Privilege

Social Justice Usage

Source: Sensoy, Ozlem, and Robin DiAngelo. Is Everyone Really Equal?: An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education, first edition. Teacher’s College Press: New York, 2012, p. 57.

From a critical social justice perspective, privilege is defined as systemically conferred dominance and the institutional processes by which the beliefs and values of the dominant group are “made normal” and universal. While in some cases, the privileged group is also the numerical majority, the key criterion is social and institutional power.

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Source: McIntosh, Peggy. “White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women’s studies.” Working Paper 189. Center for Research on Women, Wellesley College, 1988.

“I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious.”

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Source: https://educatenotindoctrinate.org/glossaries/race-equity-glossary-of-terms/

White privilege: Refers to the unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements, benefits and choices bestowed on people solely because they are white. Generally white people who experience such privilege do so without being conscious of it.

New Discourses Commentary

In Critical Social Justice, privilege is viewed as the set of structural advantages that “dominant groups” are bestowed as a result of being dominant and yet that are denied to “oppressed groups” by virtue of their status of (structural) oppression (see also, systemic power). Privilege is deemed to be unearned and unquestioned, and often it is assumed that members of dominant groups are generally unaware of the privilege. People with privilege not only take their privilege for granted, under Theory, but also they are motivated to maintain it and legitimize it by perpetuating the structures and systemic power dynamics that allegedly keep it in place (see also, racism, sexism, ableism, heteronormativity, cisnormativity, white comfort, white equilibrium, white innocence, and epistemic oppression). They are also generally unaware of it and defensive of it (see also, internalized dominance, white fragility, colortalk, privilege-preserving epistemic pushback, white ignorance, active ignorance, pernicious ignorance, willful ignorance, racial contract, white solidarity, white talk, and white complicity).

Under a critical approach, one of the key objectives is to make people more aware of the Theorized “realities” of systemic power and oppression, which often falls under a heading of “consciousness raising.” Developing a “critical consciousness” (see also, wokeness) is the objective of this endeavor, in general, and this roughly means to become aware of the way one’s demographic group-based identity positions them with relationship to the systemic power dynamics of their society. This can be understood in terms of becoming more aware of both privilege and oppression, and in terms of privilege often entails generating increasing awareness of how one has unearned advantages that should be accounted for (see also, white innocence, racial stress, and antiracism, and also, individualism, universalism, human nature, and meritocracy). This is (part of) the meaning of the phrase “check your privilege,” which is (in part) meant as a reminder to be conscious of and acknowledge it (i.e., take on and operate from a critical consciousness).

The concept of privilege as used in Critical Social Justice seems to be a dramatic expansion of the more common usage that refers to economic privilege, which has long been reserved for the extremely wealthy. This usage carries the same mix of connotations now familiar from the usage in Critical Social Justice, a pejorative and shaming connotation that indicates disconnection from the harder realities of life when used by those accusing someone of having it (e.g, “he’s just a privileged ass”) and a rather humbling or even self-effacing connotation when used by people with it (e.g., “I know I have been very privileged in my life”). Thus, the term carries rather heavy moral valence.

Critical Social Justice has expanded this usage to include not only the aristocratic and extremely wealthy, but anyone of above-poverty means and, more crucially and often more relevantly, to the alleged relatively high social capital and larger set of opportunities that Theory insists comes with belonging to certain (dominant) identities and not others. Thus, someone can be deemed privileged for being able to own a modest home, in the economic sense, and for being straight, white, and/or male, in the identity sense (among others). The expansion of the term privilege in this way tends to make having or having access to relatively ordinary things and opportunities into moral transgressions unless they’re totally universal things (which is often impossible, especially on short timescales). In this sense, the critical notion of privilege looks at opportunity through the wrong end of the telescope.

Functionally, privilege operates in a nearly indistinguishable way from the religious concepts of Original Sin and Depravity. Original Sin is a stain one is born with and cannot escape, and it is the reason that each individual is fundamentally corrupt and in need of engaging in a spiritual life and finding atonement. Privilege works this way as well, though the spiritual system in question is that of systemic power dynamics as understood through critical theories, and the spiritual life/work expected comes as a result of developing a critical consciousness (which is deemed as a “lifelong commitment to an ongoing process”) and taking up the related activism (see also, antiracism).

The parallelism to the (Calvinist) religious concept of Depravity is nearer to the mark with regard to the functional meaning of privilege in a “faith system” of critical consciousness. Depravity is, in brief, the desire to sin. It is having a corrupted nature that desires to sin (as a result of the corrupting influence of Original Sin), and this fundamentally fallen nature is often understood as existing outside of one’s conscious awareness. With privilege, Theory insists that people with privilege want to maintain, perpetuate, normalize, legitimize, etc., that privilege and exhibit a remarkable array of defense mechanisms to prevent having to confront it head-on (specifically, and only, by developing a critical consciousness and taking up activism).

As is seen in Calvinism, where a spiritual life is encouraged by getting people to live up to the example of the Elect, who are fated for Heaven, spiritual life among the Woke is encouraged by encouraging them to work on behalf of the oppressed in allyship and/or solidarity and to “do the work” of antiracism (through an intersectional “practice” of engaging positionality constantly and intentionally). As we read from Ozlem and Sensoy, “It is always the primary responsibility of the dominant group members to use their positions to interrupt oppression” (p. 153). One is absolutely expected to become aware of one’s privilege to use it in a critical way to disrupt the forces of systemic evil in society.

This shines an interesting light on one of the simpler meanings of the term “intersectionality,” which is “to be aware of and analyze ways in which we are all both privileged and oppressed.” In this light, intersectionality is a tool by which the sin-like stain of privilege has to be reckoned with by all (but, perhaps, the Theoretically most oppressed person). To wit, see the first example below.

Related Terms

Ableism; Active ignorance; Allyship; Antiracism; Cisnormativity; Colortalk; Consciousness raising; Critical; Critical consciousness; Critical theory; Dominance; Epistemic oppression; Heteronormativity; Human nature; Identity; Individualism; Internalized dominance; Intersectionality; Legitimate; Meritocracy; Normativity; Oppression; Pernicious ignorance; Position; Power (systemic); Privilege-preserving epistemic pushback; Race; Racial contract; Racial stress; Racism (systemic); Sexism (systemic); Social capital; Social Justice; Solidarity; Structural; System, the; Systemic power; Theory; Universalism; White; White comfort; White complicity; White equilibrium; White fragility; White ignorance; White innocence; White solidarity; White talk; Willful ignorance; Woke/Wokeness

Additional Examples

Source: Sensoy, Ozlem, and Robin DiAngelo. Is Everyone Really Equal?: An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education, first edition. Teacher’s College Press: New York, 2012, pp. 135–136.

The dynamics of intersectionality are deeply significant and it is impossible to develop critical social justice literacy without an ability to grapple with their complexities. For example, in addition to the other intersections of oppression, classism and racism affect the gay community; racism and heterosexism affect people with disabilities; heterosexism and sexism affect people who are poor or working class; heterosexism and classism affect people of Color. Rather than rejecting the possibility that we can have any privilege if we experience oppression somewhere in our lives, the more constructive approach is to work to unravel these intersections to see how we may be upholding someone else’s oppression.

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Source: Sensoy, Ozlem, and Robin DiAngelo. Is Everyone Really Equal?: An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education, first edition. Teacher’s College Press: New York, 2012, p. 58.

The definition of privilege that we use in critical social justice education may be different from how our readers use the word. … [T]he lay usage of “privilege” means to be lucky, to have fortunate opportunity and to benefit from this luck and opportunity. These definitions suggest that privilege is a positive outcome of happenstance. However, when academics use the term in describing how society works, they refer to the rights, advantages, and protections enjoyed by some at the expense of and beyond the rights, advantages, and protections available to others. In this context, privilege is not the product of fortune, luck, or happenstance, but the product of structural advantages. One automatically receives privilege by being a member of a dominant group (e.g., men, Whites, heterosexuals, the able-bodied, Christians, upper classes). Because dominant groups occupy the positions of power, their member receive social and institutional advantages.

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Source: Sensoy, Ozlem, and Robin DiAngelo. Is Everyone Really Equal?: An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education, first edition. Teacher’s College Press: New York, 2012, pp. 58–59.

Privilege is socially constructed to benefit members of the dominant group. Further, structures of privilege are not just artifacts of a racist, sexist, or classist past; privilege is an ongoing dynamic that is continually reproduced, negotiated, and enacted.

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Source: McIntosh, Peggy. “White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women’s studies.” Working Paper 189. Center for Research on Women, Wellesley College, 1988.

I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank checks. Since I have had trouble facing white privilege, and describing its results in my life, I saw parallels here with men’s reluctance to acknowledge male privilege. Only rarely will a man go beyond acknowledging that women are disadvantaged to acknowledging that men have unearned advantage, or that unearned privilege has not been good for men’s development as human beings, or for society’s development, or that privilege systems might ever be challenged and changed.

1. I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time. 2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me. 3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live. 4. I can be reasonably sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me. 5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, fairly well assured that I will not be followed or harassed by store detectives. 6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely and positively represented. 7. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is. 8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race. 9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege. 10. I can be fairly sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race. 11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another woman’s voice in a group in which she is the only member of her race. 12. I can go into a book shop and count on finding the writing of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods that fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can deal with my hair. 13. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance that I am financially reliable. 14. I could arrange to protect our young children most of the time from people who might not like them. 15. I did not have to educate our children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection. 16. I can be pretty sure that my children’s teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others’ attitudes toward their race. 17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color. 18. 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. 19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial. 20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race. 21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group. 22. I can remain oblivious to the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion. 23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider. 24. I can be reasonably sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race. 25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race. 26. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazines featuring people of my race. 27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out of place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared. 28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine. 29. I can be fairly sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me. 30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn’t a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have. 31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices. 32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races. 33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing, or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race. 34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or selfseeking. 35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race. 36. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones. 37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally. 38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative, or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do. 39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race. 40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen. 41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me. 42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race. 43. If I have low credibility as a leader, I can be sure that my race is not the problem. 44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions that give attention only to people of my race. 45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race. 46. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin.

Through Women’s Studies work I have met very few men who are truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance and if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. We need more down-to-earth writing by people about these taboo subjects. We need more understanding of the ways in which white “privilege” damages white people, for these are not the same ways in which it damages the victimized. Skewed white psyches are an inseparable part of the picture, though I do not want to confuse the kinds of damage done to the holders of special assets and to those who suffer the deficits. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that racism doesn’t affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see “whiteness” as a racial identity. Many men likewise think that Women’s Studies does not bear on their own existences because they are not female; they do not see themselves as having gendered identities: Insisting on the universal “effects” of “privilege” systems, then, becomes one of our chief tasks, and being more explicit about the particular effects in particular contexts is another. Men need to join us in this work.

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Revision date: 3/30/20

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