Understanding the concept of social privilege by example

[Pay attention, class.]

Social privilege is a set of unearned advantages and pre-existing priority afforded to one group over another. 


Typically, this kind of privilege is invisible to those who possess it, so that such people often have trouble understanding why those who lack such privilege are asking for equality. Isn't everyone already treated the same? Hence equal rights or treatment is termed by those resisting any acknowledgement of their own privilege as "special rights" and "special treatment".

In some cases there is a lurking sense by those resisting the acknowledgement of social privilege that true equality doesn't exist, so that they must lose out and take their turn being "down" to others if others are to "rise". In other cases the idea that equality is really special treatment is taken to such an extreme that arguments for equality are seen as just a ruse to attack and subjugate those identified as having privilege.

These kinds of resentful and fearful reactions can blend together in some really unhealthy and paranoid ways. Here are some recent examples of threatened-privilege derangement syndrome.

Glenn Beck: Obama Is About To Put Conservatives In Internment Camps

Tony Perkins Says Gay Rights Advocates Want Anti-Christian Holocaust, Will 'Start Rolling Out The Boxcars'

Evangelical Leaders Warn Of 'Secular Totalitarianism' And 'Jail' For U.S. Christians

Peter LaBarbera Fears LGBT History Initiative Will Destroy America

BarbWire Pundit Warns The 'Homosexual Juggernaut' Will Rival Nazi Germany

Yup.