Playing The Game

Forwarded from a friend who I deeply respect and admire (and think is super fun to boot), this post - on Whatever by John Scalzi (who I know I'm supposed to know but can't pull out of my brain's muddled files) - is a great way to think about and explain privilege. I'm thinking it is a perfect start into yet another conversation with my white son about what society/culture has handed him without implying that he is or has done something bad. Which usually leads to the accompanying Spiderman "with power comes responsibility" talk.

The part about "Gay Minority Female" almost made me spray coffee out my nose.

Click through on the first line to read the entire post. It is well worth your time.

I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded word “privilege,” to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon. It’s not that the word “privilege” is incorrect, it’s that it’s not theirword. When confronted with “privilege,” they fiddle with the word itself, and haul out the dictionaries and find every possible way to talk about the word but not any of the things the word signifies.

So, the challenge: how to get across the ideas bound up in the word “privilege,” in a way that your average straight white man will get, without freaking out about it?