Why has "privilege" has become so polarizing?

            I’d like to preface this piece by giving a huge “thank you” to everybody who read my piece, be it on Thought Catalog or on my actual blog. The overwhelmingly positive responses I’ve received have been fantastic, and I’m truly grateful for every single one. However as a newbie freelance writer in the age of technology, I am even more aware that with praise inevitably comes criticism: in this particular instance, it is with my use of the word “privilege”. Before I get into the nitty gritty, let’s define the word at hand.

            Merriam Webster online defines privilege as:

1. A right or benefit that is given to some people and not to others
2. The advantage that wealthy and powerful people have over other people in a society

Upon first glance, both definitions seem to imply something snobbish. The word itself drips with condescendence even when one says it. Though more often than not, privilege is mostly seen as an unfair advantage that one set has over another (and in most cases, it is such), it is not necessarily something that should be held against the advantageous party. So why is it? Why has “privilege” managed to touch the nerves of all who choose to discuss it, advantaged or not? Why has it become just as polarizing as calling somebody a racist?

            The answer is found in a September 2013 Thought Catalog piece written by Kate Menendez titled “Being Privileged is Not a Choice, So Stop Hating Me For It” . Ms. Menendez spends the next 500 words or so explaining why she feels pressure to lie about her lack of student loan debt, the expensive designer suits she purchases (for professional use at her “self-earned internship”), and her need to defend her swanky high-rise digs when she tells people she’s a student living there. Finally, she ends the piece by unapologetically stating that “there is always money in her bank account” but “your situation doesn’t change her situation” and she will “respect your background if you respect hers”.

Therein is where the problem lies. Most people who are fortunate enough to live under the umbrella of privilege for most or all of their lives maintain this same type of victimized attitude, alleging that “it’s not their fault they’re rich”. Ms. Menendez’s piece may have been more persuasive had she not managed to sound like a braggart in the process of trying to garner empathy from her audience. My issue with her piece was not the fact that she is privileged and complaining about it, but the fact that she believes those who are not somehow envy or hate her for having such a fortunate life.

This type of attitude is the reason why “privilege” has become the newest term in the offensive word lexicon. In a society that coddles more often that it confronts, it is no wonder that some who are privileged don’t fully understand its glaring existence that goes unspoken. Nobody is chastising another for living in a luxury apartment or wearing J.Crew suits: material goods are but a miniscule reinforcement privilege. What I and possibly others take issue with is the underlying insecurity that comes with feeling the need to justify these things as unwarranted perks they just so happened to experience.

Ms. Menendez wants her audience to “stop making her feel like she’s done something wrong”, yet nobody has accused her of doing so. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being privileged. However, it’s one thing to consider it a blessing, recognize it as such, and use those lessons as a means to enlighten others on the socio-economic inequalities present in today’s society and it is another to lie about being fortunate in order to compensate for some imaginary prejudice you feels about their financial situation, and essentially claim that being fortunate actually makes YOU a victim. Anybody who is truly understanding of the way the world works will not hold the financial fortune of one’s parents against them: there are poor people in this world, there are extremely rich ones, and there are ones who lie in limbo of these two, or somehow lie in a cross-pollinated version of them. This is a concept that is foreign to many kids of privilege, who believe that being rich somehow means that those who aren’t could never understand the pressures of being upper-middle class, whatever they entail.

Due to America’s lack of comfort with any potentially polarizing topic of interest, privilege is a concept that is neither fully understood, nor fully explained. Society’s fear of talking about “uncomfortable” topics has led to the mutually exclusive views of the word: one is either privileged and naïve of their blessing, or underprivileged and hyperconscious of their lack of it. Because it is a topic that makes some people squeamish, it leads to a subconscious feeling of shame and/or embarrassment on both ends, thus creating the ever-present tension between the fortunate and the less fortunate. If we collectively recognize that those who are fortunate are not always bragging or ungrateful for what they have, it will clear a lot of misconceptions about those who have the power to directly inflict change on their lives and on others. In the same respect, those who are privileged should also recognize that the ones who don’t have as much aren’t envious or un-empathetic-they merely ask you to give your status the same recognition that I do, and to take it in stride, especially if you are not abusing it.

As a society, it’s our job to realize that most times, discomfort in discussion ultimately leads to a path of clarity. The sooner we start talking, the sooner we’ll start understanding how the other half lives.

25 Signs You Were A Minority Attending Private School in New York City

Yesterday, I shared a Thought Catalogue piece entitled "33 Signs You Went To Private School In New York City". I found many of the things listed to be familiar to me, occasionally nodding and saying "oh yeahhhh!" as I searched my memories for those moments. Later that night, I realized why those things were so familiar-the list was written by a girl who graduated a year previous at my high school. Although the list of things she compiled was familiar, none of it was relatable to me simply because I wasn't a privilege white kid who grew up with money. Many of my peers were the ones who did all of these things, and my memories are of myself watching these kids revel in their privilege without them being conscious of it. To them, country houses and luxury Manhattan digs were normal, not a phenomenon.

In lieu of this, I've compiled my own list of signs; however, this time, I would hope that a lot of my friends and high school peers will find my list to be directly relatable because they are derived from our experiences in the world of privilege. Granted, everyone's experience is subjective, but I'm sure there are at least two or three things that will make you as a reader say "YES GIRL!" or "Wow, throwback!" at least one time.

25 SIGNS YOU WERE A MINORITY ATTENDING A NEW YORK CITY P RIVATE SCHOOL

1. You had no less than a 40-45 minute commute not by Supertrans, but by MTA bus or subway to get to your school on the Upper East Side, or in a nicer part of the borough you resided in.
2. Everyone (including you at times) referred to Manhattan as “the City” without acknowledging there are four other boroughs that are part of that description.
3. One of the first things you did once arriving at your school was count the number of people in your classes of similar shade as you…
4. ….then approached them and promptly asked “are you a Prep kid?”
5. Having five-star meals prepared by school chefs, an extensive fruit and salad bar, ice cream, and home-cooked breakfast made you feel like you were at a hotel every day.
6. Your white friends would ask you about the latest hip-hop track and popular rappers, as well as teaching them the latest hip-hop dance craze (re: 2005 southern rap dances).
7. Except for that one episode of ‘Hey Arnold’, you didn’t know about bar/bat mitzvahs until your arrival in seventh grade…
8. …only to subsequently attend roughly 10-20 of those things over the course of your middle school career.
9. You spent most of your days on the Upper West Side with your friends in their lavish, marble-floored apartments saying to yourself “so this is what it’s like to have money”.
10. DAIS and SDLC are two unforgettable acronyms…
11. …whose personal impact and parties/events were twice as memorable.
12. Joan and Ken Marable (better known as Mr. and Mrs. Marable) were the real-life Cosbys.
13. The term “inter-school” didn’t refer to sports competition between schools, but the network of minority kids in private schools to which you belonged.
14. Going to house parties on weekends at your classmates’ Manhattan apartments was like stepping into a scene straight out of a high school movie, underage drinking, drugs, and all.
15. Sitting with the other kids of color at lunch was prime time chat for inter-school gossip and drama, but also served as a refuge to discuss certain things you couldn’t with your white friends, like cultural happenings and the like.
16. Having Tina Fey as your graduation speaker, seeing Kathleen Turner at PTA meetings, or touring Kevin Bacon around your school’s campus seems normal until you go back to your neighborhood and your friends are distantly star-struck.
17. Speaking proper English inevitably led to someone in your neighborhood saying “you sound like a white person” or accusing you of “trying to be/sound white”.
18. When most of your grade was enjoying a week of fun in the sun and debauchery in the Bahamas spring break senior year, you were braving the harsh New York City spring with your group of friends…
19. …because when you asked your parents to foot the $1000 travel cost, they looked at you as if you were mentally unhinged.
20. You were the first girl in your neighborhood to wear UGG and Juicy Couture, before it became “hood chic”.
21. You were the only guy in your grade at school with every notable Jordan or signature Nike sneaker worth having.
22. College choices weren’t as simple as “picking your favorite school”, but also which school would give you the best financial aid package as well as education.
23. Not washing your hair daily and/or wearing protective styles confused your white female friends, even after subsequent explanation or reasoning.
24. Using coded language between your private school set of friends and your neighborhood set of friends seemed more like a job at times than it was a convenience, and being with both groups felt like stepping into two different worlds.
25. You realize that your experiences as a person of color in the world of privilege (both good and bad) are ones that have molded you into the well-rounded, well-educated, walking success story that you are today.

Not just a man's game: Why Women Should Trade Baking Pies for Watching Pigskin

For as long as I can remember, sports have primarily been the defining factor as to what makes a “man’s man”. Whether it’s the hanging team jerseys that greet you overhead in a local Modell’s or something as casual as a beer commercial for the Super Bowl with a group of men crowded around a 60” TV screen, men undeniably overpopulate sports culture. It’s common fodder that women are merely along for the ride when it comes to sports- forcibly watching games with their boyfriend while pretending to understand what’s going on, their highest level of participation in Super Bowl Sunday being a homemade guacamole dish for him and his boys, wearing pink Yankee jerseys simply to look cute at the stadium.

            Therein lies the dichotomy. Why are women and enjoying sports still seen as mutually exclusive things? The introduction of the WNBA in the late 90s, the popularity of female athletes such as Skylar Diggins and Lindsay Vonn, and the growing presence of female sports analysts, have created a growing middle in the Venn diagram of females and athletics. As an avid lover of [almost] all things sports-related, I am constantly pushing for women to take more of an interest in a male-dominated field.  These three reasons are why women should get comfortable with a man’s game and take charge:

1. Greater female interest in sports culture could lead to an increase in sponsorship for female athletes.

If you have ever watched a WNBA and an NBA game, one of the differences between them is their jerseys. NBA jerseys are simple and stylish for the most part: respective team colors with the organization’s name emblazoned across the front, with the player’s last name (or now, in some cases, nicknames) and number on the back. It’s the same for the WNBA, with one marked difference: a company logo perched atop the team name. Why is it that WNBA players are forced to essentially become walking billboards? The answer is simple: lack of big-name, high roller sponsors from companies like McDonalds, Gatorade, and Bud Light. If more women (especially those in higher places) took an avid interest in athletics, big name sponsors would see female professional sports as a viable business investment due to the high volume of interest generated by fans, not by the players themselves. That coupled with better marketing tactics could save the WNBA from financial ruin and put it on par with its more popular older brother.

2. More interest means more money for WNBA players.

In lieu of this, bigger sponsors mean bigger salaries. An NBA player earns an astonishing 70.8 times more his female counterpart: the average NBA player earned $5.15 million annual salary in 2013, while the average WNBA player earned only $72,000. First round draft picks in the NBA earn a minimum of $1.3 million at the 14^th pick cutoff point-WNBA rookies earn $35,000 at any rookie level, 37.1 times more than her male counterpart. The icing atop the cake of disparity is the gap in salary cap between both organizations: the NBA’s salary cap is currently set at $58 million, 70.9 times more than the WNBA’s mere $818,000. Even a shoddy player like Eddy Curry can afford to burn his year’s earnings and still have more money than the WNBA, which speaks volumes on the importance of female professional athletics. The key here is recruiting well-known males in the entertainment and sports industries to back the WNBA and vouch for the organization as a functional and highly profitable market of interest for both fans and businesses alike. Although popular female basketball players like Brittney Griner and Candace Parker help to boost the WNBA’s reputation as a viable place for superstar talent, it’s undeniable that having the backing of someone like Kevin Durant, Lebron James, or Chris Paul could skyrocket the popularity and marketability of the WNBA as a whole.

3. Female presence in sports culture will slowly but surely work to eradicate sexist overtones in the industry.

Melissa Ludtke, a female sports journalist, made her mark in 1977 by demanding that she be allowed into the locker room for post-game interviews during the 1977 World Series. Although she was granted permission to do so, this did not sit will with the players nor the coaches, and she felt like an outsider because she was one. Almost 30 years later, there are a greater number of publicly recognized and respected female journalists from the likes of Suzy Kolber to Sage Steele. The growing presence of female journalists have created a different dynamic for 21^st century women in sports: it is acceptable to be feminine and completely knowledgeable on something that was not designed for them to understand. To play upon a sexist point of view, having attractive woman like Hazel Mae give viewers the rundown on the status of current MLB players will generate more interest off of looks alone, and have men thinking twice about increasing female reporting on and off the field. The old saying “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” perfectly describe this.

Though we are conditioned to believe that women and athletics just don’t mix, the growing presence of women in sports combats the aforementioned antiquated notion. To pique interest, professional sports clubs should cater more to their female audience: filming comical commercials where a chick’s march madness bracket was the only correct one in her pool of male friends, having more female athletes star in endorsement commercials (remember that cool one where Mia Hamm was sweating lemon-lime Gatorade in 1997?), hiring more female correspondents on all major sports networks, even something as simple as approaching female fans during bar trivia.

This Super Bowl Sunday, we’ll bring the beers. You boys just worry about making the dip.