There is nothing more frustrating than trying to explain to a white, straight, middle-class, male why sexism/racism/homophobia/inequality is still an issue in this society. Privilege is a term used so frequently in the social justice world it has lost the intensity it once had. As a society, we forget how unjust it is that an entire selection of the population is granted a special advantage merely because of their social class or race. Trying to explain white privilege to a person who has never had to live a day without it is not an easy task because he probably is not even aware of the privilege he carries.
In America, we have a unique social phenomenon where white, straight, middle-class, males are neutral. Everything that takes a person away from that “norm” is a negating factor. The aforementioned person is treated as the average person in our society, and everyone who does not fit into those categories must accommodate or work harder to just get on a level playing field. It is difficult for the people in a place of privilege to see they are given this advantage because it is not necessarily the blatant advantage we expect to see. A man is not just given a job over a woman because he is a male. However, an interviewer is allowed to ask a woman if she plans on getting pregnant in the future, and deny her a job based on her likeliness to take a pregnancy leave. In this case, the man is seen as a neutral human and the woman is seen as having her gender being a defining feature of her being. The job was not denied to her because of her gender, instead, the job was not ever built for her to begin with. The society in which we live conforms to the “neutral human,” and she has to work to prove she is worth hiring despite not being one.
People can have different kinds of privilege, depending on how many negating factors take them away from the accepted societal norm. Since the aforementioned person is neutral, however, he is most likely unaware of his privilege in society. It is not as though he is just given jobs or admission to college or an easy life; he still has to work for these things. The idea of privilege in social justice is not suggesting privileged people are given handouts. Instead, it is implying that society is built for privileged individuals. They still have to work for the society, but they do not have to work to get into the society.
For example, take the above political cartoon by cartoonist Emanu. The male still has to run along the track, he is not given the first place prize without having to do any work at all. However, the woman has to work through many other obstacles to reach the same goal. The privileged person is so focused on the fact that he also has to work that he is oblivious to the difference in the amounts of work needed to be done in order to succeed.
Despite the common misconception, the problem of inequality cannot be fixed by tearing privileged people down. It is about instead raising everyone up to the same playing ground so that we can all be regarded as “neutral” people.
