Privilege

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Privilege, in its sociological or political sense, is an umbrella term denoting set of social norms within a given society, norms which directly or indirectly benefit a certain group or groups (usually the most politically powerful with a sort of downward gradient) at the expense or exclusion of others. In the United States, that would be a tall white Protestant cisgender heterosexual male of an upper-class background, who follows traditional social norms and does not suffer from any disabilities. The more "like" this someone is, the more "privileged" they are. (Again, this exists as a gradient for social norms; there will of course be exceptions.)

Privilege is a key concept within a sociological and social justice context. There it denotes the benefits and advantages held by one group relative to another, often arising through the oppression or stigmatization of minority groups. These benefits and advantages are not usually codified as legal rights and arise as secondary qualities to suppression. As such, they can be difficult to spot, and remain unseen or unrecognised. This privilege blindness sometimes leads those who ostensibly support equal rights to inadvertently marginalize the concerns of less-privileged groups.^{[citation needed]}

Worked examples[edit]

The concept of privilege can be applied to many different social justice areas, including class and wealth distribution, racism, or sexism. Privilege is essentially the immunity that some (usually majority, usually in-power) classes have against these forms of discrimination. As well as these "hidden advantages", there is also the case of how society is set up to treat majority vs minority classes in terms of their expectations, preconceptions, and stereotyping. It is best illustrated by a few examples of clear cases and subtle cases.

Walking home at night[edit]

The majority of rape cases are male-on-female, a statistical asymmetry that is well-quantified.^[1] The result is that a fear of rape, or a threat of rape, is a real thing for women far more than for men. Generally speaking, men have fewer reasons (both statistical and tangible) to fear a sexual assault. This is what is being referred to by "privilege" in this sense. Men have a particular privilege not to experience this fear, or in other words women have a particular under-privilege (or lack of privilege) to experience it.

Public displays of affection[edit]

Heterosexual imagery is used in the vast majority of advertising and media, reflecting the sexual tendencies of the vast majority of people. Heterosexual behaviour is on constant display, is rarely ever challenged, and is effectively "normalised". So, consider the cases where people say that they're all for LGBT equality (cf. "Not racist, but..."), but disapprove of it being displayed prominently and "rammed down their throats". This is a classic case of privilege and privilege-blindness, because ostensibly overt displays of affection from homosexuals are actually no more or less overt than those from heterosexuals. Boy-girl hand-holding is unlikely to even register for most people, while boy-boy or girl-girl combinations in the street — because of their relative rarity — are likely to produce a much stronger signal.

In short, those who ask homosexual couples to be less open and "in your face" about their gayness simply don't realise how open and "in your face" heterosexual couples are.

Racial profiling[edit]

The Arizona bill Arizona SB 1070 attracted significant controversy because it encouraged racial profiling of suspected illegal immigrants. This appeared to attract broad support from Americans, with 60% backing the idea of racial profiling. However, the majority of people voting were (and still are, presumably) white and therefore wouldn't have been the victims of racial profiling in the first place. Being put at a disadvantage for their skin color in their own country was never a foreseeable consequence for those people, and so they lacked any personal salience towards the issue.

This lack of salience is exactly what the "privilege" argument addresses. People make the assumption (often without realizing it) that because something is not an issue for them, it should not be an issue for others. This is clearly not going to be the case.

Car repair and other things that are seen as unfeminine[edit]

A common demonstration of privilege that most people will see is the occasional demonstration by TV news shows of what happens when women take cars into repair garages. Quite simply, dishonest mechanics are more likely to cheat women on repair costs than men.

Similarly, websites like Not Always Right^[2] show stories of women being taken less seriously than men by customers in places like video game shops.

Non-standard dialects[edit]

People who are native speakers of non-standard dialects such as African American Vernacular English or Cockney may be discriminated against as being somehow "inferior" or stupid because they supposedly speak "wrong" or "lower-class" English. Of course, non-standard dialects are not "incorrect" forms of the standard language, but simply different things with different rules (except, of course, those who add "r" to the end of words where it doesn't belong—that's just linguistic mayhem). Native speakers of non-standard dialects are inherently disadvantaged when it comes to learning the rules of the standard variety, but standard language speakers usually do not realize this. In almost all cases the standard is associated with the Metropolitan area dominating the country (e.g. Paris in France, or Buffalo in the US^{[note 1]}), the ruling class(es) (e.g. public school educated upper class twits in Britain) or both. Discrimination against non-standard dialects is thus a not-so-subtle form of classism and/or ethnic discrimination.

Non-majority first languages[edit]

Most countries have more than one language in them. Be it indigenous to the area (e.g. Navajo to part of the Southwest of the United States) or the result of immigration (e.g. Romani^{[note 2]} in big parts of Europe). However, most education systems have traditionally only accepted one language. Hence children whose parents only speak the language discriminated against have vastly different (i.e. worse) chances in school. If you are unable to see your native speaker privilege, imagine having to learn Quechua when you are six years old, being criticized for your accent while learning it (see the above point), and being unable to get anything from government and most businesses unless you do it in a language you are not as fully comfortable in as your mother tongue.

Privilege blindness[edit]

What is so difficult about privilege, and is highlighted in the racial profiling case above, is that it is a concept that is very counter-intuitive to privileged groups. Privilege is, by the social justice definition, the advantages people have that they don't often think about because they never have to experience the oppressive side. Understanding it requires an active effort to see things from the perspective of other, underprivileged people. This can lead to problems both small-scale and the large, from a man's chronic inability to get women to talk to him to the imbalance in performance in English, math and science between the sexes and sexism in hiring in the hard sciences, computer sciences and nursing.^[3][4][5][6]

Misconceptions[edit]

The principal misconception of privilege is that it applies exclusively on, or scales evenly and perfectly down to, an individual level, and so that the existence of individuals from a class considered privileged (e.g. white males) within a class considered underprivileged (e.g. working class poor) or the reverse scenario disproves the concept. This isn't the case at all. "Privilege" in the social justice sense applies only to classes of people, as far as it could be quantified it is only a statistical average. On average, those in an ethnic majority experience privilege, and on average those in minority groups experience oppression. For example, the fact that Barack Obama was the President of the United States doesn't outright disprove anything to do with white privilege or racism within the United States. Barack Obama's presidency does not alter the vast and ever-expanding statistical evidence for the existence of white privilege.

The second major misconception is that privilege is a quantifiable set of experiences that add up. It is instead a qualitative thing relating to experiences of a specific kind. For instance, the particular "male privilege" of not feeling sexual discrimination at work, or being pressured into raising children exclusively, isn't offset by economic or wealth class — it might apply with slight qualitative differences across class boundaries, but overall it is not a number that is then mitigated by other factors.

The third major misconception is that privilege is entirely one-way. The fact that there are a few "Female Privileges", such as not being forced to register for the draft or not being expected to pay for dates, or not being racially profiled as much, or getting shorter prison sentences, does not mean that gender privileges don't exist at all, nor does it mean that they are as valuable as their counterparts.

Furthermore, the misconception that intersectional factors can "cancel out" privilege of one sort or another ("I don't have white privilege because I'm poor" or "I don't have male privilege because I'm not white") disregards that life would probably be different if that privileged intersection were to go away or stop being rewarded by society. Not all privileged groups benefit equally, depending on different social intersections, but benefit still exists in some way over some other demographic that doesn't enjoy the same invisible allowances. Basically, there is no linear scale of privilege you can move up and down on; instead, there are different types of privilege.

Problems[edit]

The use of 'privilege' in this specialized sociological sense can create misunderstandings. 'Privilege' as an English word antedates this specialized meaning. Its established previous sense described a private prerequisite or prerogative, typically unearned, and by implication describes these perks as necessarily exclusive and possibly unfair.^[7] This established meaning no doubt influenced the choice of this word for its meaning in sociological jargon. Nevertheless, its use in this context invites misunderstanding and has been criticized within sociology itself for conflating spared injustices, unearned enrichment, and other advantages not directly related to injustice ^[8]. For example, to frame a lesser risk of being subject to police brutality in terms of 'privilege' suggests, at least to an audience unaccustomed to its specialized meaning, that what is being advocated for is the abolition of the unfair 'privilege' by making everyone subject to police brutality. This is probably not what was being suggested.

As noted above, in the sociological sense, 'privilege' applies only to people on average, and in the aggregate. It is not an individual or personal thing, nor a matter of keeping score. This means that the word can be counterproductive in debate, when used to focus on the personal characteristics of an opponent. Accusing an opponent of coming from a place of 'privilege' or being subject to 'privilege blindness' is rightly perceived as a personal attack. In this context, it acts as little more than an accusation that your opponent is unaware, clueless, or lacking empathy. Defending these attacks as merely invoking the sociological meaning, which as noted above does not necessarily carry to the individual level, is a form of equivocation. It inherently turns an argument personal, by focusing on the race, gender, background, and other personal characteristics of your opponent. This generally is a recipe for generating more heat than light.

Affluenza[edit]

Affluenza, also known as spoiled brat disease or greed, is a neologism describing an alleged disorder characterized by a harmful desire for money and the pursuit of wealth, which translates to psychological problems by inspiring a blend of overwork and overconsumption at the expense of other needs. This may be accompanied by a feeling of entitlement, low self-esteem, depression, irresponsibility, and/or an inability to delay gratification or tolerate rules that prevent gratification. It originated with the anti-consumerism movement, and is a portmanteau of affluence and influenza.

It can also be used to describe a state in which a person's financial privileges leave them unable to understand the consequences of their actions. In this sense, it basically reassures that privileged kids and their drunk moms^[9] won't get arrested, no matter the crime they commit.

This "condition" was not only once, but twice successfully used as a legal defense against a charge of vehicular manslaughter.^[10][11]

Couch's psychologist, Dick Miller, attempts to explain why a rich white male who committed a crime wasn't arrested in the United States,^[12] as if it needed an explanation.

However, Mother Nature is a bit of an equalizer when it comes to this sort of privilege. As they are often brought up in an environment where "consequences" for bad behavior are just a theory, rich kids may have less respect for the rules of society. This can result in rich kids engaging in riskier behavior that a middle-class kid would never dare to. Rich kids are more likely to abuse drugs than less affluent kids.^[13] Ultimately though, no matter how rich your parents are, your trust fund will never have enough money to bribe the Grim Reaper. Just look at America's most famous spoiled rich kids, the Kennedy clan, whether it's a drug overdose, playing football while skiing after being warned by the ski patrol to stop that, or flying a plane in unsafe conditions and refusing to get a flight plan with the FAA.

Further examples[edit]

Basic examples of privileges talked about in this sense include:

• The fact that in most cultures, sexual promiscuity is acceptable (and in some cases socially desirable) for men, but women doing the same are denigrated.
• The ability of men not to worry about rape in the same way that women have to.
• The ability of straight people not to worry about being attacked or insulted for their sexual orientation, and their ability to show romantic affection in public without raising many eyebrows.
• The ability of women and some ethnic groups to avoid racial profiling and sentencing disparity, often securing more lenient prison sentences.
• The ability of people "looking native" to get better rates and service in the tourist industry — sometimes this is even enforced as a law with different rates for citizens and non-citizens.
• The ability to use a gendered bathroom straightforwardly, when compared to the experiences of transgender or otherwise gender-nonconforming people.
• The ability to effectively manage the workload of day-to-day life, when compared to the experience of chronically ill people.
• The ability of the rich and powerful not to worry about the financial implications of an accident or unexpected illness, when compared to the poor — this is drastically exacerbated in jurisdictions with weak or non-existing social safety nets.
• The ability of certain light-skinned people of color, "straight-acting" gay/bisexual people, and the like to pass as part of the privileged classes even though they're not members of it.
• The fact that people will rarely question the illness of a person whose illness is openly visible, like a broken leg or cancer, and are looked down upon for doing so, but people will frequently question those with invisible illnesses, like fibromyalgia or mental illnesses. This can get to the point where people have been attacked for parking with their handicapped placard or plates that they got because of an invisible illness, and is another form of passing privilege.
• The ability of some transgender persons to be readily identified by others as the gender that they identify as. This is also called "passing privilege".
• The availability and affordability of education, including parental financial support.
• The coinciding of national holidays with Christian holidays such as Easter and Christmas, reducing the need for make-up exams and time off of work.
• The fact that for a man to be in public without a top is often socially acceptable, while it seldom is for a woman.^{[note 3]}
• The fact that when Christian churches are attacked, they are typically historically African-American churches.
• The fact that people of color, especially African-Americans, are derided and called terms like "unprofessional" for their natural hair or their cultural garb, but when white people wear them, they are often praised for doing so.
• The fact that PoC are more likely to be harassed by police whether or not they've committed a crime, and all this extra interaction with the police is the main reason why PoC are more likely to be killed by a police officer. Even adjusting for the extra harassment, in the US at least, African Americans are still around a quarter more likely than White people to be killed by police.

See also[edit]

• Affirmative action
• Discrimination
• First-world problems
• Kyriarchy
• Mansplaining
• Patriarchy
• Plutonomy
• Prejudice plus power
• Racism
• Reverse racism
• Rights
• Social justice

External links[edit]

• White Privilege Checklist
• Male Privilege Checklist
• Cis Privilege Checklist
• Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is, John Scalzi
• White Privilege Glasses - the video is down-voted by the usual suspects while posting fallacious and racist comments

Notes[edit]

References[edit]