The Duality of Living in Privilege and being Pasifika

Exploring What It Means to See the World Through Two Different Realities.

Talofa reader,

I was actually working on another piece about how AI and it’s practical implications in the ‘hood, but got stuck having to hand wave off a concept of how I live in two different worlds at the same time, all the time.

I figured it would just be easier to write this one first, and then I can refer back to it anytime I have to run scenarios that require the reader to “get where I’m coming from”, essentially.

Let’s begin.

In my reality, I've always known I live in two worlds simultaneously.

The non-brown world, the one I experience with everyone else who's white basically.

Let’s call this world, “tech world”.

And the "brown" world, the one where, y'know, I'm a brown Pasifika guy.

We can call this “home world”.

The Pasifika Multi-Verse

There’s a lot of things I take for granted in my tech world.

I generally think all of us in this world, can see the world in roughly the same way, and where we don’t, we’re savvy enough to connect a few dots and come to a shared conclusion.

I’m often caught by surprise about how far off the mark that assumption is.

For example, RNZ did a piece about my Pasifika kids code club, where I mention there's not many Pasifika in tech.

The office where I was contracting at the time, formed a queue the next day to shake my hand, and almost every single one exclaim "oh yea, now that you mention it I don't think I've ever seen a Pacific Islander contracting around here".

I was a bit gobsmacked, to be honest.

I thought, if I can see the lack of colour around the office, day in and day out for years and years- how did you all miss that?

It's because we live in the same country, but we don't live in the same world.

I'll explain.