Privilege can be one of the most difficult, complicated subjects to talk about these days. I’ll be the first to admit that learning about my own privileged status has been a process for me. It’s an ongoing one.

Here’s an un-fun confession: I’ve been the person in the room who needs to check their privilege but has no idea what that means (and so looks like a jerk). I’ve gotten into heated conversations that didn’t end well. Now, embarrassingly enough, I know that I was on the wrong end of many of those conversations.

Before I began to understand my own privileged status, I had a series of difficult conversations with many close friends. What I noticed during these conversations was that there were two approaches: One type of person talks about privilege in a way that is aggressive and accusatory. Essentially, they say, “You have privilege.” The other type of person does something really interesting and simple: They don’t use the word privilege at all.

For me, this was the type of person who was able to reach me and ultimately teach me to accept and acknowledge my own privileged status. While this way takes more time and can be frustrating, I recommend it. It worked with me, and I’ve seen it work with other people.

Here’s how to teach someone about privilege in three simple steps, from someone who had to be taught about hers.

Step One: Don’t use the word privilege.

You’ve been educated about your privileged status, and that in itself is a form of privilege. Understand this when you approach a conversation with someone who hasn’t had access to the same education.

On the face of it, privilege can sound like something very different to someone who doesn’t know the higher, academic definition of the word. This is especially true for poor whites (see this story for a good example). I was a teenager when I heard the word used politically for the first time. And as an average white suburbanite, being told I was privileged sounded absurd to me. To me, being privileged meant owning a yacht or living in a mansion or getting to leave the country for a vacation. How could I be privileged when I couldn’t afford a college education, a car, or basic freedoms?

I also struggled to understand my status because I had already faced my own lack of privilege numerous times. For example, the day I trained a new hire at my first job, my boss put him “in charge” of me. She also paid him more. I’d worked there for two years. Privileged? Me? No way.

You’ll see this reaction a lot with people who don’t understand the word in the political sense: They only see their lack of privilege. Calling them out on something they don’t think they have will never work.

Step Two: Acknowledge their struggles and ways they may lack privilege.

When you’re in a bad financial situation, you lack financial privilege. When you’re a certain race, religion, gender, or sexuality, you lack privilege as well. Privilege takes on many forms, and we all have varying levels of it based on these complicated, overlapping, and interacting factors. A perfect privilege calculator would take these – and countless other factors – into account. As mere humans, we have to consider all of these complications when trying to explain the concept to someone. We have to acknowledge that someone may understand they’re privileged in one way, but still not understand another dimension of their status.

Instead of attacking someone on the privilege they have but don’t understand, acknowledge areas where they may not have it. The friend who was able to reach me did this. He acknowledged where I had it rough: my gender and my lack of financial stability. Only after doing that could he allow me to see where others struggled even worse than I did.

What my friend did – and what you can do – is connect to this person by expressing empathy. When you acknowledge their suffering, even if it’s less than yours from a standpoint of privilege, the chances of them acknowledging yours increases. As it turns out, empathy can be taught. The chance of someone acknowledging the suffering of others in general increases, just because you’ve taken the step to empathize with them.

Step Three: Take their lack of privilege, and show them what the next level looks like.

Much of understanding privilege comes down to understanding that you and your pain aren’t the center of the universe. Yes, you suffer, but suffering is on a far larger scale. As a teenage girl, all I saw was how unprivileged I was. What bridged the gap for me were real-life stories and people that put it into perspective.

There was the guy who had fought homelessness and survived a violence-ridden neighborhood to go to Harvard. There was my friend, growing up as a minority and gay in a small, close-minded, southern town. The fact that he had patience with me blows my mind today. I’m so thankful.

Sometimes people don’t understand their privileged status because they don’t see what true lack of privilege means. I believe that most people who argue about privilege – and their lack of it – simply don’t know any better. Three steps and a handful of conversations later, that could change.

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Chances are, if you are reading this, you are, like me, a white, well-educated woman.

I identify the majority of my readers because considering your audience is one of the most important lessons I learned in activism. So, here’s lesson one: Know your audience. I’m speaking to you, white, well-educated women.

Like many others, my first dip into activism came about recently and unexpectedly: after the 2016 presidential election. I arranged a gathering for peace for hundreds of people after Trump stole the White House because I couldn’t sleep from the horror and anxiety. I didn’t know what else to do.

Like so many other white, well-educated women, I also invested in an IUD  (grab that, Drumpf). Like so many others, I didn’t talk to my father for the first month after the election, because I felt betrayed by him for supporting you-guessed-who.

As an amateur organizer – “activist” as people started to call me – I made the mistake of planning my gathering for peace at a local park. Hugh MacRae Park is one of the largest, most beautiful parks in Wilmington, North Carolina. It also just happened to be named after a white supremacist who promoted the lynching of black people.

I didn’t know the history of Hugh MacRae. I quickly learned it when I received a stream of public and private messages berating me for planning to have the event at a racist park. Four out of five angry messages were from white, well-educated women. I felt terrible and quickly changed the event location.

I had an idealistic aim, but I am, deep-down, an idealist. The news emphasized the story that we weren’t having an #ImWithHer party, but it wasn’t a Drumpf-themed gathering by any means, either. We welcomed everyone. Mostly, progressives came. They also started a new organization to pull together disparate leftist groups called the Wilmington Progressive Coalition. And this is what I love about progressives in my area: They are legitimately welcoming, they listen to their audiences, and they act accordingly. They know activism.

Lesson one: Know your audience.

My audience was the entire community – everyone needed to feel welcome.

Your audience is one you have either been ignoring, openly detesting as a whole, or at the very least, keeping at a comfortable distance: other white people who aren’t as well-educated.

I’m talking about the guy who is buff and gorgeous but also, as you learned the hard way, a Trump supporter. The guy you may have unfriended after an unsuccessful conversation that turned into a rant. I’m talking about the neighbor you got along with so well – until you saw them put the Make America Great Again sign out on their front lawn.

Our country is fractured, and hatred breeds best in cracks between different people and points of view. Realize this: the people you don’t really want to talk to are the people you probably need to talk to more than anyone else.

Lesson two: Listen to your audience.

I carefully listened to my community’s concerns about the event location. And this translates in all activist pursuits. Ask yourself: Is it my goal to be well-educated and correct about politics and to educate other people on how correct I am, or is it my goal to make lasting, positive social change?

Lesson three: Take what you’ve learned, and act accordingly.

I changed the event location. Simple, right?

Use your resources to forge connections rather than create divisions. Make sacrifices when it makes sense. And above all, make every effort to act for the greater good.

Lesson four: Invite your detractors (or challengers) to work with you.

I didn’t want people protesting a peace gathering. So, after I changed the location, I also reached out to those who had (rightly) called me out. Unfortunately, the majority of the detractors who said they’d work with me if I moved the location mysteriously disappeared when I asked them to join me.

Nothing shuts down an angry, armchair activist more than inviting them to pick up a shovel and start digging ditches for peace. But it also makes your life much easier (less work, more networking, more outreach). Armchair activism is easy. Actually doing something isn’t. Sometimes, though, you can convince people to become involved. And when you do that, everyone wins.

Activism: How You Can Actually Do Something

As an apprehensive activist, what interests me most is creating lasting, positive social change. In my research, I discovered intergroup conflict theory (ICT). Put simply, ICT is placing people who disagree in the same room and making them hold a conversation (you can read a great primer on ICT here). Since first tested out, numerous groups have self-reported reduced prejudices as a result of ICT. Activists, policymakers, and peacemakers around the world use ICT.

For an extreme example of ICT, consider Daryl Davis, a black man who befriended numerous KKK members with one simple question in mind: “How can you hate me if you don’t even know me?” Davis successfully convinced Roger Kelly, the former Imperial Wizard of the KKK, to quit the hate group entirely. He’s also converted at least 12 other KKK members.

Like so many others, Davis showed that it works. While shallow conversations help make a dent in prejudice, it’s deeper connections – like the friendships Davis goes out of his way to forge – that research has shown make the most lasting change.

A Difficult But Necessary Call to Action

After putting together my own Gathering for Peace, reading up on intergroup conflict theory, and attending my own local YWCA’s Potlucks for Peace, I have a difficult but necessary call to action for you: try to connect to other people in the hopes that this connection will reduce prejudice and hatred.

Using the lessons above:

1. Invite someone you disagree with to a neutral and safe place, like a coffee shop or Potluck for Peace.
2. Listen to them: Before you meet this person, check in with yourself. Then, listen to how they feel, what they value, and where they’re coming from.
3. Find what you have in common with this person.
4. Invite collaboration: Invite this person to volunteer with you for a cause you both care about. Ignore the impulse to lecture or educate. Show what you value by example first. Try to connect. In time, the tough conversations will come.

In your new life as an activist, remember to also take care of yourself. Know when to walk away (at least, for a while). Activism is tough work, and real change takes time to create. But keep coming back. Peace and love are worth trying for. What other choice do we have?

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