Privelege essays

Privelege essays I was born into a string of privileges: racial privilege, financial privilege, sexual privilege, physical privilege, educational privilege. I was born to parents who considered the education and nurture of their children their highest priority; I was born into a time and class in which my gender and religion are little impediment to doing whatever I take into my head to do. I have lived my entire life thus far without ever being robbed of the feeling that anything I want to do or have is, in some capacity, possible. While the element of liberal politics that seems to entail pious self-flagellation on the part of the fortunate can occasionally make me a little queasy in itself, it hardly seems expedient and only marginally sincere I believe that consciousness of this privilege is the first step towards realizing ones own responsibility in this world. That awareness fueled much of my community work in high school. Frankly, few are better equipped in terms of resources to improve the world than people like me, who possess both societal advantage and the will to work, who have what the poet Oliver Goldsmith, two hundred-odd years ago, called the luxury of doing good. The greatest challenge for me is keeping my energy and attention focused on that recognition, without getting distracted by the potential comforts and joys my vantage point offers. I chose to take this class over something more pragmatic (Ec 10, for example, or a Core class) in the first semester of my freshman year of college, with the desire for it to compel me to stay attuned to the outside world. The seductive treasures of this new world are such that Im in danger of becoming insular, of forgetting that I want to make a contribution to the world, not just benefit from it. The quotation read in class last week perfectly articulated my inner conflict, which in its most brutal terms is that between selfishness and altruism: &qu...