I am an educator, the work I do I think about privilege. Accepting my own privilege hasn’t been easy. I have had many thoughts which help me to understand my own privilege in relation to the children I am working with and the world. My profession puts me in a position to assist children who are in need of resources, and facing educational, and environmental conditions different than my own.
Furthermore, when I am assigned a new student, I immediately hold a degree of authority over the student. Educators are the gatekeepers to resources that children need and are often unable to access without assistance. It does get complicated thinking about privilege is an ongoing exercise. It has become a part of my daily consciousness but is a difficult concept to grasp and one that I didn’t come by easily. Learning to challenge my position in the world and understand the power imbalance that I am a part of, does not mean that I immune to life’s hardships but having an unearned benefit or advantage one receives in society by nature of their identity.
My privilege also stems from being an African American lower middle-class upbringing, education, resources to food, access to health care and family support. This is not to ignore that my gender, femininity and introversion don’t at times put me at a disadvantage, but it doesn’t take away from many unearned benefits I was handed simply from being born with certain traits and resources. On the other hand, I found myself feeling alone and isolated, misunderstood and at times scrutinized. Engaging in behaviors that has turned into internalized oppression, spending money or getting my hair done that did not affirm me, using big words that at times I didn’t know the meaning of, working longer and harder than anyone else with precision. Watching the video and reading the articles helped me understand that privilege benefits people who belong to a specific social group or have certain dimensions to their identity while oppression is an abuse of power preventing a certain class of people opportunities and freedom.
I like your notion about internalized opression, since I also exprerinced it. Although my reasons for that may be completely different from yours, I often felt dissatisfaction with my appearance that sprouted from external pressures. This dissatisfaction conflicted with my strive to be as real as possible, but after time I learned to turn the pressures away as if they did not relate to me at all.
I can agree that accepting own privilege is hard, but i think that you are able to see it more upscale because of your profession and i think that is great. Same like Anna I really like your example of internalized oppression because It happen to me too because of what i see around me, and hearing whats around me I get discourage. I really like your definitions of privilege and oppression.
The articles can help us understand that privilege benefits people who belong to different specific social group or have certain dimensions to their identity while oppression is an abuse of power preventing a certain class of people opportunities and freedom.
Hello, I’tanisha
I yeah people in some cases have a hard time accepting their own privilege. The video and the reading that privilege does help us understand that it’s something we get for free. Helping us understand what privilege really is.