The first few times I was the recipient of the flip verbal warning, “Check your privilege,” I wasn’t sure what it meant. — checking your privilege means acknowledging the role those rewards play in your life and the lives of less privileged people.”How exactly does it work? That’s white privilege, which is derived from institutional racism, e.g., the fact that people of color are much more commonly arrested — or worse — for minor legal violations. “Visibility helps to bring about acceptance,” Jennifer Finney Boylan, co-chair of GLAAD and a prominent trans writer, told me. I myself have also had to learn how privilege operates — invisible as it so often is to the one benefiting from it.

Source: Washington Post April 22, 2017 18:00 UTC