Pre-existing privilege

I was born to college-educated parents in a relatively well-off financial position, attended an English-speaking school in a country known for its excellent academics, and was brought up amongst family and friends who fostered kindness and empathy. This one sentence already puts me in the top 2% of people in the entire world population to whom such educational, financial, and social structures were available. The rest of the 98% were so far behind in the race at the time of their birth that they can never hope to even get to the starting line to ever have a fair chance at life. My pre-existing privileges gave me such a massive boost that I actually get a shot at racing against the elite runners.

A pre-existing privilege is essentially the opposite of a pre-existing medical condition. The latter guarantees that you’ll be saddled with hospital bills and insurance claims for the entirety of your life (at least in America) due to a failing healthcare system, whereas the former assures that you’ve all the right criteria to ensure you’re all set to maximize any opportunity that comes your way due to simply being born at the right time in the right place to the right people with the right skin color. The most gutting thing about pre-existing privileges is that most don’t realize that they actually have it until they’re explicitly told about it or freshly experience gaining it.

At the age of fifteen, my family moved to the United States. I was appalled at the fact that I didn’t have to wear a uniform to high school. I could wear whatever I wanted? I could choose not to wear the tie that felt like a noose around my neck and do away with the ugly maroon knee-length cotton socks? This luxury of choice was a privilege I did not have when for the ten years of schooling in India. I suddenly felt like I had control of my look and appearance, which I never realized was lacking until it was shown to me that it existed. And yes, I made the most of it by straight up copying outfits from Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide for my first phase of being fresh off the boat. It was…an interesting time.

When I attended classes in an American high school, the teachers would make us go around the room and introduce ourselves. They’d ask us about our hobbies. Hobbies? This was a genuine shock to me. If you didn’t know, in most Asian countries, hobbies aren’t a thing. You don’t get pastimes. You’re always studying. Constantly studying. Hobbies are for the losers who fail examinations and end up being garbage collectors (or so we were told). So imagine my surprise when my classmates in America asked what I do for fun. I can still remember my brain almost breaking from trying to process the fact that my life was going to be different from now on. I’m supposed to have hobbies? A personality? A character? What a time.

The simple act of having time to do things you enjoy is an immense privilege that most Western cultures just do not understand or appreciate. India and South Korea have the highest student suicide rates because the students overwork and burn out due to intense academic pressure. It’s constantly being drilled into your head that you’ll turn out to be a failure if you don’t do well in school, so you spend every waking second of your precious childhood trying to get good grades. You don’t get the pre-existing privilege of being born into a relatively lax society that values leisure, sports, entertainment, and recreation. You know, a lifestyle where having free time to fill with activities you enjoy is seen as normal and healthy.

It also wasn’t quite clear to me how my experience attending an English-speaking school would literally pave my path to success. Another quick lesson: most Indian schools in Northern India are taught primarily in Hindi whereas most of the schools in Southern Indian typically teach in their regional language. All schools teach English grammar and literature as classes, but most don’t conduct all classes in English. Attending a private English-speaking international school in India was a rarity. I had the pre-existing privilege of having parents who recognized the importance of being fluent in English in a rapidly globalizing economy and chose to send their kids to a somewhat expensive English-speaking school. All students were encouraged to speak English with their classmates outside of classes and I almost always conversed with my friends in English. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this easily put me in the top 0.001% of Indian students in terms of having a leg up when working abroad later in life.

When I landed in America, I noticed many other immigrants struggling in English classes. Not just in high school, but even in college. These people worked really hard to study and come to America, and yet found it difficult to hold basic conversations in English, making it extremely tough for them to form relationships and friends outside of their core ethnic group. I had a huge leg up here and after quickly acclimatizing to the American quirks of English (I was taught British English in India #gofigure), found it quite easy to naturally spark up conversations with American students. Many were surprised to learn that I had just moved to the country a few years ago, as most assumed I was born and raised here because of the fluency with which I spoke English. Massive pre-existing privilege that I never realized I had until it was made extremely obvious.

Throughout my school life, I always had access to technology. My father worked in the IT industry, and we had a computer in 1995. A desktop computer. From a very young age, I was making PowerPoint presentations and filing out Excel spreadsheets with the makes and models of cars. I created massive Word documents detailing pokémon stats and learned more software than I can remember at a very young age. We always had technology at home. We had early access to dial-up internet and my dad was a whiz at resolving any software-related issues (hardware was a different story). This early access to technology, combined with the free time I acquired after moving to America, and topped off with my English fluency contributed greatly in me eventually choosing to pursue design a career path. I would literally never have realized that I enjoy tinkering around in Photoshop and that I would like to someday get paid to do it if I didn’t have all these pre-existing privileges forcing that moment into existence. I’m really grateful for it and cannot imagine what I’d be doing if I had continued down the path of ruthless academics back in India.

I realize that my experiences so far have shaped my worldview in a dramatically different way than, say, a white American kid who lived in the suburbs their entire life and hasn’t had the opportunity to interact with too many people that are of different backgrounds and cultures than they are. Me simply having all these experiences and opportunities is a pre-existing privilege. I didn’t actively try for any of them, they just sort of…happened to me. And I sometimes feel guilty for that. I feel guilty about the fact that I wriggled my way out of having to take the rigorous board examinations, a mandated rite of passage exam that every Indian tenth-grader takes in order to score into placement for higher-education studies. I feel bad that most of my peers from back in India, who are significantly more hard-working and smarter than me, are still set much farther back in their careers than me and I feel really weird knowing that no matter how hard they work and how hard they climb, they’ll never quite be able to match the success I’ve had simply due to the privileges bestowed upon me by virtue of me being a tech worker in America.

I don’t discount the fact that I worked hard. I think I did what I needed to do and tried my best in all the situations. But the rails were well-oiled and greased for me to just smoothly coast on through. I had to put in the work, but the tracks were there. Those tracks haven’t even been laid out for over 98% of the world. Meanwhile, I have an abundance of choices of highly-polished, well-maintained tracks to choose from at any point. This freedom fo choice of being able to to switch my job or career at a moment’s notice is another massive pre-existing privilege that I’ve grown to recognize.

So many workers around the world simply cannot afford to lose their job. Many are tied to an employer through visa or immigration restrictions. Many live in fear of being reprimanded or denied entry back into the country if they were to leave and visit home for a bit due to the tense political climate. Meanwhile, I can easily drop a few thousand dollars on an expensive overseas trip while taking three months off of work in-between jobs. I’ve done that multiple times now and I was fully aware of how privileged it felt and how insane it was that I was actually able to pull that off while millions of Americans were struggling to pay off student loans and were neck deep in healthcare bills. Still boggles the mind.

I think you get the idea by now, but I’m essentially just saying that anything can be a pre-existing privilege. Being born male is a pre-existing privilege. Being white is a pre-existing privilege. Being straight is a pre-existing privilege. Being born in America is a pre-existing privilege. The fact that you have the time to read this blog post is a pre-existing privilege. You even being able to read English to understand this sentence is a pre-existing privilege. If you didn’t already realize it before, I hope you realize it now. Many aren’t afforded this opportunity, so start recognizing it when you see others being oppressed for not having it. Build inclusive products that allow the underprivileged to gain access to them. Notice when someone doesn’t check their pre-existing privilege and call them out on it. This isn’t purely about race or politics or socio-economics. It’s about making sure everyone’s on the same playing field. It’s about ensuring everyone gets a fair shot at the one life that they all have. Make it count for them all.