Privilege is an idea that as young children, we learn can be given or taken away based on a set of circumstances — in this case, behaviour may be a variable, but as one gets older, the concept of privilege is based on one’s own personal circumstances. Whether this be one’s race, gender, class, income level, religion, ethnicity, level of education, physical ability, or geographic location, an individual is placed within the hierarchal social ladder based on ascribed status’s, and reasonings that may not always in the person’s ability to change. This is not to say that one cannot have social mobility, but it is relatively difficult to do so if there are many intersections between the social markers that place an individual at the lower end
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One type of privilege, being race, is discussed in the documentary ‘White People.’ The filmmaker, Jose Antonio Vargas attempts to answer the question of what it means to be white, from a white person’s perspective, and to start a conversation on white supremacy. Responses he received to his question was that being white meant that there was the idea that things belong to you, the perception was that white people ‘good,’ and did not have to deal with prejudices, stereotypes, being hassled by police, or with systematic oppression. White people never had to internalize what white people have done, because of the way history is taught in schools — which is that the victors were good, and all the horrible acts committed never happened. Another view was that white privilege is the other side of racism, meaning that there is a reverse discrimination or slanted view against white people. When discussing the feelings of being white, the view was that the skin colour one wears is not the individual's choice and that it allows an opportunity to represent something bigger than themselves. While this information is important to have when discussing race, these views are coming from points of privilege and power, and were not always connected back to the feelings that may be shared with minority groups who face multiple forms of discrimination everyday. An argument that relates to the point of this documentary is that: “white support for antiracism is often similarly flawed: riven with supremacist pretentious and an extension at times of the colonizer’s privilege to decide the true, the just, and the culturally valuable” (Alcoff, 1998,
One type of privilege, being race, is discussed in the documentary ‘White People.’ The filmmaker, Jose Antonio Vargas attempts to answer the question of what it means to be white, from a white person’s perspective, and to start a conversation on white supremacy. Responses he received to his question was that being white meant that there was the idea that things belong to you, the perception was that white people ‘good,’ and did not have to deal with prejudices, stereotypes, being hassled by police, or with systematic oppression. White people never had to internalize what white people have done, because of the way history is taught in schools — which is that the victors were good, and all the horrible acts committed never happened. Another view was that white privilege is the other side of racism, meaning that there is a reverse discrimination or slanted view against white people. When discussing the feelings of being white, the view was that the skin colour one wears is not the individual's choice and that it allows an opportunity to represent something bigger than themselves. While this information is important to have when discussing race, these views are coming from points of privilege and power, and were not always connected back to the feelings that may be shared with minority groups who face multiple forms of discrimination everyday. An argument that relates to the point of this documentary is that: “white support for antiracism is often similarly flawed: riven with supremacist pretentious and an extension at times of the colonizer’s privilege to decide the true, the just, and the culturally valuable” (Alcoff, 1998,