{"id":41237,"date":"2016-09-23T14:21:21","date_gmt":"2016-09-23T18:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=41237"},"modified":"2016-09-23T14:22:26","modified_gmt":"2016-09-23T18:22:26","slug":"five-questions-with-wpsc-keynote-ritu-bhasin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2016\/09\/five-questions-with-wpsc-keynote-ritu-bhasin\/","title":{"rendered":"Five questions with WPSC keynote Ritu Bhasin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ritu Bhasin is a community activist, lawyer and diversity specialist. She will be presenting a keynote address and workshop at the upcoming White Privilege Symposium<\/a> at Brock University Sept. 30-Oct.1. The following is a Q&A with Bhasin.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Q: Why is a conversation about white privilege important?<\/p>\n

A: It\u2019s critical to raise awareness about the ways in which privilege is entrenched in our societal structures, and how this privilege helps certain groups get ahead while leaving other groups behind. Here\u2019s how I think of privilege: those with privilege have an automatic red carpet rolled out for them, and those without privilege not only lack access to the automatic red carpet, they also have to fight to get that access. The core problem is that all of this is unearned \u2013 it\u2019s simply a direct result of possessing certain cultural identity characteristics. Given our history, people with white skin experience this automatic privilege whereas people of colour are disadvantaged. We all need to be talking about this \u2013 and in Canada in particular, we have not been having these conversations.<\/p>\n

Q: Who should be taking part in discussions about white privilege?<\/p>\n

A: In short \u2013 everyone. White privilege isn\u2019t something that concerns only white people or only people of colour \u2013 it concerns us all. Everyone in society needs to be part of the discussion about how to address power and privilege.<\/p>\n

Many people of colour have these discussions behind closed doors with each other, but not directly with white people. It\u2019s critical that everyone be included in this conversation \u2013 white people who have the privilege need to be able to take ownership of their piece of this issue. Until we sit together on this, change won\u2019t happen. Which is why the White Privilege Symposium is such a great platform for conversation \u2013 it\u2019s a wider, more inclusive, and much needed conversation about privilege.<\/p>\n

Q: In what ways can society start moving towards greater equality for all people?<\/p>\n

A: We need to raise awareness about and address the biases, blindspots, judgments and assumptions that we hold about marginalized communities \u2013 both individually and systemically. It\u2019s critical that we work together on addressing the systems of power and privilege while taking ownership of our own individual place and responsibility in this system. In my work, I\u2019m increasingly talking about the importance of authenticity in addressing privilege and inclusion \u2013 encouraging individuals to understand and bring their authentic selves to bear in more situations. By learning how to strategically express our true selves more often \u2013 particularly the aspects of our identities that we are consistently told to push down or hide in favour of sameness \u2013 we create an environment where others can do the same. Each one of us has a lot of self-work to do in order to change the system.<\/p>\n

Q: Your talk is titled: \u201cBreaking the Shackles of Oppression & Addressing Privilege: Rise through the Authenticity Principle,\u201d how do you suggest that can be done?<\/p>\n

A: This ties back to the idea of authenticity \u2013 which is the core theme of my upcoming book, The Authenticity Principle<\/em>. At the Symposium, I\u2019ll be talking about this concept, and why it is that I\u2019ve identified authenticity as a critical component of empowering people of colour. I\u2019ll address: how authenticity shows up in our personal and professional lives; the structural and systemic barriers that we face as people of colour; and most importantly the self-limiting barriers that we struggle with \u2013 like internalized bias, the impostor syndrome, and minimization. I\u2019ll focus on the strategies for individual self-work around authenticity which, as a result of my years of leadership and inclusion work, I truly believe is the key to both empowerment and inclusion.<\/p>\n

Q: Why does diversity matter in the workplace?<\/p>\n

A: Diversity in the workplace is important in that it tells us which groups are represented within our organizations \u2013 for example, the number of people of colour, women and members of other diverse groups who are present. But this is strictly quantitative \u2013 the more important piece when it comes to creating change within the workplace is inclusion.\u00a0Inclusion is the qualitative experience: do diverse professionals feel that they have equal access to opportunities within their organization? Do they feel that they are able to bring their differences to work, and that they can leverage these differences for success? In my global work with organizations, this is where I focus. Inclusion is where real change lives \u2013 and it\u2019s through inclusion that we can better distribute power and privilege throughout all echelons of our society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ritu Bhasin is a community activist, lawyer and diversity specialist. She will be presenting a keynote address and workshop at the upcoming White Privilege Symposium at Brock University Sept. 30-Oct.1. The following is a Q&A with Bhasin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":41238,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41237"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41239,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41237\/revisions\/41239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}