Originally posted by ilikecomics
Here's a definition of privilege.https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-privilege/
Does anyone want to read this ? No, guess not. Shrug/
Source: Sensoy, Ozlem, and Robin DiAngelo. Is Everyone Really Equal?: An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education, first edition. Teacher’s College Press: New York, 2012, p. 57.
From a critical social justice perspective, privilege is defined as systemically conferred dominance and the institutional processes by which the beliefs and values of the dominant group are “made normal” and universal. While in some cases, the privileged group is also the numerical majority, the key criterion is social and institutional power.
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Source: McIntosh, Peggy. “White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women’s studies.” Working Paper 189. Center for Research on Women, Wellesley College, 1988.
“I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious.”
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Source: https://educatenotindoctrinate.org/glossaries/race-equity-glossary-of-terms/
White privilege: Refers to the unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements, benefits and choices bestowed on people solely because they are white. Generally white people who experience such privilege do so without being conscious of it.
New Discourses Commentary
In Critical Social Justice, privilege is viewed as the set of structural advantages that “dominant groups” are bestowed as a result of being dominant and yet that are denied to “oppressed groups” by virtue of their status of (structural) oppression (see also, systemic power). Privilege is deemed to be unearned and unquestioned, and often it is assumed that members of dominant groups are generally unaware of the privilege. People with privilege not only take their privilege for granted, under Theory, but also they are motivated to maintain it and legitimize it by perpetuating the structures and systemic power dynamics that allegedly keep it in place (see also, racism, sexism, ableism, heteronormativity, cisnormativity, white comfort, white equilibrium, white innocence, and epistemic oppression). They are also generally unaware of it and defensive of it (see also, internalized dominance, white fragility, colortalk, privilege-preserving epistemic pushback, white ignorance, active ignorance, pernicious ignorance, willful ignorance, racial contract, white solidarity, white talk, and white complicity).
Under a critical approach, one of the key objectives is to make people more aware of the Theorized “realities” of systemic power and oppression, which often falls under a heading of “consciousness raising.” Developing a “critical consciousness” (see also, wokeness) is the objective of this endeavor, in general, and this roughly means to become aware of the way one’s demographic group-based identity positions them with relationship to the systemic power dynamics of their society. This can be understood in terms of becoming more aware of both privilege and oppression, and in terms of privilege often entails generating increasing awareness of how one has unearned advantages that should be accounted for (see also, white innocence, racial stress, and antiracism, and also, individualism, universalism, human nature, and meritocracy). This is (part of) the meaning of the phrase “check your privilege,” which is (in part) meant as a reminder to be conscious of and acknowledge it (i.e., take on and operate from a critical consciousness).
The concept of privilege as used in Critical Social Justice seems to be a dramatic expansion of the more common usage that refers to economic privilege, which has long been reserved for the extremely wealthy. This usage carries the same mix of connotations now familiar from the usage in Critical Social Justice, a pejorative and shaming connotation that indicates disconnection from the harder realities of life when used by those accusing someone of having it (e.g, “he’s just a privileged ass”) and a rather humbling or even self-effacing connotation when used by people with it (e.g., “I know I have been very privileged in my life”). Thus, the term carries rather heavy moral valence.
Critical Social Justice has expanded this usage to include not only the aristocratic and extremely wealthy, but anyone of above-poverty means and, more crucially and often more relevantly, to the alleged relatively high social capital and larger set of opportunities that Theory insists comes with belonging to certain (dominant) identities and not others. Thus, someone can be deemed privileged for being able to own a modest home, in the economic sense, and for being straight, white, and/or male, in the identity sense (among others). The expansion of the term privilege in this way tends to make having or having access to relatively ordinary things and opportunities into moral transgressions unless they’re totally universal things (which is often impossible, especially on short timescales). In this sense, the critical notion of privilege looks at opportunity through the wrong end of the telescope.
Functionally, privilege operates in a nearly indistinguishable way from the religious concepts of Original Sin and Depravity. Original Sin is a stain one is born with and cannot escape, and it is the reason that each individual is fundamentally corrupt and in need of engaging in a spiritual life and finding atonement. Privilege works this way as well, though the spiritual system in question is that of systemic power dynamics as understood through critical theories, and the spiritual life/work expected comes as a result of developing a critical consciousness (which is deemed as a “lifelong commitment to an ongoing process”) and taking up the related activism (see also, antiracism).
The parallelism to the (Calvinist) religious concept of Depravity is nearer to the mark with regard to the functional meaning of privilege in a “faith system” of critical consciousness. Depravity is, in brief, the desire to sin. It is having a corrupted nature that desires to sin (as a result of the corrupting influence of Original Sin), and this fundamentally fallen nature is often understood as existing outside of one’s conscious awareness. With privilege, Theory insists that people with privilege want to maintain, perpetuate, normalize, legitimize, etc., that privilege and exhibit a remarkable array of defense mechanisms to prevent having to confront it head-on (specifically, and only, by developing a critical consciousness and taking up activism).
As is seen in Calvinism, where a spiritual life is encouraged by getting people to live up to the example of the Elect, who are fated for Heaven, spiritual life among the Woke is encouraged by encouraging them to work on behalf of the oppressed in allyship and/or solidarity and to “do the work” of antiracism (through an intersectional “practice” of engaging positionality constantly and intentionally). As we read from Ozlem and Sensoy, “It is always the primary responsibility of the dominant group members to use their positions to interrupt oppression” (p. 153). One is absolutely expected to become aware of one’s privilege to use it in a critical way to disrupt the forces of systemic evil in society.
This shines an interesting light on one of the simpler meanings of the term “intersectionality,” which is “to be aware of and analyze ways in which we are all both privileged and oppressed.” In this light, intersectionality is a tool by which the sin-like stain of privilege has to be reckoned with by all (but, perhaps, the Theoretically most oppressed person). To wit, see the first example below.