Different types of privilege
Even the title, Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person, was enough to immediately grab my attention. I am not a broke white person, so I was intrigued and keen to hear a poor person’s experience with and perspective on privilege. I knew the reading would expose me to a point of view I could not obtain any other way. One thing the writer pointed out that stuck with me is that some assumed white privilege is actually wrongly placed class privilege. If I remember correctly, some examples of this are assuming that people generally respect you, that you do not experience prejudice, or even assuming that you have access to clean water. I think privilege is often sorted into different categories, including race and wealth. However, these can be overlapped. Another concept that stood out to me was that common ideologies are not actually shared by everyone, but are instead relative to class. An example of this is how middle-class people assume they can get anything in life if they work hard enough. But the author, someone who grew up poor, shared that this was never a mindset she could adopt because, in her life, it seemed impossible. I am really glad the author decided to write about privilege in relation to being white and poor because I definitely think that area of discrimination is overlooked or shadowed by other areas.
