“You just need to realize that you have privilege. Because of your race and your class and your gender and a bunch of other factors that you can’t control, but that’s O.K. What you can control is how you use that privilege,” says comedienne and American Civil Liberties Union celebrity ambassador, Sasheer Zamata, who doesn’t mince words in a video as she walks with a white male colleague.
“You just need to realize that you have privilege.” she says in the clip among other comments about gender inequalities, as she uses this platform to champion women’s rights.
Zamata, a graduate of the University of Virginia, trained in improv and sketch at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and co-created the critically-acclaimed web series “Pursuit of Sexiness.” The video addresses the need for diversity and inclusion as it relates to gender, but somehow or another viewers felt she was playing victim to racial inequalities and white privilege. The disgruntled viewers are either master manipulators who aim to cause a racial divide or they’ve mastered misunderstanding and totally missed the point.
According to the advocacy organization, “Zamata will elevate the ACLU’s work to fight gender inequality and structural discrimination against women in employment, education, healthcare, housing, and criminal justice through advocacy and public education.”
They also point out that in the U.S.:
- Women make only 78 cents for every dollar earned by a man; African-American women only earn 64 cents; and Latinas, only 55 cents for each dollar earned by a white man;
- A woman’s right to choose is threatened by extreme lawmakers who have introduced more than 100 abortion restrictions in 2015 alone;
- Few legal protections exist for pregnant workers and new mothers, putting families in danger of economic instability, though women are the primary breadwinners in 4 out of 10 families with children.
One posted this shocking comment on Facebook: “well never watching SNL again thank you aclu you and your liberal bs.. ask me if my daughter got a grant for college with a 3.8 gpa and ask again if you could pronounce any of the names of the people that won the scholarships she qualified for and didn’t get even though she had a higher gpa than most of them…..!”
Watch the video on the next page and sound off in comments your opinion of the video.
