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I woke up this morning with my passport ready to go. Not the one I need to move from one country to another, although this one helps in that regard. No, this is a different sort of passport.
I’ve lived my entire life with this passport. It was issued to me at birth. Most people I knew as a child had one. Just a few people that I knew didn’t. I didn’t know at the time that they didn’t have a passport, but they knew they didn’t.
They were reminded of it every day, in ways both subtle and obvious.
It’s a funny thing about the passport. Most of us who have one don’t realize that we have it. But everyone who doesn’t have the passport knows all too well that they don’t have it, and they can spot the people who do a mile away.
The passport isn’t necessarily passed on. Sometimes it skips a generation. My son has one but my grandchildren don’t. It’s because his wife doesn’t have one. All my nieces and nephews have it. A majority of my friends have one, but I have quite a few that don’t.
And I’ve heard their stories about what not having the passport has cost them, in time, in treasure, in dignity.
The passport cannot be easily obtained. You’re either born with it or not. You carry it with you every minute of every day awake or asleep. And it influences your life in ways you can never imagine.
I’m wearing mine right now, and if you’ve got one you’re wearing yours right now.
Take a look at the back of your hand. If you see light skin that could pass for “white”, in our culture, that’s your passport. It opens doors, changes people’s behavior toward you, get you into many places that others can’t easily go.
And most times, most places, most of your life you’re been unaware that you had it. Not the skin color, but the privilege, the power, the pass on certain things in life, that your passport gets you every day.
If you are what we call white, you are the norm, you don’t stand out or draw unwanted attention. You get to pass.
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Joe Laur is a leadership consultant, strategic facilitator, speaker and executive. He has led workshops and initiatives in systems thinking, strategic visioning, capacity building, personal mastery and multi-stakeholder conferences worldwide. He is a founding partner of SEED Systems, a consultancy dedicated to innovation and leadership for sustainable enterprise, applying systems thinking, scientific frameworks and organizational learning disciplines to foster innovation in organizations engaging with environmental and social issues.he can be reached at [email protected]
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