Blazing the Trail: Teaching the Privileged about Privilege

TL;DRAbstract

Teaching students about privilege in any setting can be a diffi cult endeavor, but teaching these topics to undergraduate students who represent mostly privileged social identities (i.e., White, heterosexual, affl uent socioeconomic status) presents unique challenges. These identities describe the typical student population enrolled in small, selective, liberal arts colleges (Pryor, DeAngelo, Blake, Hurtado, & Tran, 2011). This type of academic setting, with highly privileged students, represents one of the most diffi cult arenas for teaching about privilege (Ahmed, 2008; Boatright-Horowitz & Soeung, 2009). These students usually come from homogeneous, affl uent neighborhoods (Pryor et al., 2011). Most rarely experience any substantive experiences with individuals different from themselves. Most importantly, almost all remain unaware of the privileges they possess and blind to the benefi ts of various forms of privilege and the impact on non-privileged groups (McIntosh, 1988). E

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