BEHS 220 Discussion 2

This week’s resources focused on two concepts: privilege and intersectionality. Privilege is the idea that our society values some identities over others and assigns those higher-value identities more power and prestige than others. An obvious example of this is rich over poor (or upper class over everyone else). In the US, people of the highest economic status have more political power and more social prestige than those of the lower ones. Many other identity characteristics, like age, gender, sexuality, race, disability, level of education, marital status, and so on have similar divisions between high- and low-prestige states.

Intersectionality is the idea that people have more than one identity characteristic and the way that those interact can increase or decrease the level of advantage or disadvantage that an individual (or group of individuals) experiences in a situation.

Use and cite at least two of this week’s resources in your responses to the following questions:

Identify one part of your identity where you may have privilege relative to others. How is your privilege demonstrated? Using terms from this week’s resources, why is it important to understand that you have privilege in this area?

Identify one part of your identity where you are at a disadvantage relative to others. How is your lack of privilege demonstrated? Using terms from this week’s resources, what does this reveal about our society?

Do you have equal privilege (or lack of privilege) in all situations? Why or why not?