Let’s Check Our Privilege: A Letter to the International School Community

Particularly addressed to those in East Asia.

After facing backlash from my high school peers due to my social media posts supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and after reading this letter, I felt compelled to write a reflection of my own international school experiences to both give insight and to urge those who attend or have attended an international school to recognize and to be more active within our roles to dismantle institutional and systemic racism.

Let’s face it. We have privilege; this means that we have the financial resources that the majority of other people in the world do not have. We have had more educational resources and opportunities than most other people. In all honesty, I had never understood what privilege meant and how it applied to me until I had graduated and gone on to university. We literally lived in a bubble of privilege. This was never a conversation that was had with us. Instead, oftentimes, we have instead a culture of complacency, due to both a lack of awareness and a mentality where we believe “this does not pertain to me.” I had peers who messaged me feeling hurt and guilty and ashamed by social media posts that told them we should stop being complacent. There was one Instagram story where I addressed those from my high…