Hello everyone! We hope you are having a great break. As part of our ongoing attempts to uphold our mission statement (“to promote awareness about LGBTQ culture and to foster understanding, acceptance, and tolerance through education and activism”), this week we discussed the concept of privilege. Privilege is a difficult topic to wrap one’s head around, so if you have any questions after reading this post, feel free to email us questions at gsa.wra@gmail.com, or ask questions in the comment section below!
Before we begin, we want you to say the following several times: privilege is not personal. Got it? Privilege, in the sense in which we are speaking, is not related to personal accomplishment--you don’t earn the privilege we’re talking about. These types of privilege merely exist in culture.
So what is privilege? Anti-racist activist and academic Peggy McIntosh explains that privilege exists when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they’ve done or failed to do. Privilege affects people differently depending on the intersections of oppression that they experience; oppression is the flip side of privilege, where a group is denied access to something because they do not belong to a certain group. To further explore these ideas of privilege, we put several types of privilege up on the board and asked those that attended the meeting to pick one and we could talk about the ways those privileges interact with us in our every day lives. Below are the ones we discussed on Thursday.
Native English Speaker: As a native English speaker, one is guaranteed to understand all signs posted here in the United States. The Internet is written primarily for English speakers, and a huge amount of literature is either written in English or translated into English. Native English speakers also have the advantage of going to practically any country in the world and being able to find someone able to speak at least rudimentary English in that country--these are all privileges non-native English speakers don’t have in their native languages.
White: White people are less likely to be arrested than people of color, and have access to higher quality goods; ghettos and inner-city spaces are more likely to be considered “food deserts” (low access to nutritious food), for example. White people can choose whether or not to acknowledge the fact that they are white, and they have a much higher amount of representation in different types of media; for example, we could count on one hand the number of people of color in the Harry Potter series. White people are more likely to control conversations, and what is said by a white person is more acceptable--in some cases, a white person could repeat the exact same idea as a person of color, but where the person of color might be ignored, the white person would be paid attention to. This might be because white people have created the dominant culture and virtually erased the histories of other groups in the process. White privilege is a privilege that intersects heavily with other types of privilege, and is one of the privileges we encourage particularly increased awareness of.
Monoracial: People with monoracial privilege--that is, people whose parents are both of the same race--are guaranteed to almost always have their race represented on forms. They never have to worry, if there is no “multiracial/other” option, about which box to tick. Even when there is a “multiracial/other” category, the proximity of “multiracial” to “other” immediately makes those who are multiracial feel like “others” or outsiders.
Male: Men are more likely to dominate a conversation, and have what they say taken seriously. They are less likely to be harassed or sexually assaulted than women; although men are victims of sexual assault, likely in higher numbers than reported, the estimated number is still significantly lower than attacks made on women. They earn much more money than women, and are much more likely to hold positions of power. Their success and achievements are not written as a success for men; this is rarely true for women. If a man fails in some pursuit, his failure will not be chalked up to the fact that he is a man--the same cannot be said for women.
These are just a few examples of privilege. Other types we’ll discuss later include heteroseuxal privilege, cisgender privilege, and Christian privilege. Do you have any of the types of privilege we discussed here? Which ones? How do they impact your daily life? Think about it--examine the ways privilege touches your life and the lives of those around you.
In other news, THIS THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20TH, from 6:30 - 7:45 pm, in Wilson Reading Room, GSA is hosting an ALLY WEEK WORKSHOP. This will be instead of our weekly meeting. We will be playing games, distributing prizes, and there may be sweet treats and something to drink! Please come out, as this is our first big event of the year and it would be a great opportunity to show your support. Bring a friend! We promise it will be a fun and educational experience. You can RSVP to the event here.
We hope the rest of your midfall break is fun and safe, and we look forward to seeing you all Thursday evening!
No comments:
Post a Comment