Privilege: Having been born into a demographic that has an inherent advantage over another because of social standing, financial situation, or predetermined stereotypes.
We talk about privilege as if it is an evil thing, an advantage that the corrupt and greedy one-percenters hoard and abuse. And yes, used in the wrong way, privilege is a lazy way to exploit minorities and sail through our society with ease. But privilege isn’t necessarily inherently bad—it’s just a thing that some people have and others, unfortunately, do not. It is how people treat and use their privilege that determines the justness of it. Even if you are a white, heterosexual cis-male—for these demographics are often seen as the pinnacle of privilege—you can still use your advantages for good.
Think about privilege like this: Privilege isn’t just having an inherent advantage over other communities. It also gives you the ability to influence others of privilege in a positive way, in a way that members of the oppressed community cannot.
I’ll try to explain further. I may be a queer woman, but I am also white and cis-gendered, which gives me certain privileges over those of the trans and colored communities. But that doesn’t mean I can’t also be an ally to those minorities.
Say I am out with one of my friends who happens to be non-binary. We’re at a party and someone makes a comment about how being trans is not a valid identity. This a-hole probably has a predetermined idea of what all trans individuals are like. While they are most likely wrong in their assumptions, they may not be apt to listening to my friend explain what it truly means to be non-binary as the asshole would dismiss their opinion as biased and faulty.
However, coming from a cis person such as myself presents the truth in a different light. If a fellow cis person stands up for the trans community and agrees that, yes, non-binary identities are valid, then maybe the aforementioned a-hole at the party will be more likely to listen to a member of their own community as opposed to a member of the community they are abusing.
Allow me to be a nerd for a paragraph or two. There’s a beautiful moment in Les Miserables between Grantaire, the poor drunk skeptic, and the rest of the student revolutionaries that sums up my ideology on privilege perfectly. The metaphor works when you imagine the subject of the conversation—money—as privilege, which it is, in a way—financial privilege. “If I had been rich, there would be no more poor!” Grantaire laments to his more financially stable companions. He is of the opinion that the financially privileged do not take advantage of their money, they do not directly influence the poverty-stricken, and instead they try to appeal to the government to help. Had he the money, Grantaire would give it all to the poor so that he had no excessive wealth.
Think about this in terms of privilege—those with excessive advantages in life should use it to directly better the lives of the oppressed minorities. If you are a white, heterosexual cis-male (for these demographics are often seen as those with the most advantages in life) you can use your privilege to directly influence those who have it a bit harder than yourself by talking to your uninformed peers or being an ally to those in need.
Privilege is seen as taboo in our society, but it doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person. It just means you have an advantage. Use it, and affect those around you in a positive way.
