If you were to make an off-color comment to me and defend yourself by saying that you don’t have a racist/sexist/classist bone in your body, or that you are “colorblind” your response would give me an important piece of information about you. Because as the song goes, everyone’s a little bit racist.
Tag: crashcourse
22 Ways to Make Retail Workers Love You
If you have any friends who work retail, you’ve probably heard a lot of their horror stories. In order to avoid being labeled one of those customers, here are 22 Do’s and Don’ts for how to make retail workers love you.
What Is Socialization?
If you’ve been in the social justice world for very long, you’ve probably heard variations on the phrase, “You were socialized to be X.” But what does that mean? What is socialization?
Explaining Privilege Part 4: Privilege is an Invisibility Cloak
Privilege can bring you many benefits, and eliminate many obstacles for you. But privilege can also mask negative traits such as incompetence, unethical behavior, and dishonesty. Privilege can give you literal get-out-of-jail-free cards, to the detriment of people who lack that privilege. Privilege is an invisibility cloak.
Explaining Privilege Part 3: The Scrutiny of Oppressed Groups
We often talk about privilege in terms of the positives, the benefits you receive: Resources, freedom, trust, and benefit of the doubt are extremely common ones. But what about the flip side? The opposite of privileged groups receiving the benefit of the doubt is the scrutiny of oppressed groups.
Explaining Privilege Part 2: The Cycle of Reinforcement
In the second part of the Explaining Privilege series, I talk about how the socialization of marginalized and privileged groups reinforce the blindspots of privileged groups, which in turn causes a cycle that deprioritizes the needs of marginalized people.
Explaining Privilege Part 1: WHAT Is Privilege?
This article covers the absolute basic answers to the question, what is privilege, including social, financial, and institutional privilege.
Who Is Marginalized?
There are a number of traits for which people are oppressed, and these traits fall into a number of categories. To be involved in social justice work, you must first understand who is marginalized. This article breaks that down.