In this class, we’ve paid specific attention to how society shapes — and is shaped by — social categories such as social class, gender, race and ethnicity, etc and this assignment dives more deeply into the experiences of inequality in everyday life. While inequality is a topic that we are perhaps more accustomed to talking about, privilege is less known and easily overlooked. Privilege (defined in Chapter 11) is an unearned advantage in society, or advantages that come simply by being part of a dominant/majority group. It is the flip side of the coin when talking about disadvantage that is incurred to people who are in a minority group. While originally it was applied to the concept of race, it has expanded to other social categories such as gender, sexual orientation, body size, ability, social class, etc…
As might be expected, sometimes it is difficult for people in majority groups to understand the concept of privilege. Believing that one has this been the beneficiary of unearned advantage often seems implausible for any of the following reasons:
a.) people are not familiar with the everyday discrimination that happens to people in minority groups, and/or
b.) people in majority groups rarely are asked to think of themselves in those terms, and/or
c.) it might seem like someone is saying that people’s lives have been easy if they have privilege.
By no means does the concept of privilege indicate that people’s lives have been easy! And we should be careful to paint with a broad brush because our identities are intersectional (defined in Chapter 11) and we may find that we have societal privilege from some aspect of our identity, but disadvantage from another aspect of our identity. Some people may have several layers of privilege or several layers of disadvantage or a combination of the two.
Privilege, as a sociological concept, was not designed to make people feel “bad” about their unearned advantages in society. From this literature has come an abundance of information about the lived experience of privilege (stemming from the lived experience of discrimination). Privilege is an important concept for Sociologists who study inequality because it often brings awareness to how people face different disadvantages in their lives. The resistance to acknowledging privilege can often slow the pace of social change toward equality, hence the importance of studying privilege.
Step 1: Review the Video and Checklists
Use this Buzzfeed video illustrating how privilege works within our multi-dimensional, intersectional identities to further your understanding of this concept:
Check out (at least) 2 of the follow “Privilege Checklists” that appear on Arizona State’s website for Project Humanities. If possible, try to choose one list that represents a majority group that you belong to, and one list that represents a minority group that you belong to.
https://projecthumanities.asu.edu/content/able-bodied-privilege-checklist
Step 2: Write the essay
While incorporating course concepts, write a essay that addresses the following questions:
Describe yourself as an intersectional person with many demographic characteristics (Please only share aspects of your identity that you feel comfortable writing about.
Using several examples of privilege from the lists you have chosen to review, explain how privilege works in everyday life.
sources:
2. Privilege Checklists
