Minesweeper Tricks and White Privilege, Oh My!

Thanks for stopping by for Coffee and Culture, Episode 9. Today, we are talking about privilege, but also the game Minesweeper.

How are those things related, you ask? Let’s discuss

(Please see this link for the ‘trick’ of how to play Minesweeper: drive.google.com/file/d/1AI2Eoz…)

Minesweeper.mp4https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AI2EozS3n5vuchoRy8hJq91UthgNf7aB/view?usp=sharing

Okay, so, if you didn’t watch the video, suffice it to say, there’s a trick to Minesweeper that most people do not seem to know.

I know this because I figured it out while isolated in a religious cult (yes, I had access to a computer so I could learn to be a secretary).

The trick is that if you click both mouse buttons on any square, it will show you which squares can be bombs. If you do that on a square where all possible bombs have already been marked, then it will automatically expand more squares. If you don’t get it, video 👆.

Ever since I moved to the United States at 15, whenever Minesweeper comes up, (as it does) I’ve told people about the trick.

That’s when a funny thing happens, people start to get really, really defensive. Basically, a certain group of people will angrily try to argue that it doesn’t exist. They stick to their certainty regardless of argument, and then throw up their hands in despair when I demonstrate, beyond all doubt, that it does, in fact, exist.

These people believe that, because they all played Minesweeper as children, to their increasing frustration of never winning — or spending hours trying to math it out — but didn’t know that there even *was* a trick, then it cannot possibly be true.

They cling to this with fervor.

I’ve recently noticed how many similarities this has to the way some people react to the concept of privilege. So, now that I’ve got you all fondly thinking of your childhood game, let’s talk about that.
What is privilege? There are obviously 1000s of definitions, but let’s try.

Privilege is essentially any advantage that you have over another person (or usually, a group of people) that you were born into (ie. did not work for). We talk about things like white, male, able-bodied, intelligence, looks, etc. being types of privilege — nobody ‘deserves’ these

Now, when we start talking about the organizations & systems that we all live in, work in, & operate under, privilege starts to become systemic & institutionalized, & that’s where it can start to really do some damage.

That’s also where it can start to go unquestioned.

The first time I heard the term white privilege, it was because a white friend of mine was angrily arguing that it didn’t exist.

Without any further information, I knew that it did, because of the very argument he was using “I worked for everything I have.”

I began looking:

I knew that, by most people’s definition, I’d worked for everything I had (much more than that friend, too). I escaped a cult at 15, moved to the US pretty much alone, had exactly $0, & was told I couldn’t even be enrolled in HS because I didn’t exist.

Against odds, I was fine.

I put myself through HS & college, became an Army Officer, & have had many other successes & accomplishments that I’m very proud of.
Still, I knew that day that my advantages had a name — white privilege.
I knew that if I’d been as Latina as I feel, I would have struggled more.

Coming to the US from Brazil (one of the more diverse countries) I have many friends that I think of as ‘just like me’, but there are significant differences — they are brown & black. I also knew that racism in the US is a whole beast I’d never seen quite so bad in other places.

When I accepted white privilege, that was an awakening for me. I could still be proud of my accomplishments, but I had to look at the entire game through a new light. I had to begin to see all of the other privileges that I have

Where many want to deny it, I wanted to understand

I can look at it and list them out: I’m white, attractive, smarter than average, & able-bodied in ways others never have been.

None of these are things that I can have possibly “worked for”, & all of these are things that have advantaged me.

I was also a girl/woman, from a very underprivileged background…

That was my intersectionality, these are areas where I had disadvantages, regardless of my privilege in other areas. That’s okay to acknowledge, too.

Naturally, like I do with any new idea, I got excited, began to study it, & try hard now to play my part to dismantle it.

One thing I learned from growing up in a really terrible cult, & then spending my life studying & trying to understand it, is that systems work in mysterious ways.

It’s possible to grow up surrounded by systemic injustices & just never see it, like fish who don’t know water.

Just trust me — if you saw how dedicated some of the survivors that grew up in a cult most infamous for abusing children are to denying that they ever suffered any abuse, you’d understand.

We code our experiences to be able to understand them. You have to go back & code privilege

I’ve learned that people can be very dedicated to the narrative of denying privilege, as it’s too hard to accept.

They believe if they accept that there are things in life they have that they didn’t ‘deserve’, then they can never be proud of any of their achievements again.

When my husband was struggling to understand his male privilege, because he sincerely felt he’d ‘worked for everything he has’, I explained it this way: Babe, in 1990, at 8 yrs old, you decided to be a pilot — & everyone in your life fell in line to help you make that a reality.

My question to him was simple: do you think an 8-yr-old girl in 1990 would have had that same story to tell?

It’s doors that were held open for you that were slammed shut for others. It doesn’t mean you didn’t work hard to get to that door, it means it was open when you did.

Once we accept the existence of privilege in our lives, we begin to see where the cracks in the system are, the ones we can pry our privileged fingers into & begin to pull it down. We are embarrassed about privilege, bc if one group is advantaged then another is disadvantaged.

“When we identify where our privilege intersects with somebody else’s oppression, we’ll find our opportunities to make real change.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

This👆 is one of the concepts I’ve decided to dedicate my life too. As a society, we can get there.

To tie it back to Minesweeper & why I think there is so much resistance to the existence of ‘the trick’, I think it’s because once you see it, the game is over.

People tell me, “well, that trick defeats the purpose of the game”, which is kinda true. At least, it changes it.

Once you ‘see’ privilege, it changes the game. If you are a good person, you can’t sit by & accept that your undeserved advantage is because of an instutionalized system that disadvantages others. You are then forced to do the work to learn, to understand your blindspots & change

“Being privileged doesn’t mean that you are always wrong and people without privilege are always right. It means that there is a good chance you are missing a few very important pieces of the puzzle.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

What accepting the existence of privilege, or ‘the trick’, does mean is that we can see the game in a new way. Once we see it, we can come for it. White people have to tear down white privilege; men have to tear down male privilege; and on, and on. We can do it once we see it.

Thanks for reading along, and I look forward to the discussions.

Daniella Mestyanek Young is an American author and TEDx Speaker. Daniella has been breaking through barriers and challenging authority figures since her earliest childhood memories growing up in the horrifying Children of God Cult and on through her service and deployment to war twice. Daniella served as part of the first group of women who integrated into deliberate combat arms missions back in 2011 and has since spent the majority of her time leading in veteran service organizations to try and help folks heal and find their own definition of success after their service.

Daniella is married to the world’s best special operations helicopter pilot (retired) and speaks primarily in Brazilian Portuguese with her daughter, who sasses her back in three languages. Daniella is currently at work on her memoir, Uncultured. She can be found speaking speaking truth to power, irritating vetbros and stamping out the kyriarchy on Twitter @daniellamyoung. She can be contacted at daniella.m.young@gmail.com