Power U 25: Marginalization and Vulnerability

PowerU 25 - Today’s post follows up on PowerU 24 where I talked about the definition of privilege. This post will talk about the definition of marginalization or vulnerability. What neither post talks about directly is that for most of us, we have privilege in some contexts and are vulnerable in others so characterizing ourselves broadly as “marginalized” or “privileged” creates a sense of inevitability that erases the space we need for self-awareness, humility and personal accountability in environments where we are privileged and advocacy, allies and system accountability in environments where we are marginalized. This is why, of the tools I promised you in the video, the first one I am starting with is the Wheel of Privilege. It started in the US and you can learn more about it from Dominique Hollis’ excellent Wheel of Privilege video on YouTube. But wait there is more! The real power of the wheel of privilege is looking at the criteria that create power/accountability imbalances in different environments. For example, there is a Canadian Wheel of Privilege that looks quite different than the American one. For DEI resources: there are so many contexts and options that I am realizing it’s impractical for me to give you links. Anima Leadership is one of my favourites. Curious to hear what yours are. Feel free to share them in the comments. A final note: today I reached the auspicious milestone of 25 PowerU posts bringing me a quarter of the way to my goal of 100 PowerU posts. Thank you so much for tuning in and for all the notes of encouragement and letting me know how the content is useful for you in your work and life.