👀 How we can win

#92 | When the odds are never in your favour

Nikita’s Just One Thing yesterday reminded me of my own Trevor Noah moment – in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests, Trevor shared a video from Kimberly Jones, author of – I’m Not Dying With You Tonight – on his Instagram

While interviewing protestors in Atlanta, Jones recorded a video about racism in the United States that went viral in small part because Trevor, Madonna and LeBron James shared it. 

In this video, Jones brilliantly uses Monopoly to explain a fundamental truth about exclusionary economics that has kept specific communities poor. 

While she talks exclusively about the Black experience, it doesn’t take much imagination to apply it to the Dalit experience in India or any marginalised community anywhere in the world. 

Yesterday, on Twitter, I read a filmmaker’s thread on his employee’s struggle for a passport because of her impoverished background. 

Education and wealth aren’t the insulators you think they are, either. I read another thread about a young Engineer denied an apartment in Dravidian Chennai because it was for “Brahmins only”. One deeply aggrieved young person took to every social media platform possible to demand an end to Reservation for “well-to-do STs”, even going so far as to set up a change.org petition. In cosmopolitan Mumbai, my bestie has had a harrowing experience finding a home this past year because she happens to be Muslim. 

Like Kimberly says, the privileged should be grateful the oppressed are seeking equality and not revenge.

If you watch one thing today, make it this video.

Karina