Requirements:
Respond to the two post below.
Must be 3 paragraphs each.
Response should be separated.
1.) One dimension of the paradox of privilege is that privilege is not earned. “There is virtually nothing about the concept of white privilege that pertains to individuals — their morals, their characters, their personalities, their feelings” (Hyman, 2020)Links to an external site.. Instead, privilege is a system, derived from socially constructed structures. “It’s about the structure, and the way the structure reproduces itself” (Hyman, 2020)Links to an external site.. The structure of oppression is reproduced and reified by society as a collective, not just by individual actions. We have seen this called out: “institutional actions that have negative impacts with racist or sexist implications, even if those actions were not necessarily intended to be ‘racist’ or ‘sexist’ in and of themselves” (Tannenbaum, 2013)Links to an external site.. So often systems of privilege are reified without meaning or intending to be oppressive.
Have you ever witnessed privilege or oppression being reified? What did it look like?
How can we – as individuals – change these systems of privilege and oppression? How can we harness our good intentions to DO good?
2.) We all have our own standpoint, but Standpoint theory posits that some are more objective than others. Starkey (2017Links to an external site.) asks “why do the white folks who deny white privilege think that way?” Standpoint theory would argue that their standpoint prevents them from seeing their own privilege, and Starkey’s own oppression as a Black man helps him more easily see it. In her op-ed, Brownlee shares five observations that she’s been able to make as a Black woman that her White colleague may be unaware of (Browlee, 2020)Links to an external site.. One time, when my husband pulled into a particularly poorly-lit spot in a parking garage, I instinctively screeched “what, are you trying to get us raped!” He had never been conscious of where he parked because of his male privilege. I had assumed that everyone who walks alone at night is afraid of being attacked. We became more aware of one another’s standpoints that night.
What is a privilege that you have observed BECAUSE you do not belong to the privileged group? How have you become aware of it?
