While white privilege is a common example, there can be many forms of privilege along the lines of sexual orientation, religion, physical attributes, and so on, as long as there is a tipping of the scales of justice that leaves one group in an advantaged position at the expense of another group. Peggy McIntosh describes these privileges as an invisible knapsack of tools an advantages, and how those advantages manifest themselves is by virtue of the disadvantaged position it places those not lucky enough to be born into the right place in society. For my reflection I decided to do a little field work, so I took a walk around a local mall to search for examples of privilege. It wasn’t until I learned of my privilege that I began to see examples of it everywhere I looked. Once the privileges were pointed out to me, it was as if I had become aware of a secret world that penetrates the very fiber of society. I had been focused on seeing overt forms of oppression where one group actively impacts another however, I had never realized the part I played, and the advantages I gained from this system of oppression.

I was lucky enough, privileged enough, to afford to be ignorant of such phenomena, but for some, these facts of social life are daily lessons of how they do not fit into a view of reality portrayed by mainstream culture. The concept of privilege positions in society was only made aware to me in recent years as I have had the luxury of learning about these subtle forms of oppression through continued study of social justice. (You will find the actual instructions for this assignment under the Paper Assignments tab.) The impact of this experience was heightened as John and the other students engaged one another in class on their experiences writing these reflections. Of particular note is the visceral experience John has in recognizing his own positionality vis-a-vis the studied class topic. I display this unedited reflection paper anonymously with permission of the author who I will call John. Rather than simply endorsing reflection papers and their potential to dramatically connect course content with students’ lives, I want to share an example.

Reflection paper