442 Quotes About Privilege

History is only ever invisible when it abets your sense of self, your desires, your ambitions, when it carries your life along in a kind of frictionless way.

[M]aking a show was better cover than trying to stay inconspicuous; Western capitalism in particular allowed the rich just about the right amount of behavioural leeway to account for the oddities our alienness might produce.

The bus was crowded, standing room only, and he clung apelike from a bar that hung down from the ceiling. It was humiliating to be packed in with all these people; it reminded him of a cattle car or worse, a sardine can, or worse...but what could be worse than this?

He was left-leaning and well-meaning, crippled by his acknowledgement of his own many privileges. He never allowed himself to have an opinion. 'Yes, I see what you mean,' he said often.

I despised how those pale-faced vegans held their little spoons, humbling themselves. Who do they think they are fooling, those bleached Brahmins? We all know that their low sitting is just another passage in their short lives. In the end, they will get bigger spoons and dig up the earth for their fathers’ and mothers’ inheritances.

You don't necessarily have to do anything once you acknowledge your privilege. You don't have to apologize for it. You need to understand the extent of your privilege, the consequences of your privilege, and remain aware that people who are different from you move through and experience the world in ways you might never know anything about.

Privileged groups, like everyone else, want to think well of themselves and to believe that they are acting generously and justly.

It means understanding that different kinds of oppression are interlinked, and that one can't liberate only one group without the others. It means acknowledging kyriarchy and intersectionality - the fact that along different axes, we're all both oppressed and oppressors, privileged and disprivileged.

But work used to be the lot of every man, and now it is rapidly becoming an aristocratic privilege. Men nowadays are more often paid not to work.