Week 3 Blog
In Johnson's "The Trouble We're In: Privilege, Power, and Difference," she explains that groups are "pitted" against one another by the way that privilege is organized in society. We have this way of granting privleges to some, but not to others for no apparent reason. In this sense, it all comes down to privilege versus power. This is where we, as a society, put people on this pedistal, or hierarchy, and determine who should be able to do what, without really having a solid reason to back it up. When Johnson describes all of this, she explains that there are "unearned entitlements" and "unearned advantage." Unearned entitlements refer to things that people should just automatically have without being questioned. Unearned advantages are things that people say you are allowed to do, but only because of "x, y, and z." Also, she tells the reader about something called "conferred dominance" where one group has power over another. Altogether, Johnson explains that people are classified into these three different categories even if the outcome is not fair or logical.
To be more specific, some believe that whites have more power over colored people because of the way the world used to be so many years ago. In some people's eyes, that should still be the way it is today. When talking about gender, females are put into this hierarchy where men are "higher" than women are. Once again, this is because of how things were in the past. Difference is not the problem, though. People are just naturally afraid of what we know (again, from our past), that it is hard for individuals to step out of their so-called "comfort-zone" and stand up for what should really take place and what privileges should be granted to everyone.
In today's society, I do not believe that these privileges are as stressed as they were in the past. Equality with power is becoming much more common, at least with females and males. For example, women are starting to enter into more jobs in the work force that in the past men were only to partake in due to them having a certain privilege over women. Women's ideas are also being more valued, which plays a huge part in men not having as many privileges over women as there once was. Gender still plays a part in this since we have these so-called "roles" to fulfill whether we are male or female. As stated before, these "roles" are becoming much less common, and men and women are able to stand up for what they want to do as individuals with their own values and ideas.