I, maybe more than most people, can completely understand why broke white folks get pissed when the
word "Privilege" is thrown around. As a child, I was constantly discriminated against because of my
poverty and those wounds still run very deep. But luckily my college education introduced me to a more
nuanced concept of Privilege; the term Intersectionality. The concept of Intersectionality recognizes that
people can be privileged in some ways and definitely not privileged in others. There are many different
types of privilege, not just skin color privilege, that impact the way people can move through the world or
are discriminated against. These are all things you are born into, not things you earned, that afford you
opportunities others may not have. For example:
Citizenship - Simply being born in this country affords you certain privileges non-citizens will
never access.
Class - Being born into a financially stable family can help guarantee your health, happiness,
safety, education, intelligence, and future opportunities.
Sexual Orientation - By being born straight, every state in this country affords you privileges that
non-straight folks have to fight the Supreme Court for.
Sex - By being born male, you can assume that you can walk through a parking garage without
worrying you'll be raped and that a defense attorney will then blame it on what you were wearing.
Ability - By being born able bodied, you probably don't have to plan your life around handicap
access, braille, or other special needs.
Gender - By being born cisgendered, you aren't worried that the restroom or locker room you use
will invoke public outrage.
As you can see, belonging to one or more category of Privilege, especially being a Straight White
Middle Class Able-Bodied Male, can be like winning a lottery you didn't even know you were
playing. But this is not to imply that any form of privilege is exactly the same as another or that
people lacking in one area of privilege understand what it's like to be lacking in other areas. Race
discrimination is not equal to Sex Discrimination and so forth.
And listen, recognizing Privilege doesn't mean suffering guilt or shame for your lot in life. Nobody's saying
that Straight White Middle Class Able-Bodied Males don't work hard for what they have. Recognizing
Privilege simply means being aware that some people have to work much harder just to experience the
things you take for granted (if they ever can experience them at all.)
I know now that I AM Privileged in many ways. I am Privileged as a natural born white citizen. I am
privileged as a cis-gendered woman. I am privileged as an able-bodied person. I am privileged that my
first language is also our national language, and that I was born with an intellect and ambition that pulled
me out of the poverty I was otherwise destined for. I was privileged to be able to marry my way "up" by
partnering with a Privileged middle-class educated male who fully expected me to earn a college degree.
There are a million ways I experience Privilege, and some that I certainly don't. But thankfully,
Intersectionality allows us to examine these varying dimensions and degrees of discrimination while
raising awareness of the results of multiple systems of oppression at work.