The Differences in Privilege and Experience – PLSC 359: Global Governance

After our riveting, slightly disillusioning conversation in class on Thursday, I thought that I should clarify the meaning of the word privilege and how it impacts various people’s lived experiences.

This is a relatively short clip, should you have four minutes to spare. It is entitled, “The Unequal Opportunity Race.” The end goal of this video was to support affirmative action but they somehow left out the fact that affirmative action helps more white women, than any other gender/race. Legacy (going to the school where your parents/immediate family attended) is also a part of affirmative action.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX_Vzl-r8NY

Now that you have seen it, I should define three terms that we see often but do not seem to grasp fully.

1- Privilege: a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people.

2- Equality: the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, and opportunities. Also defined as treating everyone the same.

3- Equity- the way to reach fairness. Also defined as giving everyone what they need to be successful.

Privilege, all of us have it, in one form or another, but many of us have way more privilege than others and use it in a way that wields power over (oppresses) others. No one wants to take power from those who have the most (in America that is heterosexual, Anglo-saxon, white men.) The goal is to simply increase power, opportunity, and aid to people with little resources, connection, and support in general.

Everyone seems to love the idea of equality, and while I love it too, it does not necessarily alleviate social justice problems. Equality says that if person 1 is thirsty and person 2 has plenty of water, a glass of water should be given to both people. Equity says that if person 1 is thirsty and person 2 has plenty of water, a glass of water should be given to person 1 before person 2 is aided. Do not confuse this with socialist principles or anything of that nature, the idea is that the person who is in need should receive aid.

The purpose of education is to mold pupils into people who can effect change around the world but how is that possible if people do not first understand themselves?

Naomi Sand says:

April 18, 2016 at 1:46 pm

Hi Ivana. Thank you for this break down of some terms I think a many people struggle to understand. Have you ever taken a look at Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,”? It can be a great resource for white students who have never needed to truly face the inherent privilege of their whiteness. She asks the reader to react to a series of statements with an answer of True of False. Many of these responses can be very revealing about our individual positions of privilege. Here’s an example of some of the statements:

– “I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.”
– “I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.”
– “I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection”
– “I can chose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin.”

Just some interesting stuff that I think you’d like!

Casey Nolan says:

April 30, 2016 at 12:15 am

Hi Ivana,

Thank you for posting this and for sharing your thoughts this semester. This past year I’ve been wrestling a lot about what I do with privilege. I’ve been trying to listen a lot more to voices that don’t sound like mine, whether that be in person or in my news and social media feeds. A lot of it has been a learning process. The tough part is then knowing what to do with that. Do I speak up in conversation or is that just thrusting myself and my opinion into a community that it has no place of being in the first place. What does it look like to lift up the voices of other that have been systematically stifled over time? I’d love to hear some of your thoughts (and if you feel like checking out my recent blog post, I’d be interested to heard your thoughts on that too). I want to help, but I’m at a loss of what to do because I know that some efforts can be more damaging than beneficial.