I like how the author of this paper began with the analogy of white privilege is more or less the same as male privilege, maybe not the same, but definitely similar. It immediately started to change my outlook on each word that I read. The article helped me view and compare myself as a woman to others who may be in a different scenario but are still living with the same issues when it comes to the position people are placed in with “privilege.”
The list of 46 points opened my eyes tremendously. The majority of things on the list are so simple, but for some reason to my dismay I have never even thought about most of them. I first thought to myself, “Now why is this?” Could it be because of “privilege.” I found number 18 worthy of note. “I can swear, or dress in secondhand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.”
Women get sick and tired of male privilege. But as a woman, when I do or don’t do something, it doesn’t fall on the entire women species like it does on minorities. Until this Race, Gender and Media class I have not even begun to really wrap my head around such issues. I always knew there was an underlying “privilege” throughout our society but I never stopped to think: Who? How? Why? I find this to be sad and strange, given that I am a 22-year-old senior in college. What I find even more ridiculous is that it is 2009 and privilege is still around. Whether you're black, white, purple, male, female, almost everyone struggles with privilege. Will it always be around? Not if we start to make adjustments to our thinking and re-shape the minds of the next generations to come.
Re-thinking and re-evaluating, now that would mean stepping out of your box.
ReplyDeleteI have been thinking about this a lot, and does privilege actually exist? I know this may come as a shock, but I look at the scenario more as a sort of equilibrium. Yes, the things listed in the article are VERY true, but think about the other side and the privileges they enjoy. For example, as far as minorities go, I know an African-American girl who has bragged about not getting thrown out of the engineering college. She had failed the same class four times. She managed this feat by threatening to sue the college based on discrimination. I would never be able to get away with that. The same thing can apply to gender privilege. So privilege may exist, but not in the total discriminative way Wise would have us think. Just something to ponder….
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