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Defined as a special right or advantage only available to a person or group of people. In terms of equality, some people are treated better based on their race, gender, class, or sexual orientation. While the most common privilege is white privilege or male privilege, everyone has it. One example of privilege is that many us of don't need a ramp to go up a set of stairs or an elevator to get to our hotel lobby. The United States was aware of this situation and passed the Americans with Disability act in 1990 and made it a law that every building has to be ADA compliant. So the next time you see a disability bathroom stall that has a larger door for wheelchair access or text to speech functions in a library, you can understand the hardships other people face.

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Why is privilege uncomfortable to talk about

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Why is privilege uncomfortable to talk about

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When people hear the word privilege, it can seem like they are getting blamed for a problem that is bigger than themselves. It makes people feel guilty and undeserving of what they have or achieved. They might believe their privilege is going to be taking away or they are getting personally attacked when the word is used. In many cases, they aren't aware of their own privileges or don't understand the correct idea of privilege.

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Acknowledging privilege isn't about shame, it's about bringing change to a society that purpurates inequality. Privilege is the idea that everyone has the same treatment everywhere they go. It can be very hard to see privilege when you never deal with a problem that doesn't affect you

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In the United States, there is always a majority, with 75% of race is white (“U.S. Census Bureau…), 70% of religious belief is Christian (“Religion in America….”), the richest 0.1% Take in 196 Times As Much as Bottom 90% (“Income Inequality.”), and 96% of the population is heterosexual (“What Percentage of the U.S….”). With such a diverse multitude of citizens with different incomes and cultural values, it's very important to understand the mixing bowl that we live in the US.

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One perspective debating against privilege

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One perspective debating against privilege

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I read an article titled, "Why I'll never apologize for my White Male Privilege" from the viewpoint of a middle-class cis-white male who attended Princeton. He declares that privilege denies him all the hard work he accomplished. He stated that although he may not have worked hard for his upbringing, his Jewish grandparents that fled Poland during World War 2 and were treated brutally as immigrants and outcast who worked their way through life to allow his father to attend college and provide a decent life for him. He discusses that he worked just as hard as anyone else to get to attend Princeton and was not comfortable with the idea of privilege taking all the credit. He did work hard, he is right. Privilege is not about taking away from the fortunate but recognizing the disparity between individuals who might not have the same opportunities. What he failed to realize was that if he did not work hard and had not gotten into Princeton, he would be finically safe, with a stable support system, and another opportunity at life.

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Why I'll Never Apologize for My White Male Privilege

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Behind every success, large or small, there is a story, and it isn't always told by sex or skin color.

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On the other hand, many people take the extreme side and believe that privilege is not real. One example that showcases the effect of privilege was evident in chapter 8, Behavior, in How to be Antiracist. Kendi describes the privileges he had when had the opportunity to attend a private tutor stated, "The teacher boasted the course would boost our GRE scores by two hundred points, which I didn't pay much attention to at first—it seemed an unlikely advertising pitch. But with each class, the technique behind the teacher's confidence became clearer. She wasn't making us smarter, so we'd ace the test—she was teaching us how to take the test" (104). 

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Would it be fair to include race into questions for college besides, California says no. As California rejected Proposition 16, a journalist defined it as, "an attempt by progressives to remove the provision in the state constitution that prohibits discrimination based on race or gender in public employment, education, and contracting"( Why California Rejected Racial Preferences, Again"). In his article, the journalist included a quote by, The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley's student newspaper, endorsed the effort to end racial preferences in the state writing, "Race-based affirmative action is wrong because it discriminates based on race," it declared. They write, "The goal of affirmative action, to redress centuries of shameful discrimination against blacks, Latinos, other minorities, and women is praiseworthy and urgent. But the ends of social policies do not justify the means."

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A majority voted against repealing the state's ban on affirmative action.

Shutterstock / The Atlantic

For at least 50 years, Californians have been fighting about whether their state government should be race neutral, treating all individuals equally under the law regardless of the color of their skin, or race conscious, granting preferential treatment to certain groups while discriminating against others to remedy past discrimination or increase diversity.

These various disputes over racial quotas and affirmative action have tended to anticipate national controversies. And last week, a majority of voters in this Democratic stronghold, where no single ethnic group constitutes a majority, reaffirmed their long-standing preference for neutrality: California voters defeated Proposition 16, an attempt by progressives to remove the provision in the state constitution that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race or gender in public employment, education, and contracting. The margin of defeat, 56 to 44 percent, was striking to students of political history, because it suggests that race neutrality is more popular now than when it was initially mandated by a 1996 ballot initiative that passed by a slightly smaller margin.
Kimberley Reyes: Affirmative action shouldn't be about diversity

Disappointed progressives fear that Prop 16's defeat will stymie their efforts to reduce racial inequality. But California voters looking to the future of their wildly diverse state were correct to conclude that permitting its officials to treat racial groups differently would be dangerous.

The California battle over racial preferences first emerged at the UC Davis medical school. Founded in 1966, its earliest classes were almost all white. Intent on diversifying its student body in the 1970s, administrators increased its class size to 100 students each year, with 16 spots reserved for minority applicants. That upset Allan Bakke, a white Vietnam War veteran twice denied admission despite a GPA and test scores that exceeded those of all the minority students admitted in both years he applied. He sued, alleging that he had been excluded solely on the basis of his race, violating his rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Supreme Court agreed, in part. In the 1978 case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, it ruled that racial quotas were unconstitutional--that "no applicant may be rejected because of his race, in favor of another who is less qualified, as measured by standards applied without regard to race." But it also approved affirmative action to promote diversity so long as race was only one factor among many that came under consideration in admissions. The case shaped a generation of affirmative-action regimes in higher education.

In the early 1990s, Ward Connerly, the most prominent proponent of ending racial preferences in his generation, rattled the uneasy peace. Born in 1939 into a segregated African American community in Leesville, Louisiana, Connerly was raised by his aunt and uncle, who moved to California during the Great Migration. "Most people call me a black man," he wrote in an article adapted from his memoir. "My enemies deny that I am. For them, I'm an 'Oreo'-black on the outside and white within. In fact, I'm black in the same way that Tiger Woods and so many other Americans are black-by the 'one-drop' rule used by yesterday's segregationists and today's racial ideologues. In my case, the formula has more or less equal elements of French Canadian, Choctaw, African, and Irish American."

Connerly attended Sacramento State, where he worked on a campaign to ban housing discrimination in state law. Later, while employed in state government, he befriended a young legislator named Pete Wilson, who later became governor and appointed Connerly a UC regent. The year was 1993. California was still reeling from the deadly riots of 1992, the AIDS and crack epidemics, ongoing street wars among Latino and Black gangs, a high murder rate, and a populist and often racist backlash against undocumented immigrants that divided the state. In that milieu, Connerly began to study how racial preferences worked in the UC system. After reviewing admissions statistics, he was convinced that white and Asian applicants were being discriminated against in an effort to admit more Black and Latino applicants.

Around the same time, two white academics, the Cal State Hayward anthropology professor Glynn Custred and the philosopher Thomas Wood, drafted what they called the California Civil Rights Initiative, a proposed amendment to California's constitution. It stated, "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting." The state legislature considered and rejected the proposal in 1994.
Read: The myth of reverse racism
In 1995, Connerly became the chairman of an effort to put the matter to voters. Soon enough, signatures were gathered to qualify what became Proposition 209 for the 1996 ballot. Prior to the vote, The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley's student newspaper, endorsed the effort to end racial preferences in the state. "Race-based affirmative action is wrong because it discriminates on the basis of race," it declared. "The goal of affirmative action, to redress centuries of shameful discrimination against blacks, Latinos, other minorities, and women is praiseworthy and urgent. But the ends of social policies do not justify the means."

Opposing Prop 209 were California Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein; Jesse Jackson; Rosa Parks; Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers; the ACLU; the NAACP; and the California Teachers Association, among others. Ultimately, 54.5 percent of voters supported the constitutional amendment. In a victory speech, Connerly called Prop 209 a link in a civil-rights chain extending back to Martin Luther King Jr. and the Declaration of Independence.

Proposition 209's critics declared that the amendment was racist. In their telling, its backers had misappropriated the language of the civil rights movement and owed their margin of victory to confused voters who favored affirmative action and did not realize their votes would help end many guises of it. Progressives in the state have wanted to overturn Prop 209 ever since. In 2011, Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill to weaken it.

In 2020, in the heat of the George Floyd protests, the California legislature finally succeeded in putting a new affirmative-action proposition on the ballot, one that would overturn Prop 209. Proposition 16 would test whether California voters had changed enough to change their minds. Compared to 1996, the state is much more Democratic. The governor is a progressive Democrat rather than a centrist Republican. Latinos rather than whites are its largest ethnic group. The ascendant populist movement is in favor of criminal-justice reform rather than against illegal immigration. And its youngest voters are Millennials and Gen Zers rather than Gen Xers. "The Daily Cal's editorial board once endorsed Prop. 209 to ban affirmative action," Berkeley's student newspaper declared this year. "We seek to rectify that harm ... Californians must right a long-standing wrong by opening employment and state educational opportunities to women and BIPOC ... Let's work toward a more equitable society through race- and sex-conscious legislation."

California political and media elites overwhelmingly favored ending race neutrality by passing Prop 16. It was endorsed by Senators Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein; former Senator Barbara Boxer; at least 30 Democratic members of the U.S. House, including Nancy Pelosi; and Governor Gavin Newsom, Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, Secretary of State Alex Padilla, State Controller Betty Yee, State Treasurer Fiona Ma, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, Speaker of the Assembly Anthony Rendon, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, and hundreds of other local officials. It was also supported by many of the state's newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, The Mercury News, the San Francisco Chronicle, The San Diego Union-Tribune, La Opinión, the East Bay Times, The Sacramento Bee, The Fresno Bee, and The Modesto Bee. And proponents of Prop 16 raised nearly 20 times more money than its opponents.

Nevertheless, California voters rejected Proposition 16. Indeed, as of Monday, 56 percent of voters had rejected the measure, defeating it by a slightly bigger margin than Proposition 209 was passed in 1996. Why did California voters diverge so sharply from the position of the officials they elected, reaffirming race neutrality as the only democratically legitimate way forward in the state?
Read: What happens when a college's affirmative-action policy is found illegal?
Many Californians believe that treating people differently on the basis of their race, ethnicity, or national origin is wrong. Others have concerns about the validity or adequacy of existing racial and ethnic categories and the attendant complications of shaping decisions on their basis. If Proposition 16 had passed, California officials would have been forced to decide, for example, whether African American descendants of slaves should be treated the same as Nigerian immigrants, whether Hmong, Chinese, and Indian Americans, or Spaniards, Argentines, Peruvians, and Salvadorans, were in the same category, or whether Latinos, the state's largest identity group, should benefit from preferences historically reserved for minorities.

Even if those problems were ultimately resolvable, California today does not resemble the state where an all-white class at the UC Davis medical school prompted calls for an urgent remedy. Last year, with the state's ban on racial preferences in place, the flagship UC system admitted the most diverse class in the state's history. "First-generation students made up 44% of those admitted and low-income students 40%," the Los Angeles Times reported. "Asian Americans remained the largest ethnic group at 35%, followed by Latinos at 34%, whites at 22%, African Americans at 5% and American Indians at 0.5%." While California's K-12 education system fails too many students of all races, with Latino and Black students suffering disproportionately in ways that warrant urgent and sweeping reforms, white supremacy has been vanquished in California's higher education system, which remains free to factor class into admissions.

My own vote against Proposition 16 was most heavily influenced by trepidation about the conflicts between racial groups that I anticipate if state officials are empowered to evaluate applicants on the basis of race rather than being compelled by law to treat every individual equally. As I understand the state's history, the country's history, and the world's history, government officials cannot be trusted to factor race into decision making without treating people unjustly, and intergroup stigmas and resentments tend to increase when any group is given preferential treatment.

In my lifetime in California, I have watched a white majority target undocumented immigrants in a xenophobic ballot initiative that passed before courts struck it down. I've seen violence break out between Black, Latino, and Asian immigrant communities. I've seen administrators in the UC system apologize for engaging in racist discrimination against Asian Americans. Supporters of racial preferences may imagine competent technocrats dispassionately factoring in race to correct for adversity suffered by marginalized groups, but I believe most humans tend to be irrational and corrupted when empowered to racially discriminate--a risk that is too fraught to tolerate. California has always owed its exceptional success to its ability to attract people from all over the world. It was as wildly diverse as anywhere on Earth way back in 1860. Today it is one of the world's most successful experiments in people of all sorts living together in peace and prosperity. Nothing would threaten its success more than political balkanization along racial or ethnic lines by identity groups engaging in a zero-sum competition.

On November 3, the people wisely headed off such conflict: In public employment, public education, and public contracting, state officials are still compelled to treat every Californian equally regardless of their race. Will political elites obey those prudential constraints, given their overwhelming opposition to them? I expect not. But state and federal courts will serve as a check on the most flagrant violations of the law--and, in the long run, the people's reaffirmation of Proposition 209 may portend victories for race-neutral policies elsewhere in the American political system. The prudence of that course will only increase along with the diversity of the nation.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Conor Friedersdorf is a California-based staff writer at The Atlantic, where he focuses on politics and national affairs. He is the founding editor of The Best of Journalism, a newsletter devoted to exceptional nonfiction.

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Why California Rejected Racial Preferences, Again

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A majority voted against repealing the state's ban on affirmative action. For at least 50 years, Californians have been fighting about whether their state government should be race neutral, treating all individuals equally under the law regardless of the color of their skin, or race conscious, granting preferential treatment to certain groups while discriminating against others to remedy past discrimination or increase diversity.

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I stumbled across this article that did an excellent job showing the intersection between privilege, race, gender, and sexual orientation. The author describes the doors being attractive has opened, but recalls the fallback that society places on the role of women.

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Beauty Beyond Binaries is a biweekly column about the intersection of beauty and identity on allure.com by writer, TV host, and activist Janet Mock.
I knew very early on that I was not pretty. No one ever called me pretty. It was not the go-to adjective people used to describe me.

Throughout elementary and middle school, I was used to hearing other words: Smart. Studious. Well-spoken. Well-read. They became pillars of my self-confidence, enabling me to build myself up on what I contributed rather than what I looked like.

Yet I was enamored by the pretty girls in class, the popular ones who walked into the room and shifted the gaze of the majority without effort, the ones who won class elections, were crowned Miss and voted Most, and who seemed to collect all the trophies and Valentines. I was equally fascinated by the pretty girls and women who were lauded in my favorite films and TV series as well as the ones who took center stage on MTV.

Pretty girls are not identical, of course, since "pretty" is subjective and means different things for different groups of people. Still, there are shared, agreed-upon commonalities. "Pretty" is most often synonymous with being thin, white, able-bodied, and cis, and the closer you are to those ideals, the more often you will be labeled pretty - and benefit from that prettiness.

As a young trans girl, I wondered what it would be like to be seen not only as a girl but as a pretty girl. Like many teens, I struggled with my body and looks, but my despair was amplified by the expectations of cisnormativity and the gender binary as well as the impossibly high beauty standards that I, and my female peers, measured myself against.

This anguish began to subside as I embarked on my medical transition at 15 when how I saw myself inside began to slowly and steadily reveal itself on my outsides. I began to finally see myself. By 16, others saw my self-image as well, and I began to notice the way people treated me shifted. They no longer stared at my body in confusion. They no longer questioned my gender because I began to present more clearly as a girl - specifically, a cis girl. Suddenly, I was successful at "passing," blending in with the pretty cis girls in class I had once watched in fascination.

I began living my teenage dream: I was seen and accepted as just another girl. With my gender nonconformity seemingly fading away, I began to attract the attention of 18-to-24-year-old cis guys who began stopping to inform me that I was pretty.

Suddenly, I was let in, and I did nothing to earn the attention my prettiness granted me. I soon saw that people stared and smiled, offered me seats on the bus and drinks in the club, complimented me on my appearance, and held doors open. This was partly how I experienced pretty privilege - the societal advantages, often unearned, that benefit people who are perceived as pretty or considered beautiful.

Pretty privilege can give way to more popularity, higher grades, more positive work reviews, and career advancement. People who are considered pretty are more likely to be hired, have higher salaries, and are less likely to be found guilty and are sentenced less harshly. Pretty people are perceived as smarter, healthier and more competent, and people treat pretty people better. Pretty privilege is also conditional and is not often extended to women who are trans, black and brown, disabled, older, and/or fat.

Being curvy but not plus-size, mixed but not all black, trans but cis-blending, and able-bodied gives me a different experience than many. I am a black and native Hawaiian trans woman (who is often perceived as cis) with brown skin, curly hair, an hourglass size-8 shape. I have symmetrical facial features; a smooth, even complexion; and a white, straight, wide smile. For me, pretty privilege operates in a myriad of ways depending on the spaces I enter, who is in that space, and whether people already know that I am trans.

I remember when I was a teenager and my classmates would praise me by saying, "You don't even look like a boy anymore," "You look so real," or "I can't even tell" - backhanded compliments that still follow me when someone hears my story. It communicates our culture's misconception that equates cisness with attractiveness and equates one's ability to be seen as cis with being seen as attractive - as real.

However, one's ability to pass should not dictate their attractiveness. This widely held belief is part of the reason why trans actress Laverne Cox started the hashtag #TransIsBeautiful. A trans person can simultaneously not embody cisnormative beauty standards and still be seen as attractive or pretty, and a trans person can align with those cisnormative standards and not be seen as pretty.

Still, my appearance is a conundrum to many, even within my own communities. Trans women like myself, whose transness often goes unchecked, are conditionally granted access and navigate spaces more safely than trans women who do not pass as easily. Being able to blend in is a gateway to survival, but many trans women do not benefit from my passing privilege or my pretty privilege.

It is also important to acknowledge that there are repercussions, too, specifically in spaces of desire. Cis men have often claimed that they were "deceived" or "tricked" by a trans woman who was assumed to be cis and was thereby deserving of the violence she faced. This harmful yet all-too-pervasive belief has gone so far as to be used as defensive arguments in courts across the country, called the "trans panic defense."

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To thoroughly examine this concept, I must also discuss race, which further complicates our lived experiences. I am a mixed black woman who has benefitted from pretty privilege in black and people-of-color spaces (largely where I am not often read as trans) but has also experienced being invisible in predominantly white and mainstream spaces. It has been a common experience to either be completely overlooked in favor of white women who are considered the beauty standard, or to have white folks or nonblack POCs point me out as an "exception" with comments like "You are pretty for a black girl" or "You don't look fully black." The message: blackness does not equate to attractiveness, and therefore my mixed-ness puts me higher on the white cis beauty hierarchy than a black woman with parents who are both black.

We should recognize our positionality across all of our intersections and experiences. I am a black trans woman who is invited into spaces largely because of how I present, but for so long, I tried to evade the fact that people saw me as pretty or attractive. And I learned quickly to adapt and play the modesty game because to acknowledge that you are pretty is conceited, and to be conceited is to be unlikable.

Women have been trained to minimize their greatness in an effort to be more likable. We learn that when we are complimented, especially about our looks, we must dismiss the compliment, feign self-deprecation and modesty, undermine our looks and pretend we did absolutely nothing to contribute to them.

I learned to counter a compliment by highlighting a flaw, pointing out something I didn't like about myself - perhaps a blemish on my forehead or the fact that my symmetry is contoured. But self-deprecation and dismissals will not save us from the fact that we exist in a lookist culture that equates a woman's attractiveness to her worth. It's problematic when a pretty person denies they're pretty, and pretty people must take ownership of the fact that they get special treatment. We do ourselves a disservice by saying looks "don't matter," because looks do matter.

Here's the math: If I did not look the way I do, then I would not be on TV or on two book covers. I would not have a beauty column or an Instagram with more than 100,000 followers. This does not mean that I have not put in work and effort and done my job well, but my beauty is not something that I earned. I did not work for it, yet it has opened doors for me, allowing me to be seen and heard. And for me to pretend that it does not exist denies the ways in which being perceived as pretty has contributed to my success and made the road a bit smoother.

This is not to say pretty people don't have their own struggles, insecurities, and pressures: having one's worthiness be defined by how good you look; questioning whether your promotion or invitation was earned based on merit or merely because of your looks; feeling an overwhelming pressure to maintain your attractiveness.

As someone deemed pretty, I have experienced people looking at me but not really listening. I have often gotten the sense that if I serve a look that I am often reduced as someone who cannot contribute anything beyond my beauty. I have been on job interviews and swiftly met with looks from interviewers that said, "A girl that pretty cannot be a hard worker," despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

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"I mean, being pretty helps...would you not say?" Oprah Winfrey asked me during my interview for Super Soul Sunday in 2015.

"Uh, yeah," I answered nonchalantly.

"Thank you for saying that," she said. "I hate it when pretty girls always say, 'No, it really doesn't make a difference. You should see my cellulite.'"

"Pretty privilege is real," I stated.

"Pretty privilege is real, girl!" Oprah repeated as if she had just discovered a new A-Ha!, high-fiving me under her grand oak trees.

I've noticed that it's more acceptable for pretty women to complain about objectification, the male gaze, and the ways in which beauty can undermine intelligence and contribution, but rarely do pretty women complain about - or, rather, acknowledge - the access their prettiness extends to them.

It's unbecoming to acknowledge your attractiveness, so it creates a silence around pretty privilege that only elevates the competitiveness and divisiveness between women who are told we must compare, compete, and measure up in a lookist culture.

People with privilege do not want to discuss their privilege - whether it's privilege derived from whiteness, straightness, cisness. But we must acknowledge our privilege if we are to dismantle these systems and hierarchies. We have to be honest, and I'll start with myself: I am pretty and I benefit from my looks.
Read more stories from Beauty Beyond Binaries: Now, watch our cover star Halima Aden teach young Muslim girls to model:

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Being Pretty Is a Privilege That Nobody Wants to Acknowledge

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Beauty Beyond Binaries is a biweekly column about the intersection of beauty and identity on allure.com by writer, TV host, and activist Janet Mock. I knew very early on that I was not pretty. No one ever called me pretty. It was not the go-to adjective people used to describe me.

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Dealing with the legacy of diversity and privilege

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Dealing with the legacy of diversity and privilege

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The power of privilege: Tiffany Jana at TEDxRVAWomen

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The idea that I could do something that would be normal for me while it might make someone uncomfortable to speak up for themselves was reassuring. That is why I believe that highlighting your privilege is not a negative connotation.

Privilege is not about taking away from the fortunate but recognizing the disparity between individuals who might not have the same opportunities. The idea of privilege intersects with so many terms including racism, sexism, and homophobia. In order to combat those terms we must understand the role privilege plays and what people undergo that we might not be aware of.

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Privilege and embracing it for good | Kelsea Walsh | TEDxHECParis

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Use Your Everyday Privilege to Help Others

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Most of us have some kind of ordinary privilege —that is, the ability to forget about aspects of who you are because they represent the majority demographics of your country or organization. But instead of feeling bad about it, we should use it to our advantage. Research repeatedly confirms that tho…