The Wheel of Power & Privilege

Introduction

Over the last several years, I have invested significant time and effort in self-discovery. This process involves personal reflection and looking inward to understand who I am, how I became who I am, and whether I am aligned with who I want to be.

Along the way, I've found tools that helped me examine myself through different lenses to see a more complete picture. While attending a workshop from OnCanada⁠, one resource they presented was Silvia Duckworth's version of the Wheel of Power & Privilege⁠. It helped me visualize a more complete picture of myself that I had been cobbling together through reading and workshops until then. It also gave me more clarity into how I see people around me and how they see me. I'd like to share what I've learned from it with you.

What Is The Wheel of Power & Privilege?

How we see ourselves is influenced by experiences that have significantly impacted our lives and formed our social identities. Our perspective on the world is shaped by our social identity and how well we understand other's perspectives.

The wheel of power & privilege gives us a tool to guide us in expanding our perspective. It defines a set of traits which are generally impactful to our social identities in Western society. Each trait has a range of values, with those that bestow more power & privilege closer to the center, while those with less are on the outer edge. Identifying where someone is for each trait on the wheel gives us a rough idea of their social identity as well as how much power & privilege they hold in our society. Because so many of our experiences are defined by the power & privilege we hold, understanding another person's position on the wheel helps us understand their experiences, thus expanding our perspective.

Furthermore, I would argue that the depth of connection we form with another person is heavily influenced by how seen and accepted we feel by each other. Meaning, that if we want to establish a deeper connection with another person, we need to be able to see and accept each other's perspectives on the world. This is especially important in connections where there is a large gap between these perspectives. So in this sense, the wheel of power & privilege gives us a tool to help form deeper connections with people. And in a Western world facing an epidemic of loneliness and isolation⁠, I believe this can be a very powerful tool.

How It's Helped Me

The wheel helped me better understand myself and how wide my perspective was, and then work to intentionally expand it.

It also helped me see where to focus my efforts to understand different perspectives. This too was a relief, as people I cared about had told me that it was hard to connect because they didn't feel seen and accepted by me. This gave me a lens to look through and understand what they meant. It also gave me a roadmap to work from that didn't require them to do the emotional labour of walking me through each step.

Finally, it helped me see who I would likely struggle to connect with most in the future. These were the perspectives on the wheel I was completely blind to. They are the ones who helped me see the hierarchy of power & privilege most clearly, and just how dehumanizing it is. They showed me how interconnected the struggles to tear that hierarchy down are, and how one of us can't be liberated from it until all of us are.

This list could go on, however it's more interesting to see how it informs on whose perspectives I need to seek to understand the reality of the world I live in. I do this by taking the trait(s) where I have power & privilege and looking from my value towards the outside of the wheel. For the example of going to any town/city in Canada, I can work to understand what this is like from as many differing perspectives as I can find. That would mean finding non-white, non-post secondary, non-English as a first language, non-male, non-able-bodied, non-citizenship perspectives. The more I can work to understand someone at the intersection of that experience, the more deeply I can connect with them. The more deeply I can connect with them, the more I can understand how my liberation is bound to theirs.

If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.

I seek these perspectives through movies, books, podcasts, workshops, social media, websites, etc. I look for existing content first and have learned not to go directly to friends & acquaintances. This is because asking an individual to educate me on their perspective and humanity is asking for their emotional labour. It's emotional labour they already have to do just to exist in the world. Some people choose to do this educational work and make it available. I've learned how to find them, and I pay them for their labour like I would anyone else providing me with a service. Sourcing, consuming, and paying for this content is part of my work as someone who holds power & privilege.

Power & Privilege and the Status Quo

Another way I think about the wheel is that values closer to the center are closer to the "status quo" of society. Here I'm using the term in the sociological sense, meaning the current state of social structure or values⁠. So, people closer to the status quo are generally higher in the social structure and closer to societal "values". Because we tend to allow our values to guide our moral judgments, they are also seen as morally "better".

For example, our society views wealthier people as higher in our social structure and wealth itself as a positive value. Society generally assumes they have worked harder than others to merit their wealth and therefore are smarter, more driven, and generally morally better. An example from the outside of the wheel is how society views homeless people as lower in our social structure. It assumes they have chosen to be this way through laziness or poor choices and therefore, are morally worse. Either way, and without any additional context, people who are on the outside of the wheel are seen as less "good", less deserving, and less human than those closer to the centre.

If you're like me, with a lot of power & privilege, this may be a confronting statement. When I first heard it, I felt it was saying that my life had been easy and hadn't required hard work to get to where I am. By pointing out the dehumanizing status quo, I felt accused of dehumanizing others.

I had to work through that defensiveness to hear what it was saying. Which was that as hard as my life has been, others have had it much harder. And as much as I've had to work to get where I am, others have had to work much harder to not make it nearly as far. I was raised with this status quo, fit into it quite well, and so I subscribed to it by default. I did not question it when presented with opportunities. Instead, I chose to stay silent or even defend the status quo without understanding it. By doing that, I refused to see others in their struggle and that is dehumanizing to them.

I had to work to understand that having power & privilege was not a value judgment on me, but a reality of the world I live in. This reality was created by people who came before me for their benefit. It's upheld today by those of us who continue to benefit from it, whether consciously or unconsciously. By subscribing people to this reality unconsciously, it resists questioning and therefore resists change.

In my early 20's when I was first presented with real opportunities to question the status quo, I had already built a large part of my identity on it. Questioning the status quo required me to question foundational aspects of my identity. Instead of courageously engaging with those questions, I chose the easy route and leveraged my power & privilege to look away from the issues it caused. At the core that is what privilege is, to be able to choose not to engage with an issue and continue with your life.

By my mid 30's the indirect impact of it finally hit me. I felt disconnected from myself. I was losing connections to people I loved because of my defensiveness around parts of my identity. I finally forced myself to sit in the pain and discomfort of questioning it. I saw how my identity was built on this shaky hierarchy of power & privilege. I had to pull that identity apart until I reached the core of who I am, then slowly build back something new, something more authentically me.

Through this work, the connection to myself has never been stronger. I have also been able to rebuild some connections with those I love yet hurt by avoiding this work, although there is much more to do here to rebuild trust. For me, it's work that will never truly be finished. Rather, it's an ongoing practice and way of being in the world.

Limitations

While I've found the wheel of power & privilege helpful as a tool, it is not perfect. It reduces people down to a common set of traits and values then assigns a hierarchical ranking to those values. The nuances of a person can not realistically be simplified into 12 traits. Nor can those traits be simplified into 3 categories with just the values listed here. For example, traits like age, religion, or marital status may all be more impactful for some people. Another example would be that the lived reality of power & privilege around sexuality for gay, lesbian, bi, pan, and asexual people is not all the same, despite them being grouped on the wheel.

For me, the goal is not to have a perfect tool but to find and use tools that help me to grow. The wheel offers me a starting point to identify blind spots and where to engage to reduce them. I believe putting my energy here can significantly deepen my connection to myself, people I currently know, and those I haven't met yet. And for me, deeper connections have always led to a more fulfilling life.

Conclusion

I write this for anyone who, like me, is close to the status quo yet unaware of their power & privilege; or those who feel defensive or confronted by it. I believe doing the work to understand this can connect us more deeply to ourselves and others. It can reframe our view of the status quo and what we're striving for in life. It can bring us into solidarity with those with less power & privilege, help us realize that our struggles are intrinsically linked, and help us see that we are more similar than we are different.

... if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.