Privilege isn't necessarily bad; it's the lack of access and opportunity that is afforded by privilege that is a problem.
Consider the thread the other day regarding the privilege of beauty: it's not bad to be beautiful, and it's not bad to find beauty aesthetically pleasing, but it becomes a problem when individuals are denied access and opportunities because they lack beauty but where beauty should not be a factor.
I think the issuenis two fold for priveledge - one is that connotationally it sounds like an attack and has occassions of being used as a cudgel. The very name has an implicit "undeserved" applied to it and guilt. Even without any selfish evangalists the terms are pretty needlessly confrontational when they need to be winning others over.
Pointing out "we don't experience it that way" is a very good instance of the concept of privledge. It is good communication period given that they would lack your baseline that the "nice polite old lady" down the street screams racial slurs at them whenever they pass by. Lacking evidence they would have little reason to think that.
But dismissing a point of view entirely because the source is privileged? Bad. Heck even if the view was laughably naive and wrong like "children work in sweatshops instead of going to school afford candy ans junk food since that was what I did when farm working as a kid" is good to know where their points of view actually came from.
When it comes to privledge sometimes they may really know more and not simply have social status denied to others. Someone with an upper middle class upbringing may result in being ignorant at what bread, milk, and eggs are supposed to cost but know that credit card debt should be avoided whenever possible and how to diversify investments and maintain properly liquid buffers for emergencies. Someone from a poorer upbringing obviously wouldn't have the investing skill set due to lacking the prerequisites let alone the education and experience.
It isn't fair but it is real and knowing that is the first step to fixing it. Pretending sensible investing is just a bigotted social construct of priveledge doesn't help while promoting financial education does.
> Privilege isn't necessarily bad; it's the lack of access and opportunity that is afforded by privilege that is a problem.
I think that this is something that people who bear privilege (like me, a currently economically comfortable white man) don't realise. I have this privilege; I'm not a bad person for having it, and someone who tells me that I have it isn't accusing me, only reminding me. I can still be a good and empathetic person, and I try to be. It's just important to realise that what I perceive as empathy, by imagining myself in someone else's shoes and proceeding from that premise, cannot fully succeed, since my privilege means that there are shoes that I will never fully understand what it's like to occupy. I should thus pause before thinking I understand such a situation—that's what "check your privilege" means—and make sure that I listen to someone who knows more, from experience or science, in preference to my genuine, well intentioned, but in this respect uninformed feelings.
The access/opportunity/etc are what is being referred to as privilege, not the quality granting it. In a world where being beautiful doesn't come with advantages, there is no "privilege of beauty", just beauty
But the problem with that is the people with the privilege are blind to what the problems are.
It took a simple conversation with someone of color for me to even begin to understand this. The conversation was something like:
"The 15th time the guy behind the deli counter calls over your head to the person behind you in line instead of you really understand that you are not only different, but invisible to people because of your difference."
Sure, we've all had something happen a few times. But this is an everyday occurrence to people who aren't a part of the dominant group.
To me, a WASP, I couldn't even fathom that ever happening. It's just not part of my lived experience. How could someone just skip over the next person in line? It doesn't make any sense.
But, that was, and is, my privilege blinding me to the daily plight of so many people.
So yes...we should work to "raise everyone up", but simply being the person with privilege blinds us to the problem entirely.
It’s only a “privilege”, by definition, if you have it and others don’t. So the main point about checking your privilege is recognizing the advantages your privileges confer and how to use those advantages to help those without.
Consider the thread the other day regarding the privilege of beauty: it's not bad to be beautiful, and it's not bad to find beauty aesthetically pleasing, but it becomes a problem when individuals are denied access and opportunities because they lack beauty but where beauty should not be a factor.