Awareness of Privilege 1 RUNNING HEAD: INCREASING AWARENESS OF PRIVILEGE White and Male Privilege: The Consequences of Increasing Awareness of Privilege Jessica Copeland Rhodes College Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Arts degree with Honors in Psychology Awareness of Privilege 2 Abstract Research shows that educating people about inequalities is a delicate process that must be approached carefully. The Privilege Game was designed to educate about privilege through presenting empirical data and experiential learning. The present study investigated the success of this game by comparing it to other multicultural education tools (The Game of Oppression and The White Privilege video) and no treatment. The Privilege Game was more successful than The Game of Oppression and the control condition but was not always more effectual than the video. Additional modifications to The Privilege Game are recommended in order to make it more effective, particularly when compared to the video. Awareness of Privilege 3 White and Male Privilege: The Consequences of Increasing Awareness of Privilege The 2008 presidential race provides a unique mix of issues involving race and sex comparisons. In particular, the competition for the Democratic nomination provides an interesting juxtaposition of the African American situation with that of the female situation. For the first time ever in history, the Democratic candidate for the presidency will not be a White male; it will either be an African American male or a White female, both of whom have not had the privileged experiences of their White male predecessors. Personnel from both Barack Obama’s campaign and Hillary Clinton’s campaign have made comments about the competing candidate and advantages they have due to factors such as their race and sex. For example, Geraldine Ferraro, a fundraiser for the Clinton campaign, is no longer with the campaign after making the following statements regarding Obama: “If Obama was a White man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept” (Maddaus, 2008). Ferraro points out that there are huge disadvantages to being a female, while also making comments that reflect the ignorance that surrounds race issues in this country. The Revered Jeremiah Wright, former spiritual advisor to the Obama campaign, made similar comments regarding Clinton and her race: "Hillary was not a black boy raised in a single parent home. Barack was. Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich White people…. Hillary has never had her people defined as a non-person” (Mooney, 2008). Rev. Wright followed Ferraro’s ignorance in ignoring the hurdles that Hillary faces due to her sex. He was wrong when he said that her people have never been defined as a non-person because Awareness of Privilege 4 although Whites have not been treated this way, women have. Although these comments are negative in how they rank order types of disadvantage, at least their comments point out how the United States continues to struggle with these issues. Instances of overt racism and sexism, such as burning crosses in someone’s yard or espousing the idea that women are not as intelligent as men, have lessened in polite society. Because blatant discrimination is less frequent than it has been in the past due to such events as the women’s suffrage movement and the overturning of Jim Crow laws, individuals in the dominant group (i.e., Whites, males, etc.) are often seduced into thinking that discrimination is a thing of the past (Lehrman, 2003; McIntosh, 2003). However, closer examination shows that discrimination has just taken the new form of privilege that creates inequality, despite the fact that we are “taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on [the privileged] group” (McIntosh, 2003, 191). Consequently, education about racism and sexism need to dissuade people from the notion that gender and race inequality are ancient history. White privilege and male privilege are two ways in which inequalities are created between the races and sexes (McIntosh, 2003). Although Whites no longer force African Americans to use separate bathrooms or drinking fountains, Whites still enjoy privileges that are results of their skin color of which African Americans do not have the benefit (McIntosh, 1992; McIntosh, 2003; Wise, 2004). Males, too, benefit from their sex in ways that females do not (McIntosh, 1992). Because certain individuals are given advantages due to the color of their skin or their sex, others are put at a disadvantage. For example, African Americans can often have a hard time relating to their supervisors and Awareness of Privilege 5 teachers more often than Whites do because people in these positions are often White themselves (McIntosh, 2003). African Americans’ lesser rapport with authorities impedes their success and decreases the likelihood that they will win a promotion. Whites are exempt from the stress that results from working under someone of a different race, so they feel comfortable at work, unencumbered by the hassles that African Americans face. Similar arguments can be made about women working for men because it occurs much more often than men working for women, which can admittedly be difficult for men too. However, it is much less common for men to work under women; therefore, men are privileged in this way. Gender discriminations start even at a young school age because beginning in nursery school, it has been demonstrated that teachers on average give eight times more individual instruction to boys than they do to girls (O’Reilly & Borman, 1984). These inequalities persist throughout life because as these females enter the workplace, they will find that their yearly earnings are substantially smaller than those of men with the same qualifications in the same positions (Durden & Gaynor, 1998). The purpose of the present research is to refine a game designed to promote awareness of two types of privileges that many individuals are awarded on a daily basis: White privilege and male privilege. Experiencing how these advantages play out in the game will hopefully raise awareness about the prejudicial benefits that certain groups enjoy and the subsequent disadvantages of other groups. The ultimate goal is that this awareness will lead privileged individuals to make efforts to counteract the injustices that plague their disadvantaged counterparts. We examined the effectiveness of a game the experimenters created to educate about privilege, while also comparing its effectiveness Awareness of Privilege 6 to that of other education tools that are utilized in the field of multiculturalism. A “Game of Life” styled board game was created in which participants experience life as a privileged individual as well as a nonprivileged individual. Educating privileged individuals about the concept of privilege, its effects, and its pervasiveness in society is the goal of this multicultural awareness research. With the game, we hope to not only enlighten its players about the privileges some people groups enjoy but also about how association with such privileged groups makes individuals personally privileged. We hope to motivate privileged people and nonprivileged people alike to take steps to reduce inequality in addition to making constructive changes in the players’ race-related and sex-related attitudes in the most positive manner possible. With the study itself, we hope to learn more about the effectiveness of some multicultural tools that are manufactured and widely distributed in education circles. Plus, we want to see how The Privilege Game measures up to these successful educational devices. It is important to remember that discrimination awareness is not sufficient to institute social change. Because overt discrimination is largely absent today, people often feel that action is either no longer necessary or the action needs to only be creating laws against discrimination. But with 25 years of anti-discrimination laws, social inequities are still thriving, so something else must be perpetuating inequity: privilege. So the next step in creating equality is eliminating privilege, but it is a hard concept to see and may be even harder to eliminate. Even when Whites and males acknowledge the fact that their situations are better than their counterparts, they are often resistant to accept the fact that African Americans and females have a poorer lot due to the advantages males and Whites receive everyday Awareness of Privilege 7 (Lowery, Knowles, & Unzueta, 2007). By telling Whites and males that they receive the jobs and salaries that they do because of their skin color or sex, their self-image can be threatened. When a White male is told that he achieved his career partly due to his sex and skin color, this could communicate to him he is not as intelligent or talented as he thought. Because this can be threatening to Whites’ and males’ self-worth, they might deny the existence of privilege altogether. It appears to be easier for the privileged groups to admit that nonprivileged groups are disadvantaged, but making the link that you cannot have disadvantages on one side without having privileges on the other is not something that privileged individuals are quick to do. This is due partly to the threat to their self- identity mentioned above, but also due to the fact that making this link implies a responsibility on the part of privileged individuals for the poorer situations of nonprivileged groups. It is easier for privileged individuals to say, “Since I do not discriminate, the inequality is not my problem.” Modern Sexism and Racism Just as it would be entirely unacceptable for someone to commit an overt act of racism, there are severe consequences for acting overtly sexist towards females.