PRIVILEGE. It’s a bit of a touchy subject.
The term is most often used in the context of social inequality to mean unearned benefits given to people who fit into specific social groups. It’s basically the opposite of oppression. I think this video explains the concept most simply. I’m visual, so it really helped me!
Let’s get this out of the way right now: having privilege does not mean you are a bad person. Having it does not mean that you do not work hard or don’t deserve the things you’ve earned. It simply means that you are the receiver of certain benefits that others are not. Some people have had to be a better person and work harder, just to meet the same standard. I can relate with the “guilty” feeling that this idea might elicit, especially at first. But as with most problems in life, we can’t deal with them until we define them. Pointing out how you may be privileged in certain ways is not meant as an insult, it’s meant to open your eyes to new perspectives. As an example, most of us have the internet, right (not sure how else you’d be reading this)? In many countries, there is not the same standard of a strong, stable, relatively inexpensive internet connection. Something we rarely even think about. If you don’t have to think about it, its a privilege. When we become aware of the privileges in our own lives, we can be more compassionate to other people’s situations and begin to work to eradicate that privilege.
My first introduction to the term “privilege” was in 2009, in an online Intro to Women’s Studies course at the University of Central Florida. The professor assigned the article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh. This was my first true foray into the idea that certain experiences I take for granted are not universal experiences.
I grew up in a small rural town in Central Florida and lived a pretty sheltered life. We went to church every Sunday and hung out with my extended family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins) weekly. My parents, while they weren’t the strictest, definitely kept tabs on what I was doing most of the time. My closest group of friends was heavily involved in the baptist church, so my parents didn’t really need to worry. I was also a cute, white girl, with a middle class lifestyle, so I didn’t have much to worry about either.
Fast forward to 2009. I’m reading the McIntosh article and something clicks. It’s a tiny click, but it’s the very first in a series of “clicks” that has brought me to huge realizations that have opened my heart and my mind.
Admittedly, while reading through the white privilege list in the article, there were points that made me feel uncomfortable, some that I didn’t fully understand, and some that I flat out disagreed with, but there were also so many points were I thought to myself, “This makes sense, why has no one said anything about this before?”. Particularly, "I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin”. Something so simple, yet so blatantly unfair. This stuck with me (pun intended).
Since then, I’ve been able to expand my knowledge about privilege. I wound up minoring in Women’s Studies after that first class, and became very interested in feminism, which often focuses it’s attention on male privilege. Because I am female, it was pretty easy for me to see and relate to most examples of male privilege. What was harder, obviously, was facing my own privilege, particularly my white privilege.
So, remember when I mentioned that some of those points from the white privilege list made me feel uncomfortable? Ya. Realizing you’ve been, at best, party to oppression, and at worst, an oppressor, is not really the most comfortable feeling. At first I felt defensive. I wanted to explain myself. I’m not that kind of white person! For a long time, I pushed the idea away, because it felt bad. But once you’ve become even a little bit aware of the ways your privilege can affect others, it’s hard to forget. This is when I first started realizing just how incredibly important it is to become aware of and listen to, the voices of those whose experiences are different than mine. While seeking out information and hearing more and more new perspectives, I realized that, well, this just isn’t about me. This isn’t about my comfort. I should be uncomfortable with oppression! It’s taken me a long time, years even, to understand that having privilege does not make me a bad person. I did not ask for my privilege, and I did not set up the power systems that keep it in place. What matters is what I choose to do with the privilege I’ve been given.
Because I've had the privilege (ahem) of being able to come to these realizations, I feel obligated to share them. And because of some of the feelings I've experienced in learning about and dealing with my own privilege, I feel strong empathy for those who may not be “there” yet. My hope is to share this information in a way that is compassionate to both the privileged and the oppressed, and to hopefully open a few hearts and eyes.
Alright, let’s get into it! What is privilege, really?
Like I mentioned earlier, privilege is the opposite of oppression. The term is used to describe unearned benefits granted by society, based on certain aspects of identity like race, gender, sexual orientation, class or religion, among other things. But privilege is more complicated than that, and requires a bit (ok, more than a bit) of nuance in understanding.
There are lots of types of privilege, but one of the easiest to understand in my opinion, is able-bodied privilege. If you are free from disabilities, you have able-bodied privilege. The privilege of being an able-bodied person is built into society. It’s the norm. Disabled bodies are an after thought. Think about how stores, restaurants, and most homes, are designed with the able-bodied person’s body in mind. Often, things need to be modified or specially designed for people with disabilities. For someone with a disability, it could be worrisome to visit unfamiliar places, because you can’t be sure if the place can accommodate your disability. These are just some of the things that if you don’t have a disability, or aren’t close with someone who does, you’ve probably never thought about. You have the privilege of not having to worry about it. Other types of privilege include white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege, cis-gender privilege and class privilege, to name a few. We can talk about the reasons why and how certain types of privilege were instituted, but the bottom line is that where privilege exists, equality does not.
Privilege describes what everyone would (and should!) experience, if we had complete equity. In theory, most people believe that everyone should be treated equally in most situations. If only this were really the case. For example, think about how differently a pregnancy might affect the career of a man versus a woman. For obvious reasons, women have to take significant time off, where men have the choice to take the time or not. A woman’s career could be jeopardized by this fact, while this is not the case for men. The male experience is the “default” in this case. Women are expected to “conform” their experience based solely on their biology, even though men are just as responsible for pregnancies as women. Males have the privilege of not worrying about how a pregnancy, planned or otherwise, might interfere with their careers.
Privileges and oppressions overlap. The term intersectionality (coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw) refers to how these different aspects of our identities interact, and cannot be separated from each other. Intersectionality takes into account that people’s lives are multi-dimensional and complex, and that our experiences don’t all fit neatly into a few select categories. Crenshaw uses an analogy to describe the concept:
"Consider an analogy to traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four directions. Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars traveling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed because she is in an intersection, her injury could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination. . . . But it is not always easy to reconstruct an accident: Sometimes the skid marks and the injuries simply indicate that they occurred simultaneously, frustrating efforts to determine which driver caused the harm.”
I’ve come to understand that everyone experiences degrees of privilege and oppression, based on their life circumstances. These privileges and oppressions inextricably inform each other.
So, why am I even talking about all this? Well, to be perfectly honest, waking up to my own privilege was and still is hard, and I want to try to make it easier for others. I’ve witnessed so much misunderstanding around the concept of privilege, and remember my own misunderstanding. I also see how much this misunderstanding is dividing us as a country, and as individuals. Those who "get it" are feeling frustrated. Those who don’t are feeling judged or accused. I want to help bridge that gap in whatever small way I can. With this in mind, I plan to use this website as a forum to share about privilege and social justice topics I’m interested in. My intent is to put my privilege to use toward ending privilege. I plan to further my research and hope to continue to be exposed to new perspectives. The more I listen and learn, the better equipped I am to help others understand.
Please let me know your thoughts! Especially if you have suggestions on how I can make this site better.
For further reading click HERE for a list of my favorite resources on understanding privilege.
Sources:
http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/09/what-is-privilege/
http://isreview.org/issue/91/black-feminism-and-intersectionality
