Arizona State University Promotes Workshops To 'Acknowledge Privilege', Publishes Multiple Privilege 'Checklists'

Clay Robinson | August 3, 2020
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An initiative called Project Humanities at Arizona State University (ASU) posted a series of workshops on their website pertaining to the ‘perils and perks of privilege,' including checklists for individuals who experience ‘privilege.'

The ‘Project Humanities’ initiative seeks to facilitate “critical conversations among diverse communities through talking, listening, and connecting” by exploring “shared ideas and experiences."

The initiative offers workshops that are “centered on participants’ vital voices, providing a model for understanding ‘difference’, identity politics, and acknowledging privilege."

According to Campus Reform, the initiative includes ‘checklists’ of privilege based on specific identities, including race, sexual orientation, gender, and socioeconomic status.

If you are Christianwhitethinmaleheterosexual, or able-bodied, Project Humanities has a privilege checklist for you. Interestingly, the site also included a privilege checklist for black males.

The black male privilege checklist splits privilege into several categories: leadership and politics, beauty, sex and sexuality, popular culture, attitudes and ideology, sports, diaspora and global, college, communication and language, relationships, church and religious traditions, and physical safety.

The checklist asked identifying black males to recognize privileges such as:

  • I don’t have to choose my race over my sex in political matters.
  • I have the privilege of not wanting to be a virgin, but preferring that my wife or significant other be a virgin.
  • If I go to an HBCU, I will have incredible opportunities to exploit black women.
  • I have the privilege of knowing men who are physically or sexually abusive to women and yet I still call them friends.
  • I have the privilege of marrying outside of the race at a much higher rate than black women marry.

Project Humanities also lists ‘pandemic’ privileges, which includes living in a house and having health insurance.

According to Project Humanities "Primer on Privilege," privilege is described as:

About how society accommodates you. It’s about the advantages you have that you think are normal. It’s about you being normal, and others being the deviation from normal.

Privilege is not negated. I can’t balance my white privilege against my female disadvantage and come out neutral. Privilege is not something you can be exempt from by having had a difficult life.

However, the site contradicts itself by telling readers that privilege is not “inherently bad,” but then goes on to say that privilege is bad for the privileged because it makes you blind and you are not forced to think about it.

Even reading the website alone constituted privilege because it assumes you have access to the internet. 

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