Johnson Chapter 2

In the reading by Allen Johnson, I feel that his thesis is that privilege and power is based on the construct of society, and that difference between race and ethnicity varies from country to country. It is clear that the United States has put "labels" on people based on physical appearance. Americans use colors to describe people, which in essence allows people to make assumptions about that person. Johnson talks about how human beings have been dealing with racial lines or divides for so many years it is now ingrained in us. He states in the beginning of his article " Ignoring privilege keeps us in a sate of unreality by promoting the illusion that difference by itself is the problem." (12) Basically he is saying that the illusion or physical appearance is the cause of all problems. Johnson also talks about the "diversity wheel" which is a way to "group" people by different aspects of society. Some of these "groups" consist of race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, Education, Parental status, and Marital Status. He talks about how these categories determines your role in society, it also determines the privileges and powers you have. One of the things he talks about is how a persons life would change if they woke up one morning and were a different race, or woke up as a homosexual instead of heterosexual. How drastically one persons life would change if this happened. Johnson states in this chapter that "the trouble around diversity isn't just that people differ from one another. The trouble is produced by a world organized in ways that encourage people to use difference to include or exclude, reward or punish, credit or discredit, elevate or oppress, value or devalue, leave alone or harass." (16) This is stating again that people base opinions and how they treat someone by the physical apparence of another person. Johnson talks about how in different cultures they do not have just male and female genders, they have more than that based on how a person is born. One example is that in the Native American culture they have a nadle which is someone who is born with a mix of "male" and "female" biological make up. However these people do not get treated differently. One of the powerful statements Johnson says is that "race and all its categories have no significance outside systems of privileges and oppression in which they were created in the first place." (18) A women in Africa is not considered black until she arrives in the United States, where then she is limited to what she can and cannot do. In Johnson's article he defines privilege as, "when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they've done or failed to do." (21) One example he talked about, it how a straight or heterosexual female can talk about her life openly to anyways saying how she's married to a great guy. Talk to a gay or lesbian person and they have to be careful because revealing they are of a different sexual orientation can put them at risk. Johnson creates a list of privileges in everyday life, here are a few of the ones he mentions;
-Whites are less likely to be arrested, but once they are arrested they are less likely to be convicted.
-Whites are more likely to have loan applications approved than black people.
-Whites can assume that when they go shopping, they'll be treated as a serious customer and not as a potential shop lifter.
-Whites have greater access to quality health care and education.
-Men are charged lower prices for new and used cars.
-Heterosexuals can marry
These are just a few out of a list of about sixty. Johnson states that, "one of the most visible consequences of privilege is the uneven distribution of jobs, wealth, and income..." (32)

If we did not have the concept of privilege and power, how would this county and society be different? Would it be better or worse? According to Johnson, more people would be succeeding, more people would have jobs, and people wouldn't be afraid of talking out in public about themselves. If a person cannot talk in public about the gender of their significant other without fearing for their lives, that take away a huge freedom and sense of security. If society in the United States did not have that false sense of security more people would get along, and less people would be living in fear.

I think that a lot of what was said in this article was true, however i feel that the concepts are so "natural" and ingrained in the minds of Americans that it would be almost impossible to change it. I know a lot of people of different ethnic backgrounds, and sexual orientations, and religions, that it makes it so hard for me to look at them and realize that they will never have the oppotunity to do some of the things I will be able to do in my life. I never quit comprehended the struggles they have to go through everyday, until i became really good friends with them. There was one time where i was talking to one of my friends who happens to be a lesbian, and all of a sudden i found myself talking about getting married and having kids, then when i realized who i was talking to i felt guilty. These concepts of privilege really affect people in how they live their life. You only have certain freedoms, other things are just given to you based on how you look, and for the most part that is not fair.