Green River LibGuides: One Book 2021-2022: So You Want to Talk about Race: Why Am I Always Being Told to "Check My Privilege"?

Chapter 4: Why Am I Always Being Told to "Check My Privilege"?

The definition of privilege is in reality much simpler than a lot of social justice discussions would have you believe. Privilege, in the social justice context, is an advantage a set of advantages that you have that others do not.

These privileges are not due 100 percent to your efforts (although your hard work may indeed have privileges are disproportionately when compared to what the privile be ascribed to certain social grou ability, gender, class, etc. But you may have not considered, like differences. It is in these advantage the health and well-being of nefits of these ally undeserved dvantages can often on race, physical lie in areas that logical ges that people are often determined. If we are truly dedicated address ystemic oppression and inequality, we must understand the full impact of these advantages and disadvantages in order to move toward real change in our society and ourselves.

-From "So You Want to Talk About Race," Chapter 4

Background Articles

These are articles that come from encyclopedias, overview reports, books, or similarly sourced aimed at providing the basic facts on a topic.

Check Your Privilege: An Important Self-Assessment
Check Your Privilege: What it Means and How to Do It
Heterosexual Privilege
How White Privilege Works
Race and Social Privilege in America
Systemic Racism: Can the structures of inequality be overcome?
We Can't Talk About Racism Without Understanding Whiteness
Where Do We Go from Here? (cover story)
more... less...

The article presents opinion on questions about privilege, race and the value of African American life in the U.S. According to author Isabel Wilkerson, Africans Americans must know in their hearts that they can survive anything if the ancestors could survive the Middle Passage. Educator Melissa Harris-Perry states that she felt a need for someone to want the African American baby to live as they witnessed the indifference of a legal system that permits African American death to go unpunished.
Whiteness and White Privilege
White Privilege
White Privilege.

Scholarly Articles

These are articles from scholarly/academic journals that are written by researchers and other experts in their fields to share the findings of their original research with others in the field.

Videos

Videos can be a great place to get information. Linked below are some featured - both from the library's streaming collection, as well as videos on the web.