Allan G. Johnson's Privilege, Power & Difference

Privilege, Power and Difference, the subject of today's response.

    As I read Allan G. Johnson’s Privilege, Power and Difference, I am reminded of and forced to once again confront a number of elements. To start, though I am non-binary, I am male presenting and certainly enjoy many of the societal benefits that come with being a man. Likewise, I am bisexual, but am in a straight presenting relationship despite both of us identifying with the non-binary spectrum. Additionally, I am white, of middle class, and aside from seasonal affective disorder do not suffer from mental illness. So I have found myself in the unique position of being someone who technically has (and upon demonstrating the less obvious sides of my identity am more prone to experience) the ability to speak on disadvantage and discrimination on a societal level. But my perception is most certainly warped due to the shields I have from this, and I also understand better than many who are more obviously marginalized the defensiveness that rises in you unwittingly when an accusatory finger is pointed towards you. Allan Johnson likely shared this experience, as a white man with a wife, and this makes for a reading that speaks to me and my experience of the world and its relationship with minorities better than most. 

Allan G. Johnson, author of Privilege, Power and Difference.

I’ve come to understand how entangled each subject of oppression is. An example I like to use is this: police brutality is an issue that you would be hard pressed to argue doesn’t exist. There have been countless recorded instances since the early 1990’s of police using brutal, unnecessary force, and even today the conversation is as topical as ever. Many would say that this is an issue of racism, and the police targeting black people. However, statistics suggest that while a bigger part of the black population is affected due to its relative size, just as many white people as black people seem to be targeted and brutalized by police each year. The constant in this is that police brutality is almost always in low income neighborhoods, which are, of course, more prone to crime. However, while this is true and I would suggest is the leading target of police brutality (that is to say, people that can’t afford to defend themselves or people that have done ‘wrong’ and therefore deserve to be beaten in the minds of a power-warped authority), you can’t make this argument without also acknowledging that low income neighborhoods house more people of color than most neighborhoods due to previous systematic oppression, and through entirely different systematic problems, it is near impossible for anyone to get out of poverty once in it. Not only does this make minority communities disproportionate targets of police brutality, but it also leads to the stigma that all minorities are low-income and/or criminals, which then allows this already serious issue to affect people of color that aren’t in poor neighborhoods when police and others assume they’re low income, and therefore, criminals.   

This is how entangled our systematic issues are, and to confront them properly means to confront them all. This is why it is important for authors like Allan Johnson to reassert the importance of understanding privilege, and how those with it can utilize it for good. It’s what I appreciate most about his writing- the theme of accountability, not judgment that echoes throughout the work. It’s not a crime to have privilege; we are born with it. But it is important to recognize it and use it to advocate for those who don’t have privilege, to work towards turning those privileges into rights for all. This is the thesis of Johnson’s piece, and it’s a message that I can happily get behind.