There are few words that convey a far complex idea (due to historical and societal contexts) while the meaning of the word itself is easy to understand . Privilege and oppression are two of such words. In a general sense, privilege is the ability to enjoy something that other people may not enjoy. For example, beaches are a privilege people in mountainous regions don’t enjoy. Oppression is a prolonged state of being treated unjustly. One may feel oppressed by their job that overworks them. Sounds simple enough. However, privilege and oppression hold a much greater value. They are one of the key concepts that makes us understand the status quo, in terms of race, gender, sexuality, class and other socio-economic factors.

Marilyn Frye’s Oppression and Peggy McIntosh’s White Privilege both share light on how most privileged people are either unaware or don’t acknowledge their privilege. They accept that certain groups are disadvantaged but at the same time cannot grasp that it means their group is advantaged. This has a lot to do with the misconception about the term. People assume that when they’re labeled privileged, it implies that they don’t face obstacles in their lives or every thing is always easy for them. In reality, it simply means that the problems they face have nothing to do with the group they belong to. It’s a personal issue rather than a societal problem. Men telling womxn they too feel unsafe walking at night for the fear of being robbed do not seem to grasp that womxn fear that, as well as being catcalled, sexually harassed or followed home (which isn’t a fear for most men).

In the same way, oppression is also something the group in power have a hard time comprehending. They fail to understand that oppression isn’t just a minor nuisance we as humans face, irrespective of our diverse background. Oppression is a systematic barrier of discrimination, subjugation (both apparent and subtle) enforced upon a specific group to make it difficult for them to step up in society. The group in power hordes all power to maintain a sort of superiority over other groups. White people that complain that cultural appropriation doesn’t exist, or that they should be allowed to wear ethnic hairstyles justify their reasoning with “but people of color also wear suits, adapt “white culture”.” What they don’t recognize is that most of these ethnic people were forced to assimilate, forced to give up parts of their culture in order to appease white people, to make them feel safe and comfortable. A white person being told they can’t wear indigenous headdress isn’t oppression, but a Muslim woman being asked to remove her hijab is.

Having privilege isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially since it’s not something in your control. It is how you utilize your privilege that makes all the difference. You can either remain indifferent to the injustice of groups you don’t belong to, or you can choose to work towards bridging the gap between these groups. Hell, as a cis-gendered bisexual woman and a “model minority” I have certain privileges other LGBTQI+ and POCs don’t have. The basic assumption is I’m smart, hard-working and docile. Basically, I’m not considered a threat to the current power structure and hence not treated in a terribly bad manner. On the other hand, as a woman and a first gen immigrant, I am not granted the same opportunities as men or white Americans are. I do not have the bodily autonomy or sexual freedom men do. Similarly, my accent is seen as a sign of incompetency, nevermind the fact that I’m fluent in 3 languages and fair in 2 more. One can be privileged in certain regards and oppressed in others. This is true for most people, except maybe heterosexual, cis, white men. Privilege and oppression are hard to understand, except they’re actually not. You just have to be willing to learn about them.

My parents immigrated from Mexico in the late 80s soon after getting married and began a new life in the NYC borough of Brooklyn. Although the neighborhood in which they landed was not as highly recognized as it soon became, they always expressed that they felt they fit in with the other Hispanic families that resided there. Within the first year of moving to the US, my parents opened their business, which is the first Mexican bakery in Brooklyn. It slowly but surely became successful.  As time moved on, so did specific groups of people in the area, and it was clear to see that many white families were starting to move in. I feel that being able to have grown up in Park Slope was a privilege, yet one I had no control over. Although Park Slope was not always this way, it is now known to have some of the most lavish brownstones in Brooklyn, great elementary and middle schools, restaurants on every corner, parks for your little ones to run and play, etc. Due to my parents’ hard work, I was able to attend private schools growing up, with friends whose parents were part of huge companies, including me on their vacation trips, and was fortunate enough to travel the world growing up. Yet still, it was very clear to see how I stood out as the only Mexican girl in my all-white school. I am privileged in a way where I was given opportunities that others have not been given. I experience religious privilege because I can easily find a place of worship. I also have heterosexual privilege where, unlike many others, I do not have to feel the anxiety of coming out or being treated poorly due to my sexual orientation.

 Being a Mexican-American woman in the United States is oppressive in many ways. Not long ago, my family, and I experienced discrimination by being told to “go back to our country” when simply speaking Spanish at a bagel store we have been going to for over 15 years. Like many women of color, I have also experienced a difference in pay, compared to the other women at work, for doing the same job. Being able to physically see how one can move ahead, or backward, in life, due to their sexual orientation or race, was very emotional for me to watch. After watching the video and doing the readings I understand that to be oppressed means to be restrained or restricted to do something or be someone due to things I can’t control, such as being a Hispanic woman. To be privileged means having the ability to do something or have something due to my gender, or another example, ethnicity, that others cannot have or do because they are at a disadvantage.

I think I experience some privilege because of course, I do not need to walk miles to go and get water just as the women said in the video. We have a safe space to sleep in whereas others don’t. We also take for granted that some of us wake up everyday with no worries of food or shelter. Many people do not have that blessing. There are a lot of jobs available here with good enough pay that not everyone experiences. We have health care which makes sures we get what we need. I don’t have to worry about the rent going unpaid.When it comes to privilege you need to know this means religion, racial, gender, sexual orientation, wealth, social class and many other things. White privilege sets people way ahead of life just because of their skin orientation. They can get into any job, school etc plus be able to get out of many things without consequences. Gay people have some privileges now such as same sex marriage which they did not have before. Social class varies when it comes to privilege and oppression because me being low class I never really had the opportunity to do as much as others like i.e see the world whereas, upper class could do a lot more and has a wide range of opportunities.  The Way I experience oppression is with mental health issues because of things such as anxiety where I can not do anything without getting really anxious and hiding. I also have bipolar type 1 where it makes it really hard for me to maintain any kind of relationship including friendships. Also, it makes it harder for me to be in a workspace as well. It kinda just stops everything in my life. Another way I experience oppression is when I’m a female and an example of what I mean is both genders could get paid for doing the same job but only the female will get paid less. The video mainly helped me define privilege more as something which holds you back from some life experience compared to others experiences. I used to believe it was just something I could not understand. Before watching the video I only related privilege and oppression to white people or black people. I always assumed it was more of a racial thing than gender or even social class as I mentioned. 

In my 20 years of living I haven’t experienced much of being privileged. I lived my first 5 years of life living in poverty in the Dominican Republic with my mom. We lived in a small little room, we had to share the bathroom with our neighbors. The shower outside in the yard we also had to share it. It’s very hard for women to get jobs in the Dominican Republic. Coming to the untied states gave me more opportunities to become successful. I can agree with white privilege. The word Privilege means to me Someone who has an advantage or opportunity that most that most people don’t have. I started experiencing privilege when I was in New York in school I was given free lunch, I didn’t have to pay for books. I was able to experience a lot of things here for example finding a job at my job was pretty easy. There’s opportunities to get into very good colleges based on your grades and not your money.Privilege describes the advantages that people belong to because they belong to a specific social group or have certain dimensions of their identity. You may have privileges because of your race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, wealth, and social class, among many other characteristics. Being able to travel the world, go out to eat, do activities you weren’t able to do before is a privilege. I didn’t know what the word oppression meant until I read about it. Oppression is the malicious or unequal treatment or exercise of power, often under the guise of governmental authority or cultural stigma. Oppression is seen in seen in school, racial profiling and overly harsh school discipline policies disproportionately impact students of color and fuel the pipeline from school to prison. Educational differences hinder access to high quality learning environments for many students of color. Watching the video and doing the readings helped me define the concepts of privilege and oppression, oppression is the exercise of authority of power in a cruel, burdensom, or unjust manner and privilege is unearned advantages people have by virtue of status or position. An example of privilege is the adviser to the president holds a privileged position of trust. He had privileged access to the files. Only a select few can join the club. An example of oppression is the oppression of minorities in our country is terrible. The root of oppression and tyranny is often a corrupt and power-hungry ruler. Neither oppression on the one hand, nor servility on the other hand explained this abandonment of their traditions.

I experience privilege in many ways. In ways that I sit back and think why are we this privileged? For example, how the woman said in the video, we can open the faucet and get water while there’s others that have to walk miles for it. We have a bed to sleep and some don’t. We have shoes/sneakers to put on to go outside and some go out barefoot because they don’t have anything to put on. I don’t think it’s fair and I always think about things I can do to help those in need. I also feel like we are privileged to open our eyes everyday, some call it blessed but it’s the truth. Growing up my parents worked night and day to keep the lights on, keep our home a home, keep food in the fridge, have clothes on our back. They gave my siblings and I a life they weren’t as privileged to have. I was the only one from my siblings to be born in New York. I had to see them struggle to turn into citizens. Now that I am older, working and going to school. I am trying to support my son and my mom at the same time. I see how much she used to struggled and I want to take care of her now. My sisters also depend on me sometimes. Its hard but at the end of the day I don’t want them to struggle either. I’ve had the privilege to work on Wall Street, across the street from the New York Stock Exchange and during lunch or even on my way to work, in the train, I would get looked at weird when coming out on Wall Street. People giving me looks pretty much saying how is she here? How can she afford what she has on? During lunch I will go downstairs and walk and it will be the same thing. I never fully understood the word oppression. I’m still misty about it but something that I can compare to is sexual oppression. “If one dresses one way, one is subject to the assumption that one is advertising one’s sexual availability” and I didn’t think about it as deep as this before. At the age of 11, my body was fully formed, my boobs were really big, I always looked older than I was. I would walk down the street and all the drug dealers will try to talk to me, always looking at my boobs or butt, and my lips because they are big. It always made me feel so uncomfortable. But than growing up at the age of maybe 18-23 I used to dress up to go out to the club with tight clothes but it was for me, NO ONE ELSE because I look good and guys will definitely confuse it with I want to sleep with them. Point is that now that I’m older, I realized that outside of work because I do work nightlife, I don’t dress like that but its because I don’t want the attention. These readings and video definitely helped me open my eyes on what privileged and oppression mean. I understand a lot more now.

I really never consider myself privileged for many reasons. Growing up I lived with my mom in a country where I was not legal. Meaning I have no citizenship or in other words undocumented. By telling you (the class) this you can only imagine the unprivileged life I have experienced. Coming to America opened doors for me, doors I didn’t know were possible. I can honestly agree with white privilege. Privileged to me is being able to work a job without getting paid “ under the books”. Having a proper healthcare support system in case of any medical need. Not worrying about whether or not rent is going to be late this month. Going on family vacations, getting to go to college for a small cost, or having some type of credit score is all a privilege to me because a few years ago I was limited from all the simple things. Privilege to me is as simple as what any human being should have the opportunity of doing. I recently found out what oppression means about a week ago. Through a television show that frequently spoke about black oppression. Nevertheless, I don’t recall experiencing oppression while racist oppression anyway. However, sexist oppression happens to me quite often.  I would be stared at by older men who would try to talk to me. Constantly cat calling me on my way to school or work. I ignored them but it still makes me feel unsafe outside. When I was at work the supervisor only use to let the guys at the job do all the heavy lifting, taking out the garbage and breaking down the boxes. They were saying women can’t do those things because it’s a man’s job. Even though it is not something a person would want to do because it’s kind of gross taking out the garbage. However, why must women be  limited  from doing hard or heavy duty? We should all be treated the same regardless of if you are a man or woman. Reading Peggy Mclntoch’s article was very enlightening to say the least. I realize privilege is an invisible cloak that white people don’t know is there. They are not aware of the rights they have. Ms Mcintosh states, “ I can be pretty sure that if I asked to talk to you “ the person in charge,” I will be facing a person of race.” Privilege is being able to see your people of race in charge. To my understanding, having or being able to do something that others are not able to do is a privilege. The video was very sad to watch because privilege to one is another person’s disadvantage. Privilege is based on your family, their income, culture, race, etc . I noticed the black woman and young man were in the black. Majority of the people in the front were white. I believe white people do have more opportunities than blak people. Simply because I think white people come from a good home and they inherit more than black people do.  

I experience privilege for the things I experience on a daily basis. Being able to afford food and housing is an example. After watching the video, I realized i’m more privileged than I thought. You don’t realize how lucky you are to be in a situation until it is compared with someone else’s. I sometimes learn to appreciate my privilege when thinking about the conditions people are in across the globe. Being In a major city full of opportunities is where many people dream to be. The video gave me a better understanding on what privilege means because it visually shows how it benefits people. You can be setback in life while others may have a head start because of their family, living condition, finances, etc.. This relates to white privilege, where white people have a head start in life automatically because of their skin tone.In Mcintosh reading, she admits that from a white person’s perspective, it is easy for them to forget how they are privileged. It wasn’t until she wrote down reasons why she is different from minorities that she understood why her privilege exists. After reading her reasons, it also made me aware of ways I’m oppressed. When I have children, my oppression can be passed down to them because of skin color, which is why I want to give them as much privilege as I can.  I’m oppressed in many ways also. Being a women and a minority means society views me differently than a white person. For example, shopping in luxury clothing shops means being followed around sometimes, even if you’re not doing anything wrong. Being turned down jobs that are predominantly white even though you’re qualified. I don’t come from a rich family, so i don’t have the luxury of not knowing what struggle means. In the reading “Oppression”, by Marilyn Fyre, It touches on how being a woman ties in with oppression. We are put in a bind, what she compares to a bird in a cage. No matter what we choose to do or think, we are oppressed for it. “But unlike the case of mens emotional restraint, women’s physical restraint is not rewarded. What do we get for it? Respect and esteem and acceptance? No. They mock us and parody our mincing steps.” (pg.16). Fyre differentiates how men are treated versus women, emphasizing why oppression against women is a way tougher experience.