Privilege 101: Why privilege is bad

This post is part of my Privilege 101 series. You may want to read it from the beginning. To see all of the posts in the series, click here.

In my last post, I tried to explain clearly what privilege is, and to provide examples to demonstrate that it is a real thing that does exist. Now, let’s talk about why exactly it is bad.

This is something that anyone working to fight oppression assumes: Oppression, privilege, and kyriarchy are bad, and it is worth the time, energy, and risk to fight against them. Just like the assumption in the last post, this may seem obvious to a lot of people already working to fight oppression; however, the purpose of this series is to explain the reasoning behind the assumptions we make, for those who jump into the whole mess without realizing the foundation it is built on.

To talk about whether or not something is bad, we have to look at the problem of morality and ethics. Philosophically, this is a landmine, best articulated by the is-ought problem. I won’t go into detail here; for a comprehensive breakdown of the problem with ethics and morals, See this trilogy of articles. Basically, though, the problem is that there has never been an argument justifying any code of behavior other than “because we think it is a good idea”.

However, I’m going to skip that problem by sticking with descriptive ethics. The United States, at least, is founded on the principle of Equality. To wit, in one of the first public documents of our government, the Declaration of Independence, the founders of the nation said:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Every American schoolchild knows these words, but I often think that many Americans, child or adult, have failed to spend very much time thinking about them. There are several relevant points I want to draw out:

First, all men are created equal. The sexist language is a sign of the age of the document, and it is worth noting that these words were not intended, as written, to apply to all humanity; after these words, the US went on to perpetuate slavery (and later institutionalized racism), misogyny, and an abundance of other legalized, institutionalized injustices. However, as a nation we have embraced, slowly, the realization that all people are people, not just white men. And so we stand by the idea that all people are fundamentally equal.

Also, the unalienable rights listed are not meant to be exhaustive. …among these are… is a key phrase, and the government has (again, slowly over time) recognized certain additional fundamental human rights, such as the right to marry (Loving v Virginia, Zablocki v Redhail, Turner v Safley, and of course the ongoing Perry v Schwarzenegger. The right to an education is also considered a fundamental right, and was the purpose of the founding of the public school system in the US.

Finally, that second sentence, not quoted as often. The purpose of government is to ensure these fundamental rights. So, clearly, our society considers equality to be key; it is the reason for governments to exist, after all. It is, then, necessarily noble and just to fight for equality wherever inequality exists.

Privilege is inequality defined. Privilege necessitates oppression; you cannot gain an unearned advantage without imposing an undeserved disadvantage on someone else. So, if you accept the idea that equality is a worthy goal (again, an idea on which the US was founded, and an idea that pervades European political philosophy as well), then privilege is necessarily bad, and should be challenged.

If you don’t believe that equality is good, then there may be nothing I can do to convince you (see above on the unproveability of morals and ethics).