High School Students’ Emotion and Perception on the Privilege Walk

Macedo, Adriana Ribeiro de; Dias, Kerollane Pereira de Araujo; Loiola, Mariana Costa; Ramos, Natalia Correia da Silva; Nogueira, Susana Engelhard; Imbiriba, Luís Aureliano

doi:10.1590/2175-6236108437vs02

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OTHER THEMES • Educ. Real. 47 • 2022 • https://doi.org/10.1590/2175-6236108437vs02 copy

High School Students’ Emotion and Perception on the Privilege Walk

Authorship SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

ABSTRACT

The social debate at school is essential for an integral, critical and emancipatory education. However, motivating students is essential to address social issues in a dialogic way, reducing resistance to debate. Based on Grada Kilomba’s reflection, from a psychological point of view on such resistances, this paper adopted the Privilege Walk (PW) as a strategy to approach the debate on social inequality at school. The following were investigated: self-perception of students’ social position, PW’s emotional dimensions, sincerity in PW and PW’s impacts on students’ perception about social inequality. Final position in PW correlated with social self-perception. The magnitude of the differences and the related factors empathically triggered important social perceptions and considerations.

Keywords
Privilege Walk; Social Inequality; School; Meaningful Learning; Emotional Dimensions

Perceptions	Utterances
Difference between people (perceived by the distance between them at the end of the Walk)
Distance as a concrete representation of inequalities	“I expected... to stay a little way behind, but not so far at the end, right?) I discovered that the differences are much greater than I imagined...” (OIEM).
Distance as a concrete representation of inequalities	“I was expecting there was going to be a difference, but I thought that difference was going to be, say, little, you know? Everyone was going to be, say, inside the same square. [...] I expected differences, but not so many of them” (DEZEM).
Differences are not directly visible or addressed in everyday school life	“[interesting] the fact that we all come to school every day, spend six hours, five hours a day and we realize that there are differences, say, incompatibilities like that, in each one’s life, you know?” (NOVEM).
	“[...] although we study at a school where we try to go through the same situations, we are not the same and we never talk openly about the differences we go through, you can even talk about something, but we see that there are many things that we have never discussed with people and there are many things that we do not know either” (DEZEM).
Identification of painful experiences (Process facilitated by the Walk)
Experiences can be common and real	“[...] it’s not something you see on television, something that happens to others. It happens to you and to the people around you too” (QUAEM4).
Lack of communication about experiences	“we guys are not used to communicating, we are not ready to be completely honest about our experiences [...]” (OIEM).
Effects of using the 3rd person to debate sensitive topics
Distance from the themes	“We discuss... the LGBT population suffers, but we don’t talk, I suffer...” (CINEM). “We don’t talk about our personal inequality, we talk about statistical inequality [...]” (OIEM).
Distance from the themes	“[...] then it goes like this: oh, because the blacks, the gays... it sounds like something abstract, like something that is not happening, it sounds like a superior entity is in action, it does not sound like something real [...]” (NOVEM).
Impersonality of the speech can make identification difficult	“In fact, it is a speech that we learn to do properly, you know, not criticizing the way it is worked at school; when we are going to write an essay, the teacher usually says: Ah, you can’t, ok, don’t be subjective, you have to use a language that suits everyone, and in fact sometimes this happens [...] but there are lots of people, you know, who may end up by identifying themselves when you are telling you own experience [...]” (NOVEM).
Meritocracy and effort are not the only success factors
Family influence	“Not merit... you know, you got it because you tried hard for it, but thanks to your parents, you got this place” (ONZEM).
Opposition between merit and privilege	“That which she [ONZEM] spoke about meritocracy, in my opinion, is privilege. That thing about getting something because of a friend” (DEZEM)
Opposition between equality and meritocracy	“[...] it is hard to talk about meritocracy considering that there is no equality in our society” (QUAEM).
Unequal opportunities
Inequalities in the access to opportunities	“[...] even the chances, whatever, even for an ordinary job, a salesgirl for a black girl and for a white girl, is very different [...]” (OIEM).
Inequalities in the access to opportunities	“And it’s unfair to compare this person to someone who could afford good quality studies all his/her life [...]” (NOVEM).
Factors responsible for unequal opportunities
Need to support the family [during adolescence]	“[...] some people interrupt their studies to work and this is unfair because sometimes these people need to support the family” (NOVEM).
Social and family context	“[it is not] the same social situation, the same family life, all this has influences [...]” (QUAEM).
Physical traits, hegemonic standard of beauty and racism	[...] people talk, ah, but now it’s the fashion, right, it’s fashion to wear black. Okay, but we know that she won’t be considered pretty enough, she won’t have the looks to work in that store many times[...] simply because she’s black and she’ll be unemployed and people will tell her that if she had tried harder, if she had gone to more stores, she could have gotten a job” (OIEM) “Want you to follow a standard of beauty, right?” (DOZEM)
Physical traits, hegemonic standard of beauty and racism	“You have to put on make up to thin your nose” (ONZEM). “if you are black, you have to have your hair stretched, you have to wear make-up, because, you know, you are not “pretty,”, so you have to make up (DOZEM).
Main themes that emerged (related to the Walk statements)
Bullying, prejudice and racism	“[...] the speaking part, you have already been bullied, or teased for some characteristic that you cannot change” (OIEM).
Sexual Harassment	“the question about going out on the street without fear” (SEISEM).
Intersectionality: race, gender and sexual orientation	“There were several, you know, let me tell you, you know, because we are women and because I am not straight and I am a woman and [OIEM] because I am black and a woman, and something private about my father, for some reasons I haven’t talked to him until today and it touched me a lot, that’s why I started crying because I saw [OIEM] going backward and [DECEM] going forward. “Because I know them so well, I know why [DECEM] was ahead and [OIEM] was back there and it is very painful to think about it, very painful” (DOZEM).
Interruption of studies and the need to work	“I think the questions that they talked about, you know, like working and if you have already interrupted your studies... to work” (NOVEM).
Heteronormativity and family conflict	“There was a day when I got stressed and I said: ‘Look, if you don’t want to accept it, okay, I’ll still be your daughter [...], I’ll still be not straight and you’ll have to accept me’. Because I was still the same and I thought it was wrong to hide it because I always told my mother everything. I went to her and said: ‘Mom, look, I like girls, I like gays...’ And she just said: ‘No, but you can’t like that’. And I was afraid to question that... But she is my mother, got it? She is the person who has to accept me. If she won’t accept me, who will? [...] I got depressed because of things related to that, I take medicines, but, you know? I just thought: who am I going to talk to? To my shrink? Someone who has no connection with me? [...] It’s very good to talk to someone who has no connection with you, because he/she won’t judge you, but, hey, why can’t you talk to your mother? [...] today she accepts me, but I know that there are cases and cases [...], for example, she [points to her colleague], you know... they are suffering a lot because of that, a lot, and they are totally different families and I cannot come and talk, but you have to tell your mother [...]” (DOZEM).
The Effects of the Walk on emotions
Shock	“But when we actually see what happened now, it’s totally different, there’s no way you can hide from others, it’s each one’s sincerity and it’s always shocking when you see how unequal it really is” (QUAEM).
Painful when talking	“[...] we talk about inequality out there, but about what you experienced specifically, it’s sometimes a little more painful to talk about, I think...” (OIEM).
Discomfort and insecurity	“[...] it’s a matter of discomfort, insecurity, because when people around you seem privileged, they seem to be much superior to you, I don’t know” (OIEM).
Protection strategies
Diminish not to hurt	“Because no matter how much we know that all this inequality is there, we prefer, you know,... kind of diminishing it not to hurt us so much [...]” (QUAEM).
Disguising inequalities Whoever did not experience it will feel sorry	“The person, sort of trying to hide it generates a great discomfort when you start to talk about all of them, assume all your inequalities, all your fears, and since that person did not experience that, and I don’t know. He/she’s going to look at you and, you know, feel sorry, huh?” (OIEM).

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E-mail: educreal@ufrgs.br

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[1] Adriana Ribeiro de Macedo is professor at the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rio de Janeiro (IFRJ). Researcher at the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Extension and Social Research (LIEPS/IFRJ) and at the Center for Human Movement Studies (NEMOH/UFRJ).