A Tool for Understanding Privilege and Racism in Your Company
Build a Strong Company Culture Using Intersectionality
WHAT IS INTERSECTIONALITY?
Intersectionality is the framework for understanding the interconnected nature of a person's multiple identities—including but not limited to gender, race, and class—and seeing how they uniquely combine to form a status of discrimination, disadvantage, or privilege.
WHY DOES INTERSECTIONALITY AT WORK MATTER?
It’s simple. There are multiple factors to someone’s identity; recognizing and acknowledging all of the diversity in your organization can help you make smarter decisions around your company’s culture and attract top talent (Williams, 2019). When thinking about diversity, equity, and inclusion at your company, it’s important to note that race and gender are made more complex by the intersectional nature of identity. Actively considering someone’s multiple identities alongside your own can help you see all the possible different perspectives your team can offer that may benefit your company and helps you to develop a culture in which every member of your company feels accepted and valued for who they are.
THE SOCIAL MATRIX: A VISUAL TOOL
Jodie Kliman’s Social Matrix (2010) is a visual tool for showing the intersections of social privilege and marginalization. It not only encourages introspection and reflection of your own privileges, but as Dr. Jessica Binkley of the Oregon Psychological Association Diversity Committee puts it, promotes a “respectful curiosity and dialogue” between friends, family, team members, or clients. Often in a work environment, unexamined biases or assumptions may cause misunderstandings that can damage rapport and degrade communication (Binkley, 2014). However, taking an intersectional approach may enable you and your team to enhance your cultural self-awareness and sensitivity both professionally and personally.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
This matrix entirely changed the way I think of privilege. There are over 30 categories on the chart that all in some shape or form have affected my identity. Previously, I had not realized that a lot of my privilege revolves around my parents, how they grew up, and how their views have affected mine. You can see my chart below:
Personally, it was fascinating for me to dive deeper into some of the categories on here. I was born in Turkey and have been lucky enough to travel to many countries around the world, so the language category stuck out to me. I would be considered extremely privileged in America to speak more than one language—and I speak three fluently—because many Americans only speak English. However, placing myself in the context of Europe, for example, speaking three languages is much more common. Therefore it would be seen less as a privilege and more as a norm.
Doing this activity with my team was enlightening for me, as it gave us all a chance to tell our own story, discover more about ourselves as well as each other, and allowed us all to connect on a much deeper level. While we all had shared experiences around being female, discussing women in the workplace, power dynamics, and safety concerns, we also shared our unique domains of marginalization which helped us better understand each other.
Going over this matrix with a work team presents the opportunity of bonding over shared identities, while also showing everyone that while they may share a privileged or marginalized identity such as race or level of education, no two experiences are the same. The process of completing the Kliman Social Matrix encourages discussion around identity domains and highlights any overlooked power dynamics among relationships.
You can read more about the Kliman Social Matrix here (page 7).
TAKE THE FIRST STEP
I urge you all to do this activity, to share it with your friends and family members, to send it out to your team members, and reflect on it together to gain a better understanding of each other. Reflect on your privilege and sit in your yuck a little. Process who you are, what made you the way you are, the privilege you have, who got you here, and think through the biases and stereotypes that live in your mind. Understanding intersectionality is the foundation of creating an inclusive community and workplace.
If you want help presenting this activity or conversations around identity for yourself or your team, reach out.
Sources
Binkley, J. L. (2014). Mapping Intersectionality: A Practical Approach to Contextualizing Multiple Sociocultural Identities. The Oregon Psychologist: Bulletin of the Oregon Psychological Association, 33(3), 7-8. Retrieved from https://www.opa.org/assets/docs/Newsletters/2014/opanlq32014.pdf.
Kliman, J. (2010). Intersections of Social Privilege and Marginalization: A Visual Teaching Tool. AFTA Monograph Series: Expanding Our Social Justice Practices: Advances in Theory and Training, 39-47. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cjE-_zZCqnW9sp0on7gn5wtAStvKj15q/view.
Williams, Terri. “What Is Intersectionality, and Should Your Workplace Acknowledge It?” GoodCall, 6 Sept. 2019, www.goodcall.com/news/intersectionality-workplace-011486/.