Left-wing comedian and producer Chelsea Handler said during a virtual conversation with actor-comedian Amy Schumer and actor Jameela Jamil that it is necessary for everyone to “give a little bit away who has too much” in the pursuit of equality.
Chelsea Handler joined her left-wing counterparts in a virtual discussion last week, discussing “activism and allyship.” The theme prompted Handler, star of Hello, Privilege. It’s Me, Chelsea, to detail what she described as a firsthand account of white male privilege — something she encountered, ironically, while spending a day backcountry skiing in Canada.
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“This is not just white privilege. It’s male privilege. You know it’s any privilege really, but this is a good example, I think,” Handler said, explaining how she went skiing with a “badass” female skiing guide.
“You know, I was rappelling down mountains. I was doing things I thought I was never capable of but because I was in a woman’s hands. I knew that she was looking after me in a way that sometimes men aren’t aware of,” the actress said, detailing the conversation her group, four women and a man, had as they stopped on a mountaintop, discussing privilege.
“She was talking about …. how that explains privilege and what it’s like to grow up as a person of color and that really a white person never will understand what it’s like to be different,” she said, concluding that white people while never understand just as “a man will never understand what it’s like to be a woman and walk home at night alone in the dark and worry that there’s a possibility of you getting assaulted or attacked.”
The Life Will Be the Death of Me author then said she asked the man how he felt about the conversation centering around white male privilege and the patriarchy, to which she recalled him saying, “I feel like there’s a lot of reverse discrimination.” That remark triggered Handler, who said she had to “bite her tongue” as she has “no patience for that kind of bullshit.”
The activist said she later confronted him in the car and explained to him tha t “everyone has to give a little bit away who has too much.”
“I said, reverse discrimination, I said let’s talk about — you can’t just make things equal,” Handler said. “You have to go back and make up for the past just like we have to go back and make up for the past of what we did to black people even though it was our ancestors and we weren’t around. We are s till responsible just like men are still responsible for moving over for women.”
“During this adjustment period everyone has to give a little bit away who has too much,” she assessed. “We’re not asking for people that don’t have anything to give anything away, but we’re asking for the people who have a lot to step aside and give a place to a person of color to a woman, you know, give it away.”
Handler claimed that her explanation resonated with the man, who said he had never thought about it in that light.
“He said wow, I didn’t even think about that. I thought we could just make sure everything was equal moving forward. I go, wouldn’t that be great but we can’t, so you have to acknowledge the past to move forward, so that’s how I feel you know with regard to sexism and racism,” she concluded, earning praise from Schumer.
Earlier this month, Handler took to social media to explain how life is so much better now that former President Trump, whom she identified as a “white supremacist,” is no longer in office.