Alan Johnson’s “Privilege, Power, and Difference”

 The author argues that… the way in which the construction of our society has been built ultimately benefits certain groups and harms others. 

Three Talking Points:

Beginning: Humans belong to a system that they have created. Johnson states, “We are not prisoners to some natural order that pits us hopelessly and endlessly against one another. We are prisoners to something, but it’s closer to our own making that we realize.” Because race, gender, and sexual orientation are socially constructed classes; wherein a dominant group has cast aside “deviant” groups  as less than or othered in society, our society functions as a result of decisions made by humans. This flaws any argument that one race is biologically better than another, for example, because this cannot be true when race categorizations have changed throughout history based on who holds power. So, in order to dismantle systems of oppression that are at play, humans can work to undo the powers at play instead of sitting around and acting hopelessly.  

Middle: The bulk of this reading discusses privilege and how it manifests in our society. One interesting quote I found was, “But when the stakes are privilege and power, dominant groups are quite willing to ignore such inconsistencies so long as the result is a continuation of their privilege.” I found this to be quite compelling because the history of who has power and privilege is extremely inconsistent, but people who hold current power and privilege would of course be ignorant and unwilling to recognize the inconsistencies.

End: This reading ends with a discussion on oppression and how it is the flip side of privilege. I found it very compelling to have a section on this after the bulk of discussion on privilege as it is the complete oppositional force of privilege. Oppression is the force that shuts groups of people out of society based on their deviant characteristics from the dominant ones. The author makes a point that someone can be placed in a category of people that commit oppression without being an oppressive person. This closes out the reading’s point that privilege, oppression, and power are systems that are socially constructed and not based upon individual acts.  

Reflection/Connection: The middle quote makes me think about many Italian communities in the US. As the reading mentioned, Italians used to not be considered “white” in the US when large numbers of immigrants from Italy entered the country in the 1800s and 1900s, as they were othered and discriminated against. I have noticed that many Italian-Americans can recognize this past history of not being “white”, and either become oppressive to non-white communities in modern period or ignorantly claim they are still people of color because they once used to be. This article I found gives a good account on How Italians Became White in the US. I find this history very interesting as an Italian-American, and have reflected on how I can use this knowledge to inform some other Italians of their ignorance with topics related to race. 

Additionally, one of the social constructions in our society that was talked about in the reading is gender. Our culture has been constructed to recognize two genders. While in recent years, there is more acceptance of differing genders, such as non-binary which I identify as, I would agree with the author's point of view that anyone who doesn't fit into the binary is an outsider. In an undergraduate course I took called LGBTQ+ Issues in International Affairs , there previously were many civilizations that recognized genders outside of the binary and those people had a recognized position in gender structures, but white imperialism has largely eliminated the existence of these roles. 

Finally, I wanted to include a visual graphic that depicts power and privilege. The inner most ring is the dominant group, the middle ring is the name of the system of oppression, and the outer ring is the oppressed group.