Avoiding Privilege

When talking to people, one question that I would ask was, is privilege a bad thing? Now that I look back on it, I should reword the question to receive fewer bias responses but what I found was interesting. Every person I had asked so far said pretty much the same words. The initial response was a strict, "No," and then after realizing what saying what they thought 'No' meant to answer this question, the following response was "No? Well, not all the time". They would then wiggle there way up, down, and around their own privilege to try and answer the question as politically correct as possible. This realization was hilarious to me because having read a lot about privilege, I have found that the word "Privilege" has a negative connotation attached to it though having privilege is not a good or bad thing. It is what you do with the Privilege you have that matters. 

One example I heard from a person I talked to was that privilege is okay unless it is someone like a spoiled, bratty, rich boy who isn't thankful for what he has. This brought up another question that I had not asked which was, are you thankful for the privilege you have? I wish I had asked them right there and then so I could see if they would try and run away from the real answer. 

In an article written by Beth Cooper Benjamin, "On Not Seeming Like You Want Anything: Privileged Girls' Dilemmas of Ambition and Selflessness" She specifically talks about the girl scouts Troop 19 in the Northeastern part of the US and how the fear of seeming privileged can hinder how the girls in the troop handle their ambition and selflessness. Troop 19 is located in a very affluent part of the United States, and Beth Cooper noticed that the girls in the troop were having this dilemma. I noticed this same dilemma in responding to privilege in the many people I talked to on a college campus, where most people are living on loans and piles of debt but still have an education, a house to live in, amongst other things that "unprivileged" people would not have. They would almost feel bad for saying they do not believe privilege is bad and then try to work their way to the right answer when in reality there is no right or wrong answer. Another person even asked me "am I walking into a trap" when I asked what the word privilege meant to them.

Benjamin, Beth C. "On Not Seeming Like You Want Anything: Privileged Girls' Dilemmas of Ambition and Selflessness."Educating Elites: Class Privilege and Educational Advantage, edited by Howard, Adam, 2010, pg 147-164, https://search.proquest.com/docview/884843661/.