Privilege, Power & Difference Allan G. Johnson

1
Privilege, Power Difference Allan G. Johnson

• Chapters 1 - 3

2
Rodney Kings Question

• Cant we all just get along? No.
• Use of words like racism, white, and white racism
  cause people to feel put off, offended
• Our goal is to soften and shift the emotional
  weight of concepts like privilege, white
  racism
• Why arent we all getting along? Human nature
  doesnt cut it. (p2,3

3
Were in Trouble

• Imagine a school or a workplace where all kinds
  of people feel comfortable showing up. valued,
  accepted, supported, appreciated, respected
  belonging. Something very powerful keeps this
  from us.
• The truth of this powerful forces is everywhere,
  but we dont know how to talk about it and so we
  act as though it doesnt exist

4
The proverbial elephant

• Everyone pretends not to notice it
• but the elephant is a society and its people
  for whom a decent and productive social life that
  is true to the best of our essential humanity
  continues to be elusive

5
What is the trouble were in?

• The trouble were in privileges some groups at
  the expense of others.
• It creates a yawning divide in levels of income,
  wealth, dignity, safety, health and quality of
  life.
• It promotes fear, suspicion, discrimination,
  harassment, and violence. p9

6
Wethats in trouble is all of us

• Not just straight white middle and upper-class
  males
• It is not just a problem of being black, Chinese,
  Sioux or Mexican because there is no way to
  separate the problem of being, say, black from
  the problem of not being white.
• We cant separate this from being white

7
Privilege

• Is always at someone elses expense and always
  exacts a cost.
• Everything thats done to receive or maintain it,
  however passive and unconscious results in
  suffering and deprivation for someone.
• Our society attaches privilege to being white and
  male and heterosexual regards of your social
  class.

8
What is the most powerful barrier to change?

• The trouble were in cant be solved unless the
  privileged make the problem of privilege their
  problem and do something about it.
• The fact that its so easy for me and other
  people in dominant groups not to do this is the
  single most powerful barrier to change.
• Understanding how to bring dominant groups into
  the conversation is the challenge.

9
We cant talk about it if we cant use the words

• Privilege, racism, sexism, anti-Semitism,
  heterosexism, classism, dominance, subordination,
  oppression and patriarchy all the isms
• Naming something draws attention to it makes
  you more likely to notice it a something
  significant. P11/12

10
The bottom line

• A trouble we cant talk about is one we cant do
  anything about.
• We have to reclaim these lost and discredited
  words so that we can use them to name and make
  sense of the truth of whats going on.
• Reclaiming these words begins with seeing that
  they rarely mean what most people think they mean.

11
Reclaiming the words

• Racist isnt another word for bad white people
• Patriarchy isnt another nasty code of men
• Oppression and dominance name social realities
  that we can participate in without being
  oppressive or dominating people.
• Feminism isnt an ideology organized around being
  lesbian or hating men.

12
The Trouble Were InPrivilege, Power Difference

• Difference is not the problem
• The real illusion connected to difference is the
  popular assumption that people are naturally
  afraid of what they dont know or understand.
• It is inevitable that youll fear and distrust
  people who arent like you ..in spite of good
  intentions you cant get along with them.

13
A cultural myth

• That everyone is naturally frightened by
  difference (despite its popularity)
• This justifies keeping outsiders on the outside
• There is ample evidence that the unknown has
  always been an attraction i.e. scientists,
  philosophers, explorers, children, etc.
• Our real fear is what we think we do know, or
  ideas about what we dont know. p17

14
The Diversity Wheel

• The trouble around diversity, then, isnt just
  that people differ from one another. The trouble
  is produced by a world organized in ways that
  encourage people to use difference to include or
  exclude, reward or punish, credit or discredit,
  elevate or oppress, value or devalue, leave alone
  or harass.

15
The Social Construction of Difference

• Most of what we experience as real is a
  cultural creation.
• It is made up, even though we dont experience it
  that way.
• Consider the black woman in Africa who has not
  experienced white racism and does not identify
  herself as a black woman. African, a woman,
  but not black.

16
Socially Constructed Reality

• She only became black when she came to the U.S.
  where privilege is organized according to race,
  where she is assigned to a social category that
  bears that name and she is treated differently as
  a result.
• Baldwin Race and all its categories have no
  significance outside of systems of privilege and
  oppression, social construction of reality

17
What is Privilege?

• Privilege exists when one group has something of
  value that is denied to others simply because of
  the groups they belong to, rather than because of
  anything theyve done or failed to do. P23
• Privilege has become one of those loaded words we
  need to reclaim so that we can use it to name and
  illuminate the truth.

18
The luxury of obliviousness

• Awareness requires effort and commitment.
• Being able to command the attention of
  lower-status individuals without having to give
  it in return is a key aspect of privilege.
• Race privilege gives whites little reason to pay
  a lot of attention to African Americans or to how
  white privilege affects them. To be white in
  American means not having to think about it

19
Two Types of Privilege

• 1. Unearned entitlements things that all
  people should have like feeling safe in public,
  being accepted, valued for what they can
  contribute.
• When unearned entitlement is restricted to
  certain groups, however, it becomes a form of
  privilege McIntosh calls unearned advantage.
• p25

20
Two Types of Privilege

• 2. Conferred dominance goes a step further by
  giving one group power over another. i.e. men
  controlling conversations with women is grounded
  in the cultural assumption that men are supposed
  to dominate women.
• Reluctance to come to terms with more serious and
  entrenched forms of privilege is why most
  diversity programs produce limited results. p27

21
What Privilege Looks Like in Everyday Life

• Pg. 27
• Privilege grants the cultural authority to make
  judgments about others and to have those
  judgments stick. It allows people to define
  reality and have prevailing definitions of
  reality fit their experience.
• Privilege means being able to decide who gets
  taken seriously, receives attention, etc.

22
Privilege as Paradox

• Individuals arent what is actually privileged
• Privilege is defined in relation to a group or
  social category. In other words, race privilege
  is more about white people than it is about white
  people.
• Whiteness is privileged in this society and one
  has access to that privilege only when identified
  as belonging to that category.

23
The Paradox of Privilege

• Being privileged without feeling privileged
• Privilege is more about social categories than
  who people are.
• Privilege doesnt necessarily make you happy p 38

24
Oppression The Flip Side of Privilege

• Social forces tend to press upon people and
  hold them down, hem them in and block their
  pursuit of a good life.
• Belonging to a privileged category that has an
  oppressive relationship with another isnt the
  same as being an oppressive person who behaves in
  oppressive ways. P 41