Checking My Privilege: Why Travel Reminds Me I'm Not as Smart as I Think

Checking My Privilege: Why Travel Reminds Me I'm Not as Smart as I Think

Privilege is so often invisible to those who have it. It gives us security and strokes our egos and lays claim to achievements that are not entirely ours

I never felt poor until I went to university. I was one of eight siblings growing up in a Tower Hamlets council house (vouchers for my school uniform, free school meals), but I never felt that my family was poor until I went to college.

There my group changed from Bengali girls like me to those whose families owned second homes, second cars and even thriving businesses - not international conglomerates like in Oxbridge, but impressive nonetheless: a diamond shop in west London, a doctor's surgery in Surrey, an accountancy firm in Redbridge.

There was a student whose parents owned four houses in London, another whose father owned an unimaginable 17. I'm not sure if I felt envy or just sadness when I realized that my father had worked hard his entire life for far less than what these children would get.

"Privilege is so often invisible to those who have it. It gives us security and strokes our egos and lays claim to achievements that are not entirely ours."

Years later, I told a friend that I wished my parents could have achieved more; acquired a fraction of what these other parents had.

My friend, honest as well as wise, pulled no punches. She asked me how I dared say something like that when my parents had moved across continents to a country where they didn't speak the language, had no family or friends, no capital, no jobs, no prospects, and never made me feel hungry or cold or sick, the hallmarks of true poverty.

She reminded me of all the things I learned from my trip to Bangladesh as a 13-year-old. If my parents hadn't immigrated to the UK, I would be living in a village in Bangladesh, shackled by decisions others made for me.

I was reminded of this again and again on our travels through the Pacific and South America. The reason I (and most likely you) have achieved anything is not primarily due to innate intelligence, but to circumstances; a privilege granted to us by the country of our birth or the wealth of our families.

I met people along the way who could very well run multinational companies if they had been born somewhere else. There was Werry from the Port Resolution Yacht Club on Tanna Island in Vanuatu, Josie, the receptionist at the Poseidon Dive Center in Taganga, Colombia, and Amirico, a guide on the Salkantay trek in Peru. All of these people had intelligence and skills that shone as brightly as any graduate or executive I met back home.

Perhaps it is presumptuous of me to assume that Josie and her peers want different lives. Werry spends many days fishing, which reminds me of the old parable of the Mexican fisherman who spends his days playing with his children, taking siestas with his wife, doing a little fishing, drinking wine and playing guitar with his friends.

An American businessman comes across the fisherman's small business and asks why he doesn't spend more time fishing, buy more boats and expand his operation. With the high quality of his fish, the American says he could become a multinational corporation within 20 years.

"What then?" asks the fisherman. "Then," says the American, "you would announce an IPO and sell your company shares to the public and become very rich. You would retire. Move to a small fishing village on the coast where you can sleep late, do a little fishing, play with your children, take a siesta with your wife, go for a walk in the village in the evening where you can drink wine and play the guitar with your friends."

It's a powerful story that says a lot for the simple life, but the truth is that the vast majority of people couldn't choose another life even if they wanted to. Josie will most likely never get a higher education, will never have the chance to fully exploit her intelligence, will never have the opportunity to create a startup that could change the world - but I did it and will try to never forget that again.

A friend in San Francisco once told me that the smartest people in the world go to Silicon Valley. That's not true at all. The smartest people in the world, those born with a very specific privilege, go to Silicon Valley. The smartest people in the world are most likely in Silicon Valley, New York, and London, plowing the fields of Cambodia, growing coffee in Ethiopia, and manning machines in India.

Privilege is so often invisible to those who have it. It gives us security and strokes our egos and lays claim to achievements that are not entirely ours.

Travel is the most effective way I've found to bring privilege to light, to give it form and tangible form, to force us to accept a simple truth: that you and I are much luckier than we are smart.

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