Every week in 2023 I’ll be hosting Facebook LIVES on my Facebook page. The first one of the year was on ‘White Privilege in Business Ownership’ CLICK HERE if you want to watch the recording.
Before going any further, I want to be clear…
This is not anti-whiteness, this is about dismantling white supremacy from ourselves and our businesses. Skin colour isn’t the problem. An ideology and socially constructed system that says people with white skin are supreme, is!
Louise O’Reilly
On top of the talking about the basics of what white privilege is, I shared 3 important things every white business owner should know because they are affecting your business and can be harmfully impacting marginalised communities without you even knowing.
1- White privilege influences business decisions
If you’re white, chances are you may never have been required to think or consider business to be done any other way,. After all, mainstream business here in Australia was build with the privilege people in mind having whiteness at it’s pinnacle.
Mainstream business is built to be the most accessible and most helpful for white people. A Eurocentric way of doing business is the standard way of doing business that only recognise and accommodate for European culture.
Without exposure to different ways of doing business or exposure to how different cultures conduct business, there is nothing within your mind that can assist you in creating and operating a business that’s outside a Eurocentric model. Without exposure to diversity of cultures, life experiences, or abilities, doing business outside of this model is also outside of your paradigm of knowledge.
This paradigm has systematically communicated how to do business from the very first time you encountered a business, to the first time you purchased something, to the first time you received bad customer service…etc.
From marketing and sales, to the copy and language you use, to the way you interact with, it’s all designed for the most privilege people and is embedded with privilege and white supremacy.
Having an intention of and being open to exploring your privilege and how it expresses itself through business is the first step to dissolving it from your business. If you want to know how to do this, be sure to join me on my next Facebook LIVE about ‘Uncovering Privilege in Business’ on 9th February 2023 at 11am AWST/ 1pm AEST.
2- White privilege impacts marginalised clients
When you have a white person doing their thing in business and wanting to support their clients through empowering transformation, it’s important to know and to understand that your business, your processes, your ideologies and your methods come from a lens of being white and living a white life.
Black people, Blak people, Indigenous people and the People of Colour community experience life within the confines of white society as well as having additional nuanced layers of culture in there too.
The problem with only being exposed to white or Eurocentric ways of doing life is when you work with client from marginalised backgrounds, you have the potential to cause great harm to them if you aren’t consciously listening and learning from marginalised voices in the community (both local and global) and marginalised voices within your industry.
The type of guidance, support, and solutions to a clients challenges are intrinsically linked with their culture. One empowering and positively transformational method for one culture may be devastating for another.
Kinships systems, cultural protocols & responsibilities, as well as intergenerational experiences & traumas are few of the aspects of a marginalised persons life, they also need to consider when working on their own healing or personal expansion. This is not something that many business owners consider.
If you want to hear more about this, please watch the FB LIVE. I go much more detail on this subject there.
3- What can be done with white privilege
While white privilege isn’t something that you can push away or disclaim, knowing your privilege can empower you to opt into the conversation of inclusion through your business. When I say opt in, I mean you have a choice to do so. I’m not here to convince anyone of anything, but if you feel called to be intentionally inclusive through your business, and my teachings and message resonates with you. I invite you to opt into the inclusion revolution with me. Allow me show you how to harness your white privilege to create inclusion in your business so that it positively ripples into the world and creates real social impact.
The question is, how do you harness white privilege to create positive social change through your business?
I have an answer for that and it’s one that uses the white supremacist privilege system against itself. You see, when you know what spaces you have privilege, you then know what spaces you have the potential to influence others in that space. Privilege equates to power and the more privilege you have, the more power you have. You can choose to use that power to personally benefit from the system, or you can use it to dismantle the system.
Everyone’s privilege is unique to them and their business so instead of giving you generalised information here, I invite you to join my next free Facebook Live which’ll be on Uncovering Privilege in Business. There I’ll share how you can uncover your business privilege and if you’re there live, you can ask questions as we go. This Facebook LIVE is scheduled for 9th February 2023 at 11am AWST / 1pm AEST on my Facebook page so make sure you pop it in your diary.
I also have a LIVE workshop on Business Privilege & Influencing change happening in my membership (the Inclusion Creators Collective) on 10th February 2023. In this workshop I’ll be working with attendees to:
- identify how white privilege is showing up in their business
- know how to harness it to create positive social change and support marginalised clientele
- define practical and tangible actions to take in their business to be more inclusive, accessible and culturally aware
To access this workshop, come and join the Inclusion Creators Collective membership for one month and also enjoy the other benefits the membership offers like:
- an Uncovering Unconscious Bias LIVE workshop I’m hosting on 23rd February
- a LIVE group coaching/mentoring session to ask all your questions on 7th March
- access to a private community of socially conscious business owners who learning how to increase inclusion through their business, create positive social change, and be a good ancestor by leaving a meaningful legacy
It’s $99 AU for a whole month in the Inclusion Creators Collective. You can find out more about it or join by clicking here.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them in the comment section or DM them to me on my Facebook page and be sure to watch last weeks FB LIVE as I also talk about the 4 parts of “doing the work” that’s required for anyone interested in being part of the inclusion revolution.
I hope to see you on the Uncovering Privilege in Business Facebook LIVE next week or maybe even in the Inclusion Creators Collective.
Until next time, here’s to the inclusion revolution!
