Privilege

Privilege theory is an approach to explaining and rectifying inequality and oppression. The main tenet of this theory is that those who are socially privileged are rarely explicitly self-conscious of the nature of their privilege or willing to examine their privilege because they see their state as natural and normal. This lack of self-consciousness and examination of privilege shifts the locus of inequality analysis to attributes and behaviors of those who are defined as disadvantaged in some way. In this formulation, those with privilege are much more likely to be aware of factors that place others in positions of disadvantage than they are to see exactly how they, themselves, experience and communicate advantage. Privilege, then, is a special advantage that its holders can possess without examination or self-consciousness of its contours. Even when critically examined, facets of privilege can be overlooked by the person situated in the privileged social position.

The move into action growing from this theory compels those who have knowledge of their privilege to use this knowledge to help dismantle inequality. In this way, privilege theory coordinates well with several other theories that stress criticality. For example, critical discourse analysis focuses on revealing how discourse patterns constitute social inequities, thus establishing the awareness that is necessary to work on alleviating those inequities. Critical race theory (an outgrowth of critical legal studies) delves into the racial dimensions of everyday interactions to help ascertain why even the assumption of a color blind society and laws against discrimination do not produce racial equality.

Privilege theory is an outgrowth of theoretical examinations of male privilege and White privilege. The core of privilege theory in its formative articulations is tied to conditions of social identity that define people because of their birth, mainly race and sexual assignment (meaning in the United States, White and male). In this formulation, privilege is not earned, but rather is ascribed based on the race and sex assignment given at birth and then elaborated on through social interaction. Those who have this type of privilege possess many benefits that, unless examined, remain unacknowledged. Because notions of White privilege and male privilege have proven to be powerful for explaining the persistence of privilege despite recognition of racial and gender inequalities, critical examination of privilege has been extended to other types of inequality, leading to a more general privilege theory.

In privilege theory, the concept of making privilege visible (sometimes called transparency) is a turn away from more standard approaches to studying oppression, which emphasizes making oppression and inequality visible. Unexamined privilege—privilege left invisible—cannot be easily dislodged from the everyday practices that constitute it.

Many scholars consider Peggy Mclntosh's work as foundational in concretizing how privilege [Page 799]works. In a paper she authored in 1988, Mclntosh began by noting the intractability of male privilege, that is, the resistance of many men to close examination of their privilege even when they might be sympathetic to and supportive of gender equality. She came to recognize that social hierarchies are, to use her word, interlocking, which led her to an examination of White privilege as a racial benefit and her own White privilege as an everyday set of unexamined assumptions. Mclntosh offered a long list of daily effects of White privilege that she enjoyed, such as “I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed,” and “I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods that fit my cultural traditions, and into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.” This type of microexamination of the everyday constituents of White privilege provide the foundation for broader theories that have emerged in recent years under the rubric of critical Whiteness studies.

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