The Glamorous Guide To Understanding Privilege

In today's internet age, one word keeps haunting the nightmares of everyone on the planet, privilege. This word seems to haunt some people more than others, and I am here to offer some insight into understanding this word. Hopefully at the end of this post you will be able to better understand privilege as well as educate your friends on this important word.

Google defines privilege as "a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people." On the internet it is often determined that there are privileges that help you more than others, but in my opinion:

Everyone Has A Little Privilege

I know, that's insane to think right? Think about it though. There are certain privileges that various people have. There is the privileges like skin color, but there are also privileges in your gender, gender identity, sexual preference, age, able bodied-ness, wealth, etc. Each privilege carries a certain weight to it. So yes, not all white people have the privileges assigned to a rich, white, young, able bodied, straight cisgendered man but there is privilege in being white. There is also privilege in being straight, cisgendered, male, rich, young, able-bodied. Most people would have one or two of these privileges, but they don't always have all of them.

Today's Word Of The Day Is Intersectionality

I think an important word when we think of privilege and oppression is the word intersectionality. Each of these various oppressions or privileges compound upon each other. So being a black male and a black female carry different privileges and oppressions based on how gender and race interact and intersect with each other. 

So you have a better idea of what intersectionality means, Google defines it as, "the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage."

This is so important to understand because just as privilege builds, so does oppression. I feel like privilege and oppression are two sides of the same coin and that they both must be studied.

Stop Comparing

So, some oppressions may or may not be harder to live with. I am going to quote Patricia Hill Collins. Hill Collins is an amazing sociologist and the author of Black Feminist Thought. She states 

Adhering to a stance of comparing and ranking oppressions-the proverbial, "I'm more oppressed than you"-locks us all into a dangerous dance of competing for attention, resources, and theoretical supremacy.

This is a short quote from her piece Toward A New Vision: Race, Class, and Gender as Categories Of Analysis and Connection.

I feel that Hill Collins definitely has a point. Privilege and in turn the oppression has an affect on everyone. If we want long term change we have to stop trying to be the most oppressed and work together to create viable solutions for dealing with oppression.

Doing this won't be an easy tasks. We have to start actually working together despite our oppressions to get things done.

Want some extra resources? I adore this video by Franchesca Ramsey with MTV's Decoded: