- In what ways do you experience privilege?
- In what ways do you experience oppression?
- How does watching this video and doing the readings help you define the concepts of privilege and oppression and what are your current definitions (it’s OK to quote directly from the readings and/or use their definitions.
Just like how white people have privileges for the simple fact of having a white skin complexion, men have more privilege than women.Men don’t want to give up space so women can speak up, stand up, and most importantly have rights. Something that caught my attention in the article was a line that said, “denials protect male privileges from being fully acknowledge, lessened, or ended.” It keeps men in power at all times even if they’re wrong.
Could it be oppressiveness that cause this type of treatment towards those with money, power, and white.
We experience oppression by our own culture, education and government, feels like they all try to keep us in a box, prohibiting us from learning more than what were supposed to know. Oppression can be judging anyone by their background, skin color, race, gender and how they identify their self as.
I consider myself bisexual but in the eyes of my aunts, uncles, and grandparents, that’s seen as something from the devil or I’m just “hanging out with bad influences”. I felt less of a person because it seemed like I was a joke to my aunts when ever I would mention having bisexual friends. Seeing how my family would react, I decided to just keep it to myself instead of coming out. I knew that my mom was going to accept me because I had asked her once how she would feel if she had a bisexual daughter. I believe that a lot of people are scared to come out to their parents and friends about their gender because society and our own culture has made it seem like its such a bad thing. Our culture makes it look as if you were the black sheep of the family for being different but the truth is that our families judge because people back then were not open about genders. What ever seemed different was a threat instead of an opportunity.
In the article “white privilege: unpacking the invisible knapsack” the author expresses how they felt in multiple scenarios where to them, it felt like a privilege. They go in depth about how growing up they thought that racism was seen in act of meanness. It never crossed their mind that being white would give them an advantage.
There’s an existence of white privilege which is denied and protected. Its among us and a big amount don’t see it. How could we ever have equality when privilege among race is going around.
It always starts at home and in school , the author explains that in their school they were taught that as an individual their moral state depended on their moral will. A colleague from the author said that white people go about their day like everyone else an try to make it ideal to others so it can benefit them. However that’s seen as wanting to change others to be more like white people.
The ways that I experience privilege was actually recently when I went to California, at the airport in the section where you have to pass through the metal detector. Since I took my baby sister I had to take the big Uppababy vista stroller, its supper big. On my right there was a black lady with her stroller as well but was a simple one since her baby was about 3years old. I noticed that the officers took a while to give her stroller back, keep in mind the stroller had no pockets on it. I got my stroller right after I went through the machine. The same thing occurred when I came back to NY I had a bottle of water in my hand and I was allowed in, I was waiting to get my stuff and I realized a Muslim lady wasn’t allowed in with her water and she had just bought it.
I have realized I had privilege in a college, it was my first time in and I didn’t know where anything was located so I asked for the main office and was kindly assisted. I realized there was a Hispanic girl struggling to communicate with the security guard, she was using her phone to translate. The security guard raised their voice and that’s when I stepped in because it may not be my business but there’s is no reason for an individual to get annoyed by someone else who doesn’t have knowledge but still finds a way to communicate. Before you can ask, It was the girls first time as well and I was there before her. I can see where the security could get annoyed, I like seeing individuals’ point of view, I personally don’t have patience nor do I like repeating myself if I know I’m loud enough. However, if I know someone is struggling, I make exceptions and find various ways to help them out. The security guard was not racist towards me at that time, but I realized she was making the girl feel less for not knowing English.
It is true that people act a certain way because of the way they were taught by school or home. Oppression can contradict its self because the same way we say women are oppressed, men can be oppressed as well and even worse not know when they are doing it to others. A quote that sums it up from the article “Oppression” when the author said that there’s many limitations we live with and become self-monitored which then become part of our adaptation because that’s how the government desires it to be.