Got privilege? No really, do you? Can you turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of your race widely represented? Can you walk around without feeling like an outsider or feel like you can easily speak your opinion without consequences? If you answered yes to either of those then you are privileged. But if you answered no to either of those questions then you are underprivileged, how can you change that? Don’t you want to have the same opportunities as everyone else? Everyone is supposed to have equal opportunity and equality…but that’s not the case.
How does the ignorance of privilege perpetuate inequality? Most people in society are unaware of societal privilege and how it is structured into their lives …show more content…
He provides an in-depth analysis about society, privilege and capitalism together as a whole and how it creates inequality. “The Allegory of the Cave” by Plato metaphorically showcases the ignorance of one society and how it affected them as a whole.
What is privilege? The chosen operational definition for this essay paints privilege as any special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or subset of people. Every society categorizes their people into a strata based upon their occupation and income, wealth, social status or derived power. This is called social stratification; because of the creation of these hierarchical social categories, we now have what’s called a social class. Certain identities confer privilege and power within US culture. The dominant identities here are white, male, heterosexual, non-disabled, gender-conforming, Christian, educated US citizens of high socio-economic status. Those who have these identities consequentially have power within systems which those who do not will not have. However, it is the system which confers that power, not each individual person. How can a system give some …show more content…
They all watch shadows and have never been outside, until one day one of the prisoners sees that the shadows are fake and caused by the fire inside of the cave. One day the prisoner is dragged out of the cave into the real world and is blinded by the light. Once the prisoners eyes have adjusted, he recognizes the world outside the cave and returns back to the cave to explain to the others what he has found. The other prisoners believe he is crazy, but he keeps trying to convince the others and eventually persuades a few to look beyond the cave. The metaphor vitrines Socrates idea that philosophical consideration and by opening your eyes to being skeptical of what is going on around you. His metaphor can be used to envelope the struggle of ignorance and how our society is blind to the traitorous amounts of inequality. “the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good.” (Plato, 390
How does the ignorance of privilege perpetuate inequality? Most people in society are unaware of societal privilege and how it is structured into their lives …show more content…
He provides an in-depth analysis about society, privilege and capitalism together as a whole and how it creates inequality. “The Allegory of the Cave” by Plato metaphorically showcases the ignorance of one society and how it affected them as a whole.
What is privilege? The chosen operational definition for this essay paints privilege as any special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or subset of people. Every society categorizes their people into a strata based upon their occupation and income, wealth, social status or derived power. This is called social stratification; because of the creation of these hierarchical social categories, we now have what’s called a social class. Certain identities confer privilege and power within US culture. The dominant identities here are white, male, heterosexual, non-disabled, gender-conforming, Christian, educated US citizens of high socio-economic status. Those who have these identities consequentially have power within systems which those who do not will not have. However, it is the system which confers that power, not each individual person. How can a system give some …show more content…
They all watch shadows and have never been outside, until one day one of the prisoners sees that the shadows are fake and caused by the fire inside of the cave. One day the prisoner is dragged out of the cave into the real world and is blinded by the light. Once the prisoners eyes have adjusted, he recognizes the world outside the cave and returns back to the cave to explain to the others what he has found. The other prisoners believe he is crazy, but he keeps trying to convince the others and eventually persuades a few to look beyond the cave. The metaphor vitrines Socrates idea that philosophical consideration and by opening your eyes to being skeptical of what is going on around you. His metaphor can be used to envelope the struggle of ignorance and how our society is blind to the traitorous amounts of inequality. “the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good.” (Plato, 390