RN

Sociological Perspective on Privelege

  • Social Location

    • Your social location is where you are situated in relation to others around you. 
    • It’s your gender, race, class, education level, religion, etc. and their relation to the rest of the people around you.
    • Your social location affects how those around you treat you, what they expect of you, and how they will interpret your actions.

  • Social Inequality 101

    • If there is inequality in society, then some people benefit while others suffer from the inequality.
    • If you believe that a social problem is real, then you either:
    • suffer from it
    • benefit from it
    • or are standing by being complicit

  • Privilege

    • “The result of our democratic inequality is that the production of privilege will continue to reproduce inequality while implying that ours is a just world.”

  • Just World Hypothesis

    • All actions have predictable and just consequences
    • Confirms our invulnerability
    • Helps us to differentiate ourselves from victims
    • Bad things don’t happen to good people
    • Found in the teachings of many religions
    • In our society we often “justify inequality by finding defects in the victims of inequality.” –William Ryan (1976)
    • “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” Malcolm X 
    • Who is doing the oppressing?

  • 3 Lessons of Privilege (Shamus Khan)

    • Hierarchies are natural and can be used to one’s advantage
    • Experiences matter more than innate or inherited qualities
    • The way to signal your elite status to others is through ease and openness in all social contexts.

  • Access v Equality

    • Do we have a post-race/post-gender/post-class society?
    • If we allow people of varied backgrounds admission to the world that was formerly controlled by the elite, does that make our world equal?

  • Equity v Equality

  • St. Paul’s School

    • What was the main attribute of ‘successful’ students?
    • How was success defined differently for 
    • female students
    • Non-white students
    • Less wealthy students

  • St. Paul’s v Modern day Colleges

    • What Khan describes is generally the same in terms of: 
    • Work load
    • Diversity
    • Routine
    • Hierarchy

  • Extraordinary Achievement

    • Most common notable trait of St. Paul’s graduates?
    • WEALTH
    • Claims of St. Paul’s?
    • Immense talent
    • Hard work
    • Thus, are these students more deserving of wealth?

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