to check myself and I was like, Laverne, what are you doing?
This is the same stuff people say about you. And I realized in that moment, looking at these you know, students from Miss Vera's school who were these sort of cross dressed men really probably for the first time out in the world in drag, and the awkwardness of that and the you know, the vulnerability of that moment, and I had to confront my own sort of anxieties around
being seen that way by the world. My fear of being seen is this sort of awkward cross stressor and knowing that often when people find out I'm trans, I'm viewed that way anyway. And so there were so many levels of internalized transphobia that were operating in that moment as I found myself joining in on making fun of these students who were being really brave that night to come.
Out for the first time, and I had.
To interrogate the way in which my internalized transphobia was. You know, I hopefully I don't think they heard us, but that was really not cool, and that's not the kind of person I want to be. I don't want to be making fun of people because of the way they look, and that's not how I want to proceed in the world. So I had to check myself in that moment, and I had to like say that I don't want to behave this way and I don't want to be this way in the world, and why am
I doing this? And I'm doing this because of my own feelings about myself that I need to get better with myself and okay with myself, and so much of that for those of us who are from marginalized groups who are internalize transphobia and sexism.
That's the journey that we have to have.
And if we're not from a marginalized group, if we are, that cis white man that feels like they're being attacked on a regular basis, Like the work is different. But if I can be raised in a culture where I've internalized racism and sexism and transphobia, it's probably likely that you also internalize some of those ideas and it's not and you're not a bad person if you're willing to say, yeah, I have, and how do I work on this and
how do I get better? How do I acknowledge that there are certain things I haven't had to think about around privilege, or things that I've taken for granted or things that I've thought I knew or assumed.
And it should be a privilege to.
Even when it's uncomfortable, to be lovingly called out. And it's been uncomfortable for me when I've been checked around things. It has been, but hopefully, like there are people in your life who love you, who care about you, who can lovingly say that's not it, and then hopefully you can hear them. This is a good time to take a little break. We'll be right back though, Okay, we're back. I think we're all I think we're all racist. I
think we're all transphobic. I think we're all sexist because we've you know, grown up in a culture that has sort of taught us all those things, and it's our job to unlearn all that if we're interested in on learning all those things, Like, maybe maybe a different way
to frame it. Instead of saying you are a racist or you are transphobic, maybe like say, this language or this approach is consistent with a history of transphobia, or consistent with history that devalues the womanhood of trans women or suggests that trans people aren't real. And when I say transphobia, really just you know, most transphobia is about sort of degrading trans people, saying that we're not real,
saying that we're mentally ill. Ultimately, the core of transphobia is that like trans women aren't trans women, that transmen transman, and that non binary people don't exist. Like that's the core of transphobia, or saying that, like, you know, the Roseanne Barr moment, I think is a really good example, like a really good example because it's just so blatant when oh, I still can't say what she said about
Valerie jareded but you can google it. But after Roseanne Barr tweeted what she tweeted about Valerie Jared and many hours later would go on Twitter and say I'm not racist when she said one of the most racist things that somebody could say about a black person, It's like, it's like, okay, what And I think she believes that she's not racist, right, I think she can make a
statement like that and believe she's not racist. And so I think having the discussion around like, well, what you said is consistent with a history of how black people have been talked about in America in a racist context, So the accountability would be acknowledging that these comments are consistent with that history. I didn't realize that, or I realized it, and I was angry, and I said, who knows how that came out or why you know it?
I extended as much grace as possible, But I think it's more to focus on the behavior and not the person. Is another way to kind of have the conversation maybe about the ways in which we might discriminate or buy into this normative, heteronormative imperialists, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. Maybe focusing on the behavior and not the person, so it doesn't become that person's identity the racism, but the racism becomes a behavior that they can change.
If they choose to or not. Just some thoughts, Just some thoughts.
I'd like to think that everyone is redeemable, that everyone is human and can be transformed. So you know, some people demonstrate over and over again they're not interested in that, and we have to believe them when they tell us that through their actions. But I want to be perceived from a place of love and empathy at all times. And I think that starting with we all have internalized the values of this normative, heteronormative, impeerless, wide supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
It is a great place to start, so we're all in the same place, and then we can begin to do the work together and it doesn't become like you did this to me, or you're a bad person, but you've just gotten the wrong information. And here's different information that you might want to consider so that you can see the full humanity and not discount the full humanity of the person standing next to you, or the person on the other side of the screen, or any of that.
So we can see each other better, see ourselves better, acknowledge our shared humanity better. That's what I'm interested in as an artist, as a human rights activist, that we can acknowledge each other's humanity more fully.
Just some thoughts. Thank you for listening to The Laverne Cox Show.
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