RE: My privilege as a straight, white, cisgender, middle class thin male
January 13, 2015 at 9:12 pm
I think the idea that privileged people are always unaware of their privilege is wrong. The fact is "white guilt" is a well-known term in our society precisely because many of us honkies understand that we have it easier, and behave in a manner whereby we bend over backwards to demonstrate our good will. And if we don't do so, we will get called racist -- that's one of our little privileges, y'know? "He's white, he's racist" -- if I had a dime for the many times I've had that played out on me, I could go down to part-time and write my Great American Novel.
I also think that assuming a person is privileged based on their skin color is likely to get you in hot water, because you don't know what kind of upbringing they've had, don't know the difficulties they've had to cope with, and are assuming that they have benefited from the one thing you can easily see -- skin color -- while you cannot see all the myriad bad shit that can happen to a person no matter what color they are.
I also think that assuming a person is privileged based on their skin color is likely to get you in hot water, because you don't know what kind of upbringing they've had, don't know the difficulties they've had to cope with, and are assuming that they have benefited from the one thing you can easily see -- skin color -- while you cannot see all the myriad bad shit that can happen to a person no matter what color they are.
