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?