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Speaker 1: Welcome to The Laverne Cox Show, a production of Shondaland

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Speaker 1: Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show.

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Speaker 1: My name is Laverne Cox. I've been thinking a lot

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Speaker 1: lately about privilege, and it's such a interesting, tricky conversation

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Speaker 1: to have.

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Speaker 2: These days.

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Speaker 1: You can see people online saying check your privilege, and

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Speaker 1: in people getting into fights around privilege and not feeling

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Speaker 1: privileged because they've had struggles in their lives. You know,

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Speaker 1: when we talk about something like white privilege, for example,

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Speaker 1: there are a lot of working class white people who

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Speaker 1: don't feel privileged because they've had to struggle in their

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Speaker 1: lives and they're still struggling. A lot of men, when

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Speaker 1: we talk about male privilege, they're going through struggles and

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Speaker 1: they don't feel particularly privileged. And the way I like

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Speaker 1: to think about privilege is that privilege does not mean

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Speaker 1: that you have not struggled. It just means that there

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Speaker 1: are some things that you don't have to think about.

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Speaker 2: So you could be the most privileged.

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Speaker 1: Person in one room and change rooms and be the

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Speaker 1: least privileged person in that room. And when I talk

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Speaker 1: about a privilege, I love telling this story I was

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Speaker 1: giving a lecture in South Carolina around twenty fourteen, and

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Speaker 1: before the lecture, I got to meet with a group

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Speaker 1: of students from the university and they had sat themselves

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Speaker 1: in a semicircle in this sort of conference room. And

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Speaker 1: I go around and I want to meet the students

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Speaker 1: and I ask them, you know who they are?

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Speaker 2: And they were all sort of student leaders.

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Speaker 1: They were representing different organizations and I am meeting. To

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Speaker 1: my left was the president of the LGBTQ Student Alliance.

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Speaker 1: And I go around the table and the students hit

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Speaker 1: sat themselves in an interesting way where they the students

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Speaker 1: were like white to Asian to Latino or Hispanic to black.

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Speaker 2: That's how the students were seated.

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Speaker 1: And so as the students went around, they told me

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Speaker 1: who they were, and I asked them some things they

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Speaker 1: may have been struggling with around identity or you know,

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Speaker 1: education or whatever they might have been struggling with at

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Speaker 1: the university. And I remember getting to the last student

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Speaker 1: who was who was a black student. He talked about

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Speaker 1: being black and gay and that as a member of

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Speaker 1: the Black student Union, he's often felt like he's had

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Speaker 1: to choose between being black and gay. When he's in

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Speaker 1: black spaces and when he's at the lgbt Alliance in

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Speaker 1: that group, that he has to sort of leave his

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Speaker 1: blackness behind and that he can't bring both those identities

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Speaker 1: into the queer space, or can he bring both those

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Speaker 1: identities into the black space. And so having the president

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Speaker 1: of the LGBTQ Student Alliance sitting right next to me,

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Speaker 1: I turned to the to the president and said, well,

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Speaker 1: what do you think about what he said? And he's like,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, I've never thought about it. And I

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Speaker 1: was like, that's this is privilege. I was like, this

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Speaker 1: is a privilege. It is not like he was a

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Speaker 1: bad person. This, this kid who's the president of you know,

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Speaker 1: LGBTQ Student Alliance, is not a bad person because he's

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Speaker 1: never thought about this.

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Speaker 2: It's just it's a privilege to.

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Speaker 1: Not have to think about leaving parts of yourself behind

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Speaker 1: when you go into a room because you inhabit multiple,

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Speaker 1: you know, sort of marginalized identities, and privilege just means

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Speaker 1: there's something that you don't have to think about and

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Speaker 1: it is not an indictment on you to have privilege.

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Speaker 1: I am a black, transgender woman from a working class background,

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Speaker 1: right like all of those identity categories aren't necessarily thought

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Speaker 1: of as privilege. Yet I sit here in a lot

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Speaker 1: of privilege. I sit here in quite a bit of

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Speaker 1: class privilege. And the class privilege is recent, you know,

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Speaker 1: over the past, you know, within the past decade. And

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Speaker 1: I'm fifty years old, so most of my adult life

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Speaker 1: I've been working class, working poor, however you want to

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Speaker 1: describe it, but still fly and now I'm sitting in

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Speaker 1: a lot of class privilege. Being famous and a public

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Speaker 1: figure is a tremendous privilege. Fame mitigates so many of

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Speaker 1: the struggles of being black and trans and a woman

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Speaker 1: doesn't mitigate all of them, but it mitigates some of them.

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Speaker 2: Education.

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Speaker 1: Having a mother that was a teacher was a tremendous

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Speaker 1: privilege of mine. Having a mother who corrected my grammar

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Speaker 1: and wanted to make sure that I spoke properly. That

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Speaker 1: I went to Bethel ami Church or Bethel African Methodist

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Speaker 1: Episcopal Church was a tremendous privilege because every Sunday I

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Speaker 1: summarized the Sunday School lesson, so weekly I was standing

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Speaker 1: up in front of a room full of people speaking,

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Speaker 1: and that would serve me later in my work as

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Speaker 1: a public speaker, going to the Abams School of Fine Arts.

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Speaker 1: Education is a huge privilege. So there's different kinds of privileges.

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Speaker 1: And all those privileges did not mean that I have

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Speaker 1: not had a life of struggle. It just means that,

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Speaker 1: like those privileges were things I didn't have to think

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Speaker 1: about and gave me entree into spaces that I maybe

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Speaker 1: wouldn't have gotten entree into if I didn't speak a

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Speaker 1: certain way and if I didn't have the education that

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Speaker 1: I have. And so, what I would love to invite

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Speaker 1: people to think about when they think about privilege and

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Speaker 1: ultimately when they think about racism or transphobia or sexism

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Speaker 1: is so I think so two things. When we think

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Speaker 1: about our own levels of privilege and the ways in

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Speaker 1: which we're privileged, it does not mean that we are

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Speaker 1: necessarily an open right. Being able to critically engage with

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Speaker 1: our privilege doesn't mean that we're a bad person and

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Speaker 1: that we're like oppressing someone. And I think that we

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Speaker 1: have to understand that ourselves. And then when we talk

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Speaker 1: about other people's privilege, we should be careful not to

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Speaker 1: paint them as an oppressor because they have maybe not

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Speaker 1: thought critically about their privileged or quote unquote checked their privilege. Right,

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Speaker 1: So just because someone is privileged doesn't mean that they

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Speaker 1: are a bad person. And maybe if they haven't thought

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Speaker 1: critically about their privilege doesn't mean they're a bad person.

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Speaker 1: All of this should be an invitation. We all grow

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Speaker 1: up in a world where we internalize certain ideas. And

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Speaker 1: I've said this many many times, if I can be

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Speaker 1: I'm a black transfer to woman from Mobile, Alabama, I

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Speaker 1: internalized negative ideas about black people, and I'm a black person,

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Speaker 1: I internalize white supremacist, racist ideas about my own people

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Speaker 1: and myself that because we live in a white supremacist,

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Speaker 1: anti black world, I internalized negative ideas about myself based

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Speaker 1: on class. We had an episode in the last US

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Speaker 1: season of the podcast about class shaming. I internalized negative

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Speaker 1: ideas about myself as a trans person. Because we live

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Speaker 1: in an anti trans world. I had to unlearn all

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Speaker 1: of those negative things about myself. And so if I

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Speaker 1: can internalize negative things about myself as a black person,

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Speaker 1: as a trans person, as a woman, as a person

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Speaker 1: from a working class background, because we live and what

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Speaker 1: Bellhus calls imperialists, white supremacists, capitalist patriarchy, we live in

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Speaker 1: a system that.

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Speaker 2: Is racist, that is sexist, that is cis.

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Speaker 1: Noormative, heteronormative. So then we all internalize these things. And

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Speaker 1: so if I'm internalizing it, even if you're a cis

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Speaker 1: gender person or a white person or a man, if

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Speaker 1: you likely internalize those things too. And so we're all

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Speaker 1: in the same boat. So calling someone racist, it's like

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Speaker 1: not it's not even really useful, I think anymore, because

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Speaker 1: we're all racist. We've all been sort of you know, God,

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Speaker 1: indoctrination is such a loaded word right now, but we've

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Speaker 1: all sort of internalized.

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Speaker 2: We've all been raised in a world.

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Speaker 1: That devalues blackness, whether you're black or not, we all

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Speaker 1: live in a world that this celebrates on a systemic

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Speaker 1: level whiteness over other things that like devalues womanhood, femininity,

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Speaker 1: that devalues trans people and LGBTQ plus people, and we

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Speaker 1: all have to unlearn that. And so if we can

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Speaker 1: begin to envision a world where we're all in the

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Speaker 1: same boat, it's like the transphobia thing or the racist thing,

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Speaker 1: like even calling someone I think the problem with just saying, oh,

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Speaker 1: this person is racist doesn't allow the space for transformation,

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Speaker 1: and the conversation about Bell Hooks with Darnell and Inmani

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Speaker 1: we talked about creating space for transformation, and when we

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Speaker 1: just say that someone is racist and that becomes their identity,

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Speaker 1: that doesn't open up space for transformation. Now, some people

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Speaker 1: are not interested in being transformed. Some people are not

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Speaker 1: interested in, like you know, interrogating the ways in which

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Speaker 1: they've internalized racism.

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Speaker 2: It's very uncomfortable.

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Speaker 1: It's been very uncomfortable for me to sit with the

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Speaker 1: uncomfortable feelings of like how I've internalized racist ideas about

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Speaker 1: myself and about my people, the internalized transphobia.

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Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if I've told the story on this podcast,

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Speaker 1: but there was a moment when I was working at

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Speaker 1: Lucky Chang's, which is a drag queen restaurant in New

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Speaker 1: York City, which was and there was a woman named

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Speaker 1: Verra who had a school called Miss Vera's School for

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Speaker 1: Girls who want to be Boys, sort of a charm

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Speaker 1: school for cross dressers, and most of her clients were

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Speaker 1: straight identified CIS gender men who enjoyed cross dressing and

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Speaker 1: a sort of itishistic way. They were often married to women,

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Speaker 1: and they would go to Miss Vere's charm School and

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Speaker 1: get lessons in femininity, and then sort of their graduation

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Speaker 1: would be getting dressed up on film and going out

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Speaker 1: for a night on the town. And often she would

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Speaker 1: bring them to Lucky Changs. And so one night, some

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Speaker 1: of the students from Mis Severe School that come into

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Speaker 1: Lucky Chang's and some of the girls who work at

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Speaker 1: Chang's found themselves so sort of saying really disparaging things

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Speaker 1: about the students from Miss Vera School who were very

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Speaker 1: obviously cross dressed men and who weren't the most feminine

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Speaker 1: or elegant or whatever. And I found myself joining in

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Speaker 1: with these other queens who I worked with, some of

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Speaker 1: whom were trans women, and then I had to check

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Speaker 1: myself and I was like, Laverne, what are you doing?

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Speaker 1: This is the same stuff people say about you. And

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Speaker 1: I realized in that moment, looking at these you know,

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Speaker 1: students from Miss Vera's school who were these sort of

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Speaker 1: cross dressed men really probably for the first time out

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Speaker 1: in the world in drag, and the awkwardness of that

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Speaker 1: and the you know, the vulnerability of that moment, and

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Speaker 1: I had to confront my own sort of anxieties around

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Speaker 1: being seen that way by the world. My fear of

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Speaker 1: being seen is this sort of awkward cross stressor and

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Speaker 1: knowing that often when people find out I'm trans, I'm

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Speaker 1: viewed that way anyway. And so there were so many

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Speaker 1: levels of internalized transphobia that were operating in that moment

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Speaker 1: as I found myself joining in on making fun of

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Speaker 1: these students who were being really brave that night to come.

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Speaker 2: Out for the first time, and I had.

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Speaker 1: To interrogate the way in which my internalized transphobia was.

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Speaker 1: You know, I hopefully I don't think they heard us,

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Speaker 1: but that was really not cool, and that's not the

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Speaker 1: kind of person I want to be. I don't want

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Speaker 1: to be making fun of people because of the way

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Speaker 1: they look, and that's not how I want to proceed

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Speaker 1: in the world. So I had to check myself in

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Speaker 1: that moment, and I had to like say that I

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Speaker 1: don't want to behave this way and I don't want

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Speaker 1: to be this way in the world, and why am

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Speaker 1: I doing this? And I'm doing this because of my

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Speaker 1: own feelings about myself that I need to get better

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Speaker 1: with myself and okay with myself, and so much of

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Speaker 1: that for those of us who are from marginalized groups

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Speaker 1: who are internalize transphobia and sexism.

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Speaker 2: That's the journey that we have to have.

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Speaker 1: And if we're not from a marginalized group, if we are,

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Speaker 1: that cis white man that feels like they're being attacked

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Speaker 1: on a regular basis, Like the work is different. But

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Speaker 1: if I can be raised in a culture where I've

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Speaker 1: internalized racism and sexism and transphobia, it's probably likely that

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Speaker 1: you also internalize some of those ideas and it's not

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Speaker 1: and you're not a bad person if you're willing to say, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I have, and how do I work on this and

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Speaker 1: how do I get better? How do I acknowledge that

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Speaker 1: there are certain things I haven't had to think about

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Speaker 1: around privilege, or things that I've taken for granted or

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Speaker 1: things that I've thought I knew or assumed.

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Speaker 2: And it should be a privilege to.

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Speaker 1: Even when it's uncomfortable, to be lovingly called out. And

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Speaker 1: it's been uncomfortable for me when I've been checked around things.

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Speaker 1: It has been, but hopefully, like there are people in

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Speaker 1: your life who love you, who care about you, who

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Speaker 1: can lovingly say that's not it, and then hopefully you

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Speaker 1: can hear them. This is a good time to take

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Speaker 1: a little break. We'll be right back though, Okay, we're back.

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Speaker 1: I think we're all I think we're all racist. I

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Speaker 1: think we're all transphobic. I think we're all sexist because

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Speaker 1: we've you know, grown up in a culture that has

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Speaker 1: sort of taught us all those things, and it's our

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Speaker 1: job to unlearn all that if we're interested in on

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Speaker 1: learning all those things, Like, maybe maybe a different way

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Speaker 1: to frame it. Instead of saying you are a racist

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Speaker 1: or you are transphobic, maybe like say, this language or

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Speaker 1: this approach is consistent with a history of transphobia, or

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Speaker 1: consistent with history that devalues the womanhood of trans women

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Speaker 1: or suggests that trans people aren't real. And when I

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Speaker 1: say transphobia, really just you know, most transphobia is about

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Speaker 1: sort of degrading trans people, saying that we're not real,

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Speaker 1: saying that we're mentally ill. Ultimately, the core of transphobia

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Speaker 1: is that like trans women aren't trans women, that transmen transman,

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Speaker 1: and that non binary people don't exist. Like that's the

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Speaker 1: core of transphobia, or saying that, like, you know, the

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Speaker 1: Roseanne Barr moment, I think is a really good example,

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Speaker 1: like a really good example because it's just so blatant

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Speaker 1: when oh, I still can't say what she said about

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Speaker 1: Valerie jareded but you can google it. But after Roseanne

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Speaker 1: Barr tweeted what she tweeted about Valerie Jared and many

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Speaker 1: hours later would go on Twitter and say I'm not

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Speaker 1: racist when she said one of the most racist things

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Speaker 1: that somebody could say about a black person, It's like,

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Speaker 1: it's like, okay, what And I think she believes that

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Speaker 1: she's not racist, right, I think she can make a

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Speaker 1: statement like that and believe she's not racist. And so

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Speaker 1: I think having the discussion around like, well, what you

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Speaker 1: said is consistent with a history of how black people

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Speaker 1: have been talked about in America in a racist context,

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Speaker 1: So the accountability would be acknowledging that these comments are

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Speaker 1: consistent with that history. I didn't realize that, or I

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Speaker 1: realized it, and I was angry, and I said, who

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Speaker 1: knows how that came out or why you know it?

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Speaker 1: I extended as much grace as possible, But I think

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Speaker 1: it's more to focus on the behavior and not the person.

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Speaker 1: Is another way to kind of have the conversation maybe

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Speaker 1: about the ways in which we might discriminate or buy

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Speaker 1: into this normative, heteronormative imperialists, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. Maybe

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Speaker 1: focusing on the behavior and not the person, so it

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Speaker 1: doesn't become that person's identity the racism, but the racism

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Speaker 1: becomes a behavior that they can change.

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Speaker 2: If they choose to or not. Just some thoughts, Just

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Speaker 2: some thoughts.

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Speaker 1: I'd like to think that everyone is redeemable, that everyone

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Speaker 1: is human and can be transformed. So you know, some

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Speaker 1: people demonstrate over and over again they're not interested in that,

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Speaker 1: and we have to believe them when they tell us

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Speaker 1: that through their actions. But I want to be perceived

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Speaker 1: from a place of love and empathy at all times.

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Speaker 1: And I think that starting with we all have internalized

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Speaker 1: the values of this normative, heteronormative, impeerless, wide supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

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Speaker 1: It is a great place to start, so we're all

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Speaker 1: in the same place, and then we can begin to

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Speaker 1: do the work together and it doesn't become like you

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Speaker 1: did this to me, or you're a bad person, but

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Speaker 1: you've just gotten the wrong information. And here's different information

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Speaker 1: that you might want to consider so that you can

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Speaker 1: see the full humanity and not discount the full humanity

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Speaker 1: of the person standing next to you, or the person

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Speaker 1: on the other side of the screen, or any of that.

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Speaker 1: So we can see each other better, see ourselves better,

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Speaker 1: acknowledge our shared humanity better. That's what I'm interested in

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Speaker 1: as an artist, as a human rights activist, that we

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Speaker 1: can acknowledge each other's humanity more fully.

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Speaker 2: Just some thoughts. Thank you for listening to The Laverne

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Speaker 2: Cox Show.

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Speaker 1: Please rate reviews, subscribe and share with everyone you know

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Speaker 1: if you can find me on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and

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Speaker 1: on Facebook at Laverne Cox for Real. Until next time,

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Speaker 1: stay in the love. The Laverne Cox Show is a

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Speaker 1: production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more

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Speaker 1: podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast,

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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.