6.10

I just came back from church. I'm not religious, but church isn't new to me. Most of my friends are Christian and I went to church regularly in high school. As I was sitting there watching my friend lead a youth group, the thought crossed my mind about how more Asian-Americans are becoming Christian, via large-scale missionary work being done overseas or just as a result of assimilation of Asians into Western culture. The concept of privilege is abundant in most forms of religion, regardless of how inclusive the type of religion claims to be. In Christianity, a tenet is that we are all born sinners but only Christians have the privilege of sin, based on its effect from having a relationship with God, knowing God's will and violating God's will.

In class today I gave a definition of privilege as "entitlement received not based on merit," and that's not right. Entitlement alone involves me receiving benefits and access to things that most others don't and that works independently of the concept of merit. In fact, merit and privilege aren't mutually exclusive, according to Jensen, the University of Texas professor. There are instances when someone whose privileges gives them access to resources which allows them to reach high levels of success. But they still wouldn't have gotten to that level without hard work and real dedication. Hence, privilege and merit are correlated, but is not necessarily part of a causal relationship.

To speak from experience, and to garner a better understanding of privilege in general, the class mentioned cases when racial minorities could benefit from this principle, such as the existence of black privilege. I also mentioned Asian-American privilege, but I didn't know where to go with that. Perhaps I feel professors and employers respect my abilities based on the presumption that most Asian-Americans are respectful, thoughtful and hard working. I think I am those things. I hope I am. I also would hope no one would give me the benefit of the doubt before I could get a chance to prove myself.

I don't feel privileged. I'm aware of the concept at the moment I walked into church, class, work and an IHOP restaurant today, but I don't recognize it. It is invisible, afterall.

But it's unclear how sure we can be that a circumstance we are in involves an indefinite case of ourselves, or someone else, being the benificiery of an advantage that most other people do not get. Maybe I can tell that the Mayor of Oklahoma City is going to be treated with respect and receive the best customer service when his family walks into a mall outlet store looking for some clothes. But pinpointing race as the source of someone benefitting from some systematic, unconscious public exertion of subtle discrimination leads to me making seemingly incredible accusations toward well-meaning people. For example, while sitting at the IHOP with six of my friends (all white) and giving our orders to the waitress (also white), I was the last person whose order she took. Subtle, unconscious display of white privilege? Or the waitress was just taking orders counter-clockwise of everyone at the table, and I was sitting at the far left?

Again, it seems like kind of a reach to assume the former. I'm sure we can provide numerous examples of when we feel like our exclusion, or our being singled-out could be a result of race or gender discrimination that is very subtle (and perhaps not even intentional), but how can we be so sure? McIntosh's knapsack theory is applicable in some cases, but I tend to rationalize events pretty hardcore. The IRS is going to audit my tax returns because they might find some inconsistency in the numbers (#19 in the knapsack). I'm never asked to speak for all Asian-Americans because I'm young, inexperienced and shouldn't feel like I can speak for anybody (#15). I can't find any Asian music in a music store because I don't like Asian music, and most people from my demographics aren't going to find it easy to locate mid-1800s baroque classical symphonies anyway because CD stores don't market that type of music to the 18-25 Oklahoman who bookmarks PitchforkMedia and the music review list from MetaCritic.com (#9). Is there a way to be sure we're a victim of racial or gender privilege? I'm not talking about being aware of the problem large scale, hardly anyone is going to deny the problem exists, but we can't fix the problem unless we can locate it.

In class today, Professor Flippin-Wynn referred to a personal preference for avoiding the term "minority" as it implies inferiority from the definition of minority as "less than." Never heard of that. I always thought "minority" and "majority" were simply inherent binaries, the former meaning "numerically fewer than the dominant majority" with majority to indicate instances when X is more than half of the total sum. Also, the AP Style Guideline states to use "less than" and "more than." I'll keep in mind what the professor said regardless.