As someone who tries to keep their political and personal opinions private for the most part, this is a hard article for me to write, but I also think it's one that I need to write. Up until several months ago, if someone would have asked me what I thought about privilege in society, I honestly would not have known what to say.

This article is in response to a quiz on Buzzfeed entitled “How Privileged Are You?”, and the ways I have seen and come to better understand the grave reality of privilege and the role it plays in society.

This semester, I'm taking a class that focuses on culture and the ways we interact with one another. A few weeks ago, my professor had us do a similar activity as the one on Buzzfeed, but in class, we used slips of paper and plastic beads. On the papers were statements such as “I have never wondered where the next meal was coming from”, "I have never been treated differently at a restaurant because of my race" or "I have never been passed over for an opportunity because of my race/gender”.

If the statement on the paper would be true for you, then you would take a bead. At the end of the activity, we all sat in uncomfortable silence looking around the room at the number of beads that everyone did, or didn't, have.

We all know that talking about privilege and other issues tends to make people uncomfortable. This makes a lot of us easily tempted to push these topics to the side and ignore them in all respects, especially living in a world where one comment on a social media post can spark a wildfire of hate-filled political posts.

My intention is definitely not to start a third world war in my Facebook comments. That wasn't my professor's intention either; I really think he just wanted us to take a moment and think. And I did. I thought about all of the times I've walked through airport security and not even had to take my shoes off. I thought about the times I've been pulled over, only to have the cop look at me and say, "Just get it fixed next week."

I thought about all of the times I've thought differently of a person simply because of their appearance or the color of their skin. Sometimes privilege is concrete. According to the New York Times, even today what is known as the black middle class only makes two-thirds what the white middle class does. Far too many colleges, workplaces, and governing bodies are primarily made up of people from similar socioeconomic backgrounds.

But privilege is also the fact that according to CNN, a person with a white-sounding name applying for a job is 50% more likely to get an interview than an equally qualified person with a black-sounding name.

Privilege is everywhere and it is affecting every single one of us, whether we like to admit it or not. I know this because it's now something I catch myself constantly realizing on my college campus, in neighborhoods, in the bus, in the mall, and even just driving down the street.

So if privilege is alive and well, how do we resolve it? Honestly, I have no idea. The realities of privilege sadden and infuriate me.

I’m not naïve. I know that real differences separate huge people groups, and I don’t want to in any way undermine the real issues so many people face every day. But what worries me is the large part of privilege that exists solely I also think that a significant part of the problem is the vast majority of people out there who don’t recognize both the concrete and abstract signs of privilege.

That is what makes things like the activity in my college class or an online quiz so much more important and vital than we realize. I mean, it’s small steps like those that are the reason I’m here right now writing this article to you. We cannot start to solve a problem until we address it. So that’s what I think the purpose of the Buzzfeed quiz is, and what my goal for whoever is reading it is.

I want to get you thinking. I want you to take just a moment, and step outside of yourself and your experiences. Because we cannot start to move to solve a problem until we realize it’s there. I’m still as new at this as many of you are, I’m still unsure and questioning and even sometimes doubting what impact any one of us can have, and I think all of that is okay because it gets the ball rolling. It gets people talking.

And sometimes, I think that’s all you really need.