From the “Who am I” article I realized that privilege is not a straight line and that people can be privileged in different areas. Factors such as race, religion, sexuality, and nationality all play a part in determining someone's privilege; a person can be advantaged in one aspect but disadvantaged in another. “Unpacking the Knapsack of Privilege” exposed me to the idea that men's dominance over women is comparable to a racial majority's dominance over a racial minority. When you are in a dominant group, you do not think about other groups; but that is exactly the awareness that must happen in order for grievances to be addressed. I'm guilty of never having thought that my gender advantaged me in any way. I found it fascinating to see the ways in which the author’s race granted her certain freedoms and safety nets beyond what we typically think of (one particularly interesting one was how Band-Aids are naturally colored to match light skin). A fact from “Is Race Real” that surprised me was that most variation is not between but within races; 85% of total human genetic variation exists within local populations (so two random Norwegians are likely to be as genetically different as a Norwegian and a Korean). This illustrates that race is an illusion- we are all the same species regardless of phenotype differences.
