Privilege, Power, and Difference

    In the book Privilege, Power, and Difference by Allan Johnson, he wrote that “a great deal of trouble surrounds issues of difference in this society, trouble relating to gender and race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, social class” are among some of these issues. He goes on to say that, "all of these issues cause enormous amounts of injustice and unnecessary suffering.” He further explains how each and every one of us are connected one way or another in this nation wide problem and the purpose of his book is to provide us with a new way of thinking in regard to these issues which he hopes will then help us move away from our traditional views or some may argue, oblivion. In his text he focuses on gender, race, social class, and sexual orientation because these topics have the most impact on the greatest number of people and thus cause the most suffering and greatest harm. Among these topics, social class is slightly different from the others because of its ability to change whereas the other topics are more or less fixed at birth. A nice visual he shares in his book is the diversity wheel, and the interesting thing about the wheel is how it doesn’t actually tell much about who you are or your uniqueness, but it does say alot about how other people will perceive you. His point is, shifting just a few parts of the diversity wheel diversity wheel would change someone's life dramatically because these few characteristics carry more weight in our society than does our heart and soul. Well that is a tough one to swallow, and unfortunately we see this racial divide in everyday life. I feel that the color of our skin should hold little meaning on how others judge us, and it is sad that we are still making race such an important part of our existence.

     

    In the chapter “We’re In Trouble,” the author discusses the concept of privilege. He states, “privilege is always a problem for the people who don’t have it and for the people who do, because privilege is always in relation to others.” I found this quote eye opening because what he is saying is that in order to recognize what privileges you have, you must look at the privileges that are withheld from others and that to me seems to make a lot of sense and quite frankly I have never looked at it like that before and some things I have taken for granted I should be more thankful for. An example Johnson references from McIntosh’s writings are of the two types of privileges, unearned entitlements and conferred dominance. According to McInotsh, unearned entitlements are things like safety and belonging, which all people should be granted, but when these entitlements become restricted to certain groups then it becomes an unearned advantage. The examples Johnson gives of what privilege looks like in everyday life as it relates to race, gender, and sexualtity are quite eye opening. An example I found interesting is that 90 percent of those who use illegal drugs are white, but less than half of the people in prison on drug-use charges are white. It simply means that whites are less likely than blacks to be arrested or even less likely to be pulled over in the first place.

     

    The last talking point I want to leave you with is from the chapter Privilege as Paradox, Johnson states that white people will compare themselves to other white people since being white in this society is valued and therefore they will deny having these privileges, but when they find themselves ranked low in social class they may tend to compare themselves to people of color or to women so that they feel as though they still are superior to someone. 

 This author Allan Johnson argues that the main problem with society today is that there is a lot of unneeded suffering and injustice related to issues of difference and that we need to be more aware of how we are connected to this. Instead of individuals saying that they are not racist and therefore cannot be the cause of the issue, they need to instead say how can we help minority groups have the same entitlements as white people.

Gender Equality