Pre-Reading Week 4

What I think privilege means is a special advantage or right that a person is born into or acquires during their lifetime. It’s not also available to everyone in society.  Privilege isn't a right, it’s something you earn. Like we have the right to speak. No one can stop us from speaking. If speaking was a privilege then it would mean someone of a higher power has the authority to make us not speak. Since social status is conferred in many different ways everything from race to geography to class; all people are both privileged and non-privileged in certain aspects of their life. Furthermore, since dynamics of social status are highly dependent on situation, a person can benefit from privilege in one situation while not benefiting from it in another. It is also possible to have a situation in which a person simultaneously is the beneficiary of privilege while also being the recipient of discrimination in an area which they do not benefit from privilege. For example -- Male privilege is a set of privileges that are given to men as a class due to their institutional power in relation to women as a class. While every man experiences privilege differently due to his own individual position in the social hierarchy, every man, by virtue of being read as male by society, benefits from male privilege.

White Privilege - describe certain unintentional benefits given to people of Caucasian descent. It is distinct from racism, as the recipients and even practitioners may be unaware that they are in a race-based system of decisions. Experts are divided over the presence and prevalence of white privilege in modern society; some believe it is a serious problem.

Structural inequality-concept that when a social structure is built take for example a workplace, it is already defined with its own set of inequality. In a workplace you have something along the lines of this: Owners are 'higher class' than managers, managers are 'higher' than workers.

Advantage/Disadvantage- Advantage is someone that has more power and more control. Some that has advantage to the upper hand. Disadvantage is when you don’t have any say don’t have any control. You are limited to do stuff.

Racism is the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics. In opinion privilege can be linked to racism just because back in the day colored people didn’t have a lot of privileges like the whites did. In today’s society some people don’t have a lot of privileges because of their race. For an example- in the South there are some parts that blacks can’t go because they get mistreated or don’t have the same privilege as the whites do. I’m not saying colored people have less privilege but there are limited people don’t see it or just don’t want to see it but it’s true. I’ve played for a coach one year that only played white girls most of the time I’m not being racist but it happened. The only colored people on the team was me and another Hawaiian girl and a half black half Asian girl and we only saw at least 1 inning per game.

Yes, colored people can be racist also. It just not the whites are racist. Anyone can be racist even lil kids are racist noaway days. There are people in the world who only hang out, have friend(s), date, or marry a certain person just because of their color. I know, someone out there might say "I have friends all races, and I have dated all different kinds of people", but there will be that one person or group of people you might not click with just because of their skin tone. To me, I feel that is racist!The only thing I can see wrong with a racist person is hurting another individuals feelings. The fear people should have is when a racist person used their beliefs into racism. Some one not getting hired because of their skin color, a bank not offering a loan because of someone skin color, a kid not receiving the proper education because of his or her skin tone, a realtor not showing a certain home (location) because of a person’s color, a person being pulled over by the police because of their skin color, and so on. Regardless of race, I believe majority of people are racist. It does not mean every one of us is mean, nasty, or unhappy person. What it does mean that people have racist thoughts to certain situations.

 

 

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