from psychology today
NOTE: The article is written by a man about men, but can apply to any group of 'privileged' regardless to gender and/or race.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/feeling-our-way/201702/the-privilege-not-understanding-privilege
I think an important factor in men’s openness to considering their privilege is spending time with black people and with women who don’t resent them (although openness to privilege may in turn lead to not being resented). A black colleague long ago got an emergency call while he was jogging in Boston, so he just jogged right to the hospital—where they wouldn’t let him in to see the patient because he was wearing a jogging outfit. When he told me this story the next day, he genuinely wanted me only to laugh about it with him (to laugh bitterly, but still to laugh). My closest female friends want me to appreciate my male privilege, not to relinquish it. Similarly, I don’t want rich people to apologize for being born with money; I just want them to act like they know they didn’t earn it. If they do act like they earned it, I resent their money and start thinking about increasing the estate tax. White guys who ignore their privilege find themselves resented, and then they avoid the resentful. Not being so defensive can bring out the best in others, but it requires an acknowledgement that, in a memorable phrase, you were born on third base and only think you hit a triple. I was raised by parents who grew up in poverty; they made sure we knew we were lucky to be middle-class and white.
The privileged in any setting want to believe that their lack of stigma is earned and not a matter of chance. They take credit for their status as full-fledged members of their group. To do any less would be to acknowledge that they could easily have found themselves among the marginalized and stigmatized, and the one thing the authorized in any group must insist upon is that they are not like the stigmatized. The fiercest defense of a privileged status is to doubt it.
I don't have time to read the five pages of responses and counter responses to this right now, so please pardon if I repeat what someone else already said. And realize I am not intentionally ignoring anyone.
JUST looking at the above quoted opening post, I am strongly in support of true self-awareness for everyone. Knowing who you are and why, as well as where you are and HOW you are and why, is very important for anyone to live an authentic life, as well as an imperative, if ANY of us are to solve life problems in the most accurate way.
I see one potentially dangerous mistake in the opening post, as written. Here: "White guys who ignore their privilege find themselves resented, and then they avoid the resentful."
What I'm worried about, is that you appear to want those of us who DO have accidentally acquired privileges (in my case, being white and male) to accept what should accurately be called "revenge or counter racism-sexism" from those who suffered from OTHER white males, unrelated to us.
I hold EVERY grown individual responsible for their own behavior and to be self-aware. That includes both knowing that they are or are not artificially privileged, due to the society they chanced to be born into, AND to recognize that any given SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL who they are dealing with, is not responsible for every OTHER member of whatever group that the first individual perceives them to be a part of.
On the same side as this opening post, I want to slightly extend a good simile made there. In addition to my having no patience with people who were "born on third base, and want to be credited with hitting a triple," I ALSO have no patience with people who were born on first or second base, and want to be credited with three bases, simply because someone else either got a walk, which ALLOWED them to go to third.
In other words, I give a LOT more appreciation and respect to people who started from real nothing, and made it to the middle class; but very little to people who started with millions, and turned that into billions. This is because I also know that, just as baseball's rules "rigs" things so that people who are ON base, will get additional "free" bases when someone else is walked, so too the American economic system as it is now, is rigged so that ALREADY rich people suffer far less risk when investing, and get far more government assistance and financial protection, than those without great wealth.