What is "Privilege"?

So, I think I'm finally ready to give this issue a go. It's a complicated one with no small amount of vitriol on both sides of the proverbial field (and I will address why there shouldn't be sides). People are angry at each other, and there are certain things no one wants to admit, partially because there's so much misunderstanding in this topic. So, let's get started.

I wanna' break it down to a thorough, succinct definition.

The word basically amounts to "statistically significant weighting of odds for life circumstances that contribute towards the betterment of life in a traditional sense based on birth context and current social circumstances." But, that's an enormous mouthful. So, it might help to take that chunk-by-chunk.

Privilege is impacted by the way we're born and our current social standing. eg, your race, gender, gender identity, height (even how symmetrical your face is); and your wealth, your religion, your friends, your location. Pretty much everything. The first question you might have (depending on how much sociology/psychology you've studied) is how on earth everything like that matters?

Power. Human society is one big power play, and holding influence or power is a matter of having support- financial, structural, population, etc. If you have the law behind you, or if you have a buncha' money, or if you have the support of crowds of people, you tend to get what you want. Now, because all of those things are human constructs, they're pushed and pulled by factors that humans perceive to be important. How tall you are, for example, is something that is objectively hilariously unimportant. You can reach the top of the fridge easier. The sum total of your capabilities over any other average human being is replaceable by a few chunks of wood nailed together.

So why, then, are tall people happier and richer than their vertically challenged counterparts? That makes no biological sense taken alone. However, it makes a bit more sense when you factor in evolution. Tall people would have had a number of advantages in a more primal state of humanity: speed, flexibility, visibility, and yes- the ability to retrieve things from greater heights, like fruit. Being tall was an evolutionary advantage. Enough of one that societies still prize taller people socially. We trust them more, admire them more, place higher value on their existence as a whole. Not by extraordinary amounts, mind you. Just enough to tip some scales. This effect also feeds into itself as a positive feedback loop; we expect more of taller people, and those expectations go on to color their decisions. Again, not an extraordinary amount alone. But a statistically significant amount.

This same thing applies to many other traits for humans, and far and away, we find that people with success are almost always people who have a certain set of traits from a list. You're more likely to be successful if you're taller, male, white, born affluent, born to a good family, born mentally healthy, physically healthy, cisgendered, no male-pattern-baldness, skinny, married, Christian, etc. Alright, so we've covered where it starts. What do I mean by statistical advantages?

Well, the same thing I hinted at above with tall people. You're more likely to be hired for a job if you're male than female or white than black even if you have identical qualifications. It's not a guarantee, but it's a pretty substantial and statistically significant difference.
How substantial you might ask? Well, this study suggests that white felons were more likely to receive job callbacks than black non-felons with the same experience/education. When comparing non-felons, whites were more than twice as likely to receive a callback. That's fairly substantial. Noting with this study as well, this process is subject to our negative views of people as they compare to the "standard" of society. In this case, women are viewed as less competent at math than men despite equivalent education, experience, and qualifications. So that raises the question, what's the standard? The standard is the generic Joe Everyman that our society has been crafted for. A white, land owning, male. Here's where I'm sure I'll start losing people. Unfortunately, straight, white men (please note that I am definitely one of those) in general.

Why does that demographic shy away from this idea so much? There's a few reasons, but mostly it's because people in this country specifically don't like feeling like they didn't earn what they have. We go to great lengths to assure ourselves that any successes we have are because of something inherent about us. We worked hard and we're smart.

And that's partially true. The person born with the most perfect luck ever- the most privileged person could still wind up a total failure with no money, drowning in cheap booze. Similarly, people from all walks of life can rise to attain the traditional American idea of success. However, it's undeniable how skewed the actual statistics are for millionaires, billionaires, executives, CEOs, presidents, congressmen; people with power in this country. They're mostly white males.

I'll take this opportunity to stress that privilege is not a word meant to cast blame. It is a descriptive word. Taken at its face value, all persons have privilege of various kinds. This idea applies to literally everyone with the exception of those who died before being able to integrate into their family or society at large.

With that in mind, I think the best goal for the idea of privilege is to frame societal inequality in a way that involves everyone. As it stands, even a well-meaning person who acknowledges racism can simply say "well, I'm not racist, so this whole thing doesn't involve me." Thus, distancing themselves from the conversation and any ability to create meaningful change.

To the extent that it applies to everyone, by default, "privilege" brings even people at the "top of the food chain" into the discussion as well. While many would suggest the word is blame-oriented, I would say it's not really throwing anyone under a bus for the same reason that it wouldn't be throwing America under a bus to suggest that our goods and services are, by healthy majority, produced in what amounts to slave labor conditions.

It's perhaps an uncomfortable truth, but either an undeniable truth or the world's greatest coincidence.
Americans as a whole did not get to choose under what conditions our products were made, but we definitely receive the benefit of them, whether we like to accept that fact or not. The only way to rectify the problem is to acknowledge that we're complicit in it, even if we didn't actively choose for it to happen. It's a problem that is specifically set up to benefit us.

 And that's what this comes down to. We have systemic inequality that virtually none of us actively chose or continues to choose. However, many of us benefit from it daily, usually without even realizing it. That's not our fault, per se. However, once we recognize it, I do think it's our responsibility to look for ways to push back against the systems in which it occurs. To that end, privilege, to me, is a word that signifies the sum total of my good fortune and reminds me that others cannot have it through no fault of their own. That's not a system I want to live in, so it's my obligation to try to change it as someone who sits pretty high up on that spectrum.

I often see arguments against the idea of privilege because there exist poor, white males. I see that as a fundamental misunderstanding of the word. Take, for example, a casino where you walk in with your black friend. You two go up to any given table and the dealer tells you the odds of winning before you play. For some reason, almost every game gives you better odds than your friend. Sometimes they're pretty close, but usually, you have far better odds of winning than he does. You won't win every game. Your friend may very well win all of them, but it's statistically less likely than you winning all of them. Taken as a whole phenomenon, however, it's much more likely that you'll win most, and your friend wins far fewer.

That's single-issue privilege. Black vs. white.

Now, of course, because privilege is all-encompassing, it does take poverty into account; and the people who crafted the system over generations wanted impoverished people to have less power and less opportunity, so there's a give and take for anyone who fits into multiple categories like that. Your rich, black friend will actually probably have better odds than you, a poor white person. However, because the system is set up so that fewer black people succeed statistically, it's already an unlikely situation to be presented with, and because it's a positive feedback loop, fewer black people will come out ahead over time, and more white people will, thus keeping the balance of power permanently weighted improperly.

See, I'm straight, white, male, and middle-class, but I also have a mental disorder, so I'm winning on most levels, but then I take X steps backwards because of that last trait. It's a spectrum that everyone fits onto. It just happens that it's a spectrum of societal benefits, and the benefits are aggregated heavily towards just a few very specific traits. Namely, the ones that fit the "standard" for our country. Straight, white, male, tall, land owning, physically able, cis, mentally healthy, skinny, traditionally attractive, etc. And this is largely how it's been in most cultures throughout most of time, though things have always shifted just a bit based on culture; based on what people perceived as making another person trustworthy, powerful, respectable, and so on.

So, you fit into the spectrum of privilege. You're almost certainly not at the tippy top, but if you're reading this, you're probably pretty high up. But what does that mean? Not much except that you have, in addition to whatever hard work/effort you add to your own life, a great deal of systemic luck. Other than that? It's meaningless. It's a descriptive term, meant to represent the sum total of your individual birth circumstances and social contexts that make up who you are and how you're viewed in our culture at any given time.

Having privilege does not mean that your opinion is worth less than anyone else's or that your experiences are incorrect or are not valuable. Having privilege does not mean that your life is without turmoil, strife, repercussions, unfortunate occurrences, or anything else like that. However, it is important to be aware of the benefits one receives from this system of luck. It is important to be reminded of how much context matters, particularly when you're trying to empathize with other human beings. Not every unemployed person is a slacker. Statistically, they might even just be unemployed because of the skin color they were born with.

Everyone has different considerations, worthy of examination. The statistics are meaningful though, and that's what privilege is; a statistically significant advantage. Nothing more. Nothing less.