Privilege: recognize it

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A young adult is posing straight in front of the camera, words such as "poor", "disabled", "gay" and others are written on her face. On her shoulders, you can read: "Are we all really equal?". Every word is written in Italian.

                                     A simple guide to acknowledge the different forms of privilege.

The meaning of the word ‘’privilege’’ is often misunderstood. We usually all have some kind of privilege (even without acknowledging it) but that does not mean we don’t struggle at all. 

The actual definition of privilege is: ‘’a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group’’ 

By this statement you might think that you don’t own any type of ‘’Special Right’’ but the reality is that most likely, you do.

Let’s discover it together with a fun quiz! All you have to do is mark YES or NO for every statement.

I live in a democracy          YES     NO

My education is granted by the country I live in          YES     NO

My skin is white / I am Caucasian          YES     NO

My healthcare is almost completely free          YES     NO

I am male and I identify in the sex I was born with          YES     NO

I identify as heterosexual          YES     NO

Food and shelter are always available to me          YES     NO

I / My guardians have a stable job and a good monthly income          YES     NO

I own a mobile phone          YES     NO

I can afford my school books          YES     NO

I don’t carry any disability          YES     NO

I don’t have a mental health disorder          YES     NO

My school is / was a safe environment          YES     NO

My religion is not illegal in the country I live in          YES     NO

 

If you agreed with even just one statement, then you have a life privilege that not everyone has.  Living the life you live is not a crime and therefore you shouldn’t feel embarrassed to admit your advantage. Your struggles will remain the same but it means that your personal problems are not caused by your race, your gender nor your sexual orientation. 

Unfortunately many people in this world are still judged by the colour of their skin, by their wealth and by the person they are in love with.

This is the first chapter of a series we are committed to make in order to give everyone the opportunity to learn about privileges. We will show you what they look like in different settings and how we can actually use our own privilege to fight for the ones who can’t.

If you are interested, by taking this online quiz, you’ll be able to know how many people have the same rights as you: https://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/how-privileged-are-you  

Stay tuned for the following episodes: we will be talking about the Black Lives Matter movement and white privilege, straight privilege and marriage, male privilege and wage gap and much more!

 

Article written by Lilou BARATAULT (FR) and Elisa CREMONA (IT)

 

Sources 

The definition comes from Oxford Languages, Google’s English dictionary. 

The quiz was inspired by the article How Privilege Are You, written by Rega Jha and Tommy Wesely. It was posted on April 10, 2004. https://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/how-privileged-are-you 

 

"A simple guide to acknowledge the different forms of privilege."
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