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“PRIVILEGE, POWER, AND DIFFERENCE” by Allan G. Johnson
  1. Page 2 “Problems of perception and defensiveness apply not only to
the language of race, but to an entire set of social differences that have become the has for it great deal of trouble in the world.”
  1. Page 7 “The simple truth is that when I go shopping, I'll probably get waited on faster and better than she will. I'll benefit from the cultural assumption that I'm a serious customer who doesn't need to be followed around to keep me from stealing some. thing, The clerk won't ask me for three kinds of 10 before accepting my check or accepting my credit card. But these indignities that my whiteness protects me from arc part of her everyday existence. And it doesn't matter how she dresses or behaves or that she's all executive in a large corporation. Her being black and the realtors' and bankers' and clerks' being white in a racist society is all it takes.”
  2. Page 15 “The trouble around difference is really about privilege and power-the existence of privilege and the lopsided distribution of power that keeps it going. The trouble is rooted in a legacy we all inherited, and while we're here, it belongs to us. It isn't our fault. It wasn't caused by something we did or didn't do. But now that it's ours, it's up to us to decide how we're going to deal with it before we collectively pass it along to the generations that will follow ours.”


Argument: In Privilege, Power, and Difference, Allan G. Johnson argues that we cannot even begin to eliminate privilege without first seeing that we have privilege.

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