Privilege

Privilege is a set of unearned advantages or benefits that is systematically provided to people in one class and not to people in another class. Privilege is not binary: one does not either have privilege or not have it. A poor white woman will have white privilege as compared to a rich black woman, and the rich black woman will have class privilege as compared to her.

Systematic privilege is not something that an individual can choose to take on or give up. Because it is not about what the individual does, being instead about how other people treat her, it is like a nickname: it is given or withheld from the individual without her permission. Peggy McIntosh gives an example of white privilege: " I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented." This is an advantage that Ms. McIntosh has in life, but it is not one that she can give up.

One of the most important features of privilege is that it tends to be invisible to the people who have it. Rather than being an obvious benefit, privilege usually takes the form of a difficulty or obstacle that other classes have to face, but is removed for the members of one class. Those who have it, therefore, find it difficult to see an absence. To use another of Peggy McIntosh's examples: "If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race." A white person in this situation is likely to say "That isn't privilege, that is just the way it should be." That is indeed just the way it should be; but since that is not the way it is for everyone, the fact that it is that way for white people is a privilege that they have.

Members of a privileged class are often asked by others to "check their privilege". This may be used in the sense of "check your privilege at the door": when a member of a privileged class enters a space which is dominated by people of another class, she may need to make a deliberate effort to adjust to not having some of the privileges she is usually given. It may also be used in the sense of "check whether you are unconsciously taking advantage of your privilege, or assuming that your privilege is universal."

The theory of privilege was first advanced by Peggy McIntosh in "White Privilege: Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack", first published in Independent School, Winter 1990.

See also

• male privilege
• white privilege

Further reading

• A primer on privilege: what it is and what it isn't.
• “Check my what?” On privilege and what we can do about it by Andrea Rubenstein
• List of privilege lists, Amptoons
• Privilege is driving a smooth road and not even knowing it, Amptoons