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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