Johnson chapter 8-

Every one has been in trouble at some point or another and we all try to find a way to get “off the hook” Being “on” or “off the hook” is what determined if we got in trouble or not; this same concept takes place in Johnson’s Chapter 8. Johnson’s thesis is that one way or another weather your “on” or off the hook” that everyone is involved in privilege and oppression and there is no way to avoid it.

Denial is a beautiful thing. If we deny something then we are automatically, or so we think, “off the hook.” This is what most people of privileged groups do, when the topic of privilege and oppression is brought up. If they deny it, then it doesn’t really exist. If the privileged aren’t denying the fact that they are privileged, then they are blaming the oppressed for not being privileged enough. A white man can say something extremely racist about his black equal and know that no other whites will say anything about it. This is because whites are dominant and have privilege and the rest of the population just wants to follow “the path of least resistance.” Thus perpetuating the problem of white privilege not being seen as a problem, but making the suffering that the oppressed groups endure no fault but their own. Another way the privileged can deny being privileged is by calling it something completely different. Using the example that Johnson does, in the world of privilege the issue of “gender inequality is often seen as a game of battle of the sexes.” Calling the issue of gender inequality a game allows the privileged men to feel that there is no such thing. If these two forms of denial are combined then the assumption that everyone is happy with the way things are, is made. Weather or not this is the truth, it still doesn’t matter, society doesn’t want the truth, it just wants the world to keep on going as is.

So, if a white man says something racist or sexist, even if it was unconsciously, and just says “Oh, I didn’t mean anything by it,” he is “off the hook.” There was no ill will or bad intentions he was just making a joke that incidentally offended someone. When he says “Oh, I didn’t mean anything by it” he is actually admitting that he did indeed say it but I just didn’t think about it. Privilege, however, makes it easy for him to not be aware of what he said and this is the norm for our society. The privileged or, the white heterosexual male, can get away with just about anything. But let’s say that a white man had an epiphany and is now acknowledging that there is a problem with privilege and oppression, all he has to say is I am a good person so the problems aren’t my fault. Not doing anything about it, however, and staying silent makes him part of the problem. It is his problem because the oppression that many groups feel are because he is privileged, and he is privileged because they are oppressed. But because he is a good person he becomes blind to the fact that this is true.

The fact that Johnson is part of the privileged group, white heterosexual male, makes it kind of odd that he is talking about these issues. Johnson is breaking a norm; he is supposed to be blind to things like this. His privilege, no matter how unbiased he is trying to be affects what he writes, even if he doesn’t realize it. Everyone has thoughts buried in their head that unconsciously affect how they talk and act. It will take years for someone to learn to ignore those thoughts in the back of their head. Now I assume that Johnson has done his best to silence those racist thoughts, but no matter what those thoughts are still going to be there, the same goes for the rest of the world. So, Johnson’s position of privilege in society affects how he writes, even if he is trying not to let it.

Through out all the Johnson readings I kept thinking about the fact the he is part of the privileged group. I felt as if he was, in a way, mocking the whole idea of privilege and oppression; like he knows its there but doesn’t really care. I know his writings say otherwise but the thoughts are still there.

Johnson chapter 6

The thesis of Johnson’s chapter six, “What It All Has to Do with Us” is that individualism is part of privilege and oppression, but it’s not anyone fault that it is so.

Everyone thinks that they are an individual, which is partly true, but in reality we are only individuals inside of a system. And the system dictates what is right or “normal” reality, but we can’t have a system (of any kind) with out people/individuals. People, as children, learn what their identity is by these systems; their race, gender, disability status and religion are just some of the things that we learn in a system. This is done by “socialization” and “the path of least resistance” We learn who we are and how to act by our surroundings, a growing influence of which is television and movies. All of this is what Johnson calls “socialization.” A lot of the time, however, what we learn during the socialization process is wrong but we never acknowledge it as such.

Another way that people are shaped by the systems that they are in is by what Johnson calls “the path of least resistance.” Otherwise known as following the social norms that are set up by the systems. When a person does something that is not “normally” done, for instance (using the same example Johnson does) standing in the back of the elevator facing the wall instead of the door, that person is violating a social norm. “The path of least resistance” is doing what your told, going with the flow and a way of systems keeping people/individuals in line and doing what they want them to. Johnson uses the example of the game of Monopoly as a system to show that individuals and their social systems make the patterns of social life. The only way Monopoly can start is if people start to play and if you are following “the path of least resistance” you are going to play. Johnson uses his example of his greedy behavior during Monopoly and not greedy at all behavior outside of the game to show that for every different situation there are different behaviors.

These patterns become privilege and oppression, which we previously have read by Johnson, and they become part of “the path of least resistance” practically, forcing us to be involved with privilege and oppression. And the good guys are inadvertently causing oppression to the “minorities,” just by following the “path,” even when they have no intentions of doing so. The good guys follow this “path” because they don’t know of any others and in sticking with “the path of least resistance” they are involuntarily supporting the privilege and oppression that comes with such a system.

The consequences of Johnson’s argument in our world today would be dire. As he said in the chapter we don’t talk about such things because it violates social norms. If anyone in the dominant group (heterosexual, white and male) would read this, Johnson would be ridiculed (just as the man who objected to the sexist comment about a women, in his chapter, was). Johnson makes us think about things that our social systems don’t want us to and that’s why this chapter, and probably the whole book and Johnson himself will/would be ridiculed and mocked.

I liked that Johnson used the example of Monopoly, it really helped the whole idea of systems and individuals and their relation to one another, stick in my head. I’m a pretty open-minded person so this article and all the previous that we have read make me think about our society. People/individuals are just the hamsters making the wheel turn; society cares about the systems not the individuals who run it.

Johnson Chapter 3

The thesis of Chapter 3, “Capitalism, Class and the Matrix of Domination” is that capitalism brought white privilege to us and it isn’t going away for quiet a while.
Throughout Chapter 3, Johnson talks about how and why capitalism plays such a large role in white privilege. Starting off with what capitalism is Johnson tells us that, in a nutshell, all capitalists want is to make money and they do that by using the cheapest ways possible to make the most amount of money possible. The most popular way of getting cheap labor and continuing to make a good profit is by taking the jobs to those who will work for less than Americans do. This “outsourcing” of jobs and the oppression of the freed slaves fuels racism. And this racism that “whites” had over the “blacks” after the Civil War led the “whites” to create a system that said, to be human was to be “white,” otherwise known as Manifest Destiny.
The capitalists use this racism to keep their white workers pay low and have the same production rates, if not more and threaten them with the possibility of job loss if more compensation is requested. So, to make it easier on themselves the capitalist use “migrant workers,” who will work for less, just so they can work. Then this angers the white workers who then take it out on the migrant workers proving that capitalism fuels racism.
Capitalists are even racist against those with disabilities and women. And women are the ones who raise the workers that fuel the capitalism, and they are still discriminated against.
Privilege is confusing in and of itself, then add capitalism to the mix, its even more confusing. After reading chapter 2, we know what privilege is and how it works. Here we just clarify that the social class that you are privileged or unprivileged as, is made by capitalism. You are put into a social class by how much your income is and income is controlled by the capitalists who are controlling the jobs and what people earn at that job. However, privilege is by more than just your social class, it is also effected by your sexual orientation, gender and race. Also as we learned before you can be privileged in one area and not in another. In this chapter we learn that one privilege can reinforce another, having access to one privilege, effects access to other forms, and one form of privilege can serve as compensation for not having another. The most important connection of race and privilege is that when the minorities are competing with each other over jobs, it distracts them form the more pertinent issue of privilege. And as Johnson put it “we cant get rid of racism without doing something about classism and sexism because the system that produces one also produces the other, therefore connecting them.” The moral of the story here is that capitalism fuels all of these “isms”
racism, classism and sexism. Until the capitalist system vanishes our society will continue to have all of the above.
From seeing all that I have in today’s world all of Johnson’s findings are correct. All of Johnson’s findings support the sexism that females receive, the racism that “minorities” receive and so on. I know that his findings support this because it is very well documented of the struggles that minorities and women endured, and still are. It is documented in movies, books and from leaders in the past, like, Martin Luther King Jr. and Susan B Anthony.
I felt that his article was very informative. Most of the parts about sexism I knew but that is only because I am a female. I was very surprised to learn that capitalism fuels all of this racism and sexism though. I guess it makes sense, but I never really thought about it until I read this article.

Johnson PPD chap 2

In chapter two, Privilege, Oppression and Difference, of Alan Johnson’s book “Power, Privilege and Difference” the thesis is that fear disallows us to see what is really going on with privilege and power distribution. This chapter focuses mainly on the fact that people are privileged and those who are, have power over those who don’t.

Everyone is different and culturally we are afraid of the different, but this fear is learned, not inherited. Johnson gives us the “diversity wheel” so we can “map” out we are as individuals, and asks us to think about; what if we are straight and woke up gay the next day? How would that change how other people see you? Diversity is a good thing, but the trouble with it is that our world uses peoples’ differences against them. And those differences we see, on the outside, automatically places that person into a category. For instance when you see a man in a wheelchair, we automatically place him into the disabled category and therefore he must be incompetent and need help with everything in his daily life. The man in the wheelchair is what he becomes; no matter if he has a Ph D. in medicine he is still that man in a wheelchair. Thoughts like this, about the man in the wheelchair, or any other person with any disability for that matter, are all constructed in society. Just as society told us to make the man in the wheelchair inferior to and able-bodied man, society created that word, disabled. The word “disabled” is now significant and when we look at the man in the wheelchair that is all we see.

Now what is even more significant is if the man in the chair is black or white. If the man in the wheelchair is white he has privilege over the comparable black man in the same situation. Obviously the white man doesn’t feel privileged over the black man but the white man is treated better in society. Society sees the disabled as incompetent but in the black vs. white situation, the white man is treated as less incompetent. The white man is taking part in the “luxury of obliviousness,” he doesn’t realize that he has privilege in the situation. Continuing with “race,” white people have many privileges over everyone else in the world and it boils down to economics. The author Alan Johnson has taken information from the US census and according to that “the average white household has more than 14 times the net wealth of the average black household.” This makes it easier for white people to get a good education, health care and even housing. The privilege that whites get over blacks, men over women, heterosexual over homosexuals and the non-disabled over the disabled is a social system. This system places people into a category depending on their race, sex, orientation, and their abilities; and depending on what category your in is how you get treated. Culturally because the white man is privileged he must be happy, but that isn’t always true. Just knowing that he is privileged may make him unhappy, because he knows that others are suffering because of his privilege. Of course with every privilege there is oppression.

Johnson does pose a very good and mostly true argument, however in today’s world “white” people are not as privileged as the reading says. Privilege is basically given to the majority, which used to be white males but now as America’s melting pot grows there are more and more people who were once considered minorities, becoming the majority. With new races becoming the majority it is going to be very hard to give the white majority privilege. You can see this happening just by watching television. We have a black man and a woman running for President of the United States. More and more of a variety of ethnicities are filling political roles and they are the most privileged people in the world.

I enjoyed the reading it was very interesting. Privilege is something we all know about but never think about and it was nice to get a small reality check on the matter.