I want you to think carefully about this. Think about the life you had growing up. Think about what kind of life you're living now. Are you thinking about it? About how the way you grew up affects the life you live now and how the life you live now will affect the life you're going to have in the future. I want you to really think about how privileged you really are.
Look at where you are right now? Are you hanging out with your friends? Are you out shopping with your mom or watching sports with your dad? Are you getting coffee with your coworkers? What are you doing? Just take a second to stop and look around at the life you're living. Appreciate the life you live because many others will not get the opportunities that you have gotten.
I am sick of hearing about "White Privilege" because in real life, almost everyone is privileged in one way or another. Privilege comes from many aspects of your life. Citizenship, class, sexual orientation, ability, sex, religion, level of education. All these things add up to how privileged you are.
Just by reading this, you are privileged. Not because you're reading this article but because you are able to read and write. You are literate. I bet you didn't know that illiteracy affects over 785 million adults (1 in 5 people) across the world and that two-thirds of the illiterate population are woman, according to SpeakingBooks.com. By just being literate means that you are privileged.
If you are in college then you are privileged. Not everyone can go to college because they either cannot afford it or they do not get the option to attend college. The Huffington Post says that only 6.7% of the world population has a college degree. Which means that 93.3% of the world population either has a basic education or no education at all. So if you go to college and get a degree than you are privileged.
If you have a form of income, whether it is to help pay for college or a career after you graduate, then you are privileged. According to DataBlog, out of the entire world population, only 3 billion people have a form of income. This leaves about 205 million people without any income.
If you have clean running water then you better believe that you are privileged. About 783 million people do not have any access to clean water and about 2.5 billion people do not have a form of clean sanitation. If you have clean running water then you are far better off in life then most.
I will admit that some people have an easier life than most but people are using privilege as an excuse and that's where I am drawing the line. Your life will only be as "privileged" as you make it. Get an education, get a job, defy stereotypes and defy privilege.
I know I am privileged in life. I am privileged by the color of my skin. I am privileged because I come from the middle class. I am privileged because of the way my parents raised me. But at the end of the day, I don't care how privileged I am because I know that there will always be someone more privileged than me.
I am privileged because I am going to college but because I am going into a male dominant career, I know that more likely than not, a man will make more than I will. It won't matter if I get my bacholars, masters, and doctorate. A man will perhaps make more than I will even though he will have only gotten his masters. While this upsets me, it is just the way it is (at least for now). I am privileged because I am white. That's a fact and it's not fair. No one should be privileged based on the color of their skin because this is not something that can be controlled. We are born this way but yet it is a privilege.
But I am also not privileged. I decided to push myself to go to college. I don't care that it's going to take me 8 to 10 years to finish school and I don't care how much I am going to be in debt (okay, lies--I do care about how much I am going to be in debt but in the end its going to be worth it and I know I am going to pay it off). And I honestly don't care that people don't think I can do it. I am not privileged because of the choices I've made. We all have choices in our life that can make our lives better. We get to decide if we want to go to college, we get to decide what career we want. We get the choice to push ourselves to do bigger and better things.
So I don't want to hear anymore about "being privileged" because in reality, we are all privileged in one way or another, the difference is how we chose to use our privileges to our advantage. So if you are literate, if you are going to college, if you have clean running water, and if you have a form of income then congratulations. You're privileged and yet, you've taken all these things for granted. Just remember that your life could be worse. So take a moment to appreciate all you have. Now go out and make your life "privileged" because the only way you're going to live a "privileged" life is if you make it that way. Like I said before, go to school, get a job, and defy privilege. You can do anything you want to do but only if you set your mind to it because in the end, aren't we all privileged? All you have to do is take the opportunities that life has given you.
