Questions about privilege (not a CMV type question!)

It's not really useful to think of privilege as a case-by-case, transactional factor as you have. There is race privilege. There is able-body privilege. There is prevalent profiling of people who appear to be Muslim or from the Middle East, which includes Sikh even though that is factually incorrect. "Privilege" is a concept. "Unequal treatment" and bias are how you see privilege being expressed in real life.

There is no question that "driving while black" exists and that there is grossly unfair and biased treatment toward black drivers. This phenomenon is known as "driving while black." It is an example of unequal treatment, the manifestation of the concept of privilege. The bias against people who appear to be Muslim may manifest in several ways, possibly by police who pull drivers over, but it is not an empirically proven phenomenon like "driving while black." There is a general system that oppresses people of color. Then there is the specific example of "driving while black."

If someone who believes you are able-bodied treats you in a way that is different from how they treat the disabled, you are seeing this able-bodied privilege in play as unequal treatment.

There is a concept of favored minorities in sociology and I'm sure other fields. White people are favored most. Asians are less favored but still more favored than black people. Light-skinned black people are favored over dark-skinned black people. This is not an exact list, I'm just trying to convey the gist of it. So there is a scale in this way. But it's really not useful to try to nail down the concept of privilege as binary or not. That is missing the point. Privilege acted out is unequal treatment.

/r/SRSQuestions Thread