Unearned Advantages: The Provocative Argument of Allan Johnson's "Privilege, Power, and Difference"

Unearned Advantages: The Provocative Argument of Allan Johnson's "Privilege, Power, and Difference"

April Federico

    Allan Johnson argues that James Baldwin once came up with a rather provocative idea that the idea of “race” does not exist, only our perceptions of race do. In fact, Johnson points to Baldwin’s idea of social reality which he defines as “most of what we experience as ‘real’ is a cultural creation, even though we don’t experience it that way” (Johnson 21). The differences in skin color obviously exist. At the same time, so do labels, no matter which country you go to. And following what we discussed on the first day of class, it is astonishing and simultaneously appalling how much influence America has on the whole world, all the way down to the societal differences.

    Privilege is also a topic in this chapter of Allan Johnson’s Privilege, Power, and Difference. In fact, it is the whole point of the text. What struck a chord of truth was the following quote: “the existence of privilege doesn’t mean that I didn’t do a good job […] or that I don’t deserve credit for it. What it does mean is that I’m also getting something that other people are denied, people who are like me in every respect except for the gender, race, and sexual orientation categories they belong to” (Johnson 24). What he meant by this statement, is people – human beings – could be denied certain necessities of life based on diversity, or the Diversity Wheel, shown below. For example, a woman can do the same job as a man and still be paid less for it in America. Women do not get the advantage or “privilege” of having a higher wage, even to make a sustainable living. To make a sustainable living is a human right. What Johnson is saying, that select people fail to realize that they have what Peggy McIntosh calls “unearned entitlements.” Put simply, select people are born into concepts like generational wealth, in example. Another example would be that men often have the “upper hand” when it comes to dealings and relationships with women, like controlling conversations as outlined on page twenty-six.

     Ultimately, Johnson’s point is that privilege is not about individual "goodness" or "badness," but about an invisible system that grants some people a smoother path while placing systemic obstacles in the way of others. It reminds me of the phrase that was popularized about ten years ago, “check your privilege” because essentially, select members of society are oblivious to the good that they have in their lives – things that other people wish they had. For example, someone could be wishing their latest model of the iPhone would work properly as an application is crashing, while someone could be praying to pay their cell phone bill on time in fear of having their cellular service shut off. Or, in another aspect, someone could be without a phone entirely and in a dire situation with no payphone in sight. It is almost like a domino effect of situations that could come out of a perfectly privileged scenario. Privilege has many different layers, in a world that says, “it could be worse,” when people do live or have situations that are worse than others. We are blind to what we should be grateful for, or what we are born into. This can, in turn, affect our relationships with others based on the lenses on which we see the world. An impoverished person can call a rich person “self-centered” while a straight white male could view a homosexual couple as “sinful.” Someone's "normal" could be someone's "ick factor."