Reference no: EM133420538

Case Study: The concept of privilege can be seen in literature since W. E. B. Du Bois wrote The Souls of Black Folk in 1903. In this book, he speaks of African Americans living in a world where they are not seen as just American, but as a "Negro" and an American. It further speaks to the concept that people of color are treated differently, and that Caucasian Americans have an advantage over others due to the color of their skin. He wrote:

The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world-a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two reconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

Peggy McIntosh is an American professor who revitalized the concept of privilege in her 1988 essay "White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women's studies." As a White woman, she discusses the following:

In writing this paper I have also realized that white identity and status (as well as class identity and status) give me considerable power to choose whether to broach this subject and its trouble. I can pretty well decide whether to disappear and avoid and not listen and escape the dislike I may engender in other people through this essay, or interrupt, answer, interpret, preach, correct, criticize, and control to some extent what goes on in reaction to it. Being white, I am given considerable power to escape many kinds of danger or penalty as well as to choose which risks I want to take.

D.W. Sue discusses the concept of "white privilege" and defines it as follows:

The unearned advantages and benefits that accrue to White folks by virtue of a system normed on the experiences, values, and perceptions of their group. White privilege automatically confers dominance to one group, while subordinating groups of color in a descending relational hierarchy; it owes its existence to White supremacy; it is premised on the mistaken notion of individual meritocracy and deservedness (hard work, family values, and the like) rather than favoritism; it is deeply embedded in the structural, systematic, and cultural workings of U.S. society; and it operates within an invisible veil of unspoken and protected secrecy.

Question: Based on the ways that Du Bois, McIntosh, and Sue discuss the concept of privilege, and based on your own observations and experiences of life in the US, what do you see as being the advantages of having privilege? What are the disadvantages of not having privilege? Lastly, in the United States, there is a popular phrase: "People need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps." How does the concept of privilege relate to this statement?