How Privilege kills Diversity

I’d like to approach the topic of this article from two aspects: the infrastructural aspect and the individualistic one. The infrastructural aspect is the one that is built within the system and often it surrounds our lives without us even thinking about it. The individualistic aspect is the one where everyone brings something to the table, even if they do so subconsciously. With that said, here I present how privilege presumably destroys diversity.

The privilege of Infrastructures  

The privilege of infrastructure is built upon the social norms of each cultural system. The people within said system have more of a cultural capital (“worth”) than others depending on the characteristics which are favoured by the system. In the bigger sense of our modern society, Capitalism (which is the system that we operate on the wider scale) gives more social power and “worth” to people who are rich. This automatically means that rich people are presumed as having bigger cultural capital and therefore more opinions on how the world operates.

This by default brings less diversity. If rich people have more of a say in how society operates, this automatically leads to some specific attitudes and situations being preferred over others. Usually, said “other” attitudes and situations (which are the ones that are not seen or heard by the public) are the realities and the wishes of poorer populations or populations with less power.

One doesn’t need to look much further than the clothing industry or other similar industries. I think many people are aware of the inhumane tactics with which their products are made (which is in countries with less taxation, where human rights have not yet been established as much and therefore workers are often disgustingly exploited) and this is another facet of the destruction of diversity. However, at this point, I’d like to turn the attention to how these industries kill the diversity within our everyday lives by setting examples of what is “good” or “beautiful” and how the majority of the population follows them without understanding how it affects them.

To simplify the topic even further, I would like to showcase the example of Victoria’s Secret and how its “angels” affected our views on what is considered beautiful for years. This is disturbing on its own; however, I think little attention has been brought to how these “angels” were chosen, by whom and for what reason. Two of the main figures within its operational program, Mr Razek and Leslie Wexner, were brought to the limelight for being misogynistic towards their models[1]. For me, more importantly, we should focus on how they and others like them had enough power and money to determine who is “beautiful enough to sell the fantasy” and therefore decide who should be presented as an ideal beauty.

It gets even more shocking when one realises that these grown men often viewed the bodies of 17-year-olds and then let them walk down the catwalk as sexualized individuals. Many Victoria’s Secret Models complained that they couldn’t keep up with the weight limits and other measurements they required from them once their body started growing into its mature form, even with extreme diets. Therefore, we have 50-year-old men deciding that the epitome of beauty for women are these specifically chosen 17-20-year-olds (who are no longer beautiful after they gain some curves) and no one else. Of course, thinner women and women with fewer curves are beautiful, but where is the diversity? I don’t even want to analyse the lack of representation of other ethnicities and races because I think it would be a whole discussion on its own, but, the point is, this is happening by millions of companies everywhere and the population has no choice but to follow along.

Individual Privilege

Moving to personal choices, often every one of us is privileged over someone else. People from the north of Europe are on average more privileged than the people in the south of Europe. The people in the south of Europe are more privileged than other people across the globe, and so forth. Of course, things are often not as simple as I present and a lot of things come into play, but the point is that we as individuals often kill diversity by choosing what we are more comfortable with. And if we are in a situation where we have more cultural capital than other people, we may subconsciously cut off diversity because we don’t understand it.

The way we express ourselves, the way we perceive things, our ideals, and so on, depend a lot on our cultural background. Therefore, if a person is from another country and does something which seems off, we might make fun of them or prefer another person who is closer to our culture. This would be perfectly fine if it was only within the personal sphere, but we must always remember that this could happen in the professional sphere, such as the process of hiring a new individual for work or a specific position. I have more than one story where people in higher positions will decline to hire a person from a different background because they don’t completely understand their ways. This leads to the marginalisation of people whose background doesn’t hold enough cultural capital and kills diversity.

Therefore, I think it would be worthwhile if everyone started looking more into this topic and see how they themselves may change a bit to bring more diversity into our everyday lives, the market and the workplace. Only then can we truly speak of equality.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/business/victorias-secret-razek-harassment.html