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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