This section will take you about 10-15 minutes to sift through, as well as some heavy-duty questions to consider.

Confronting Privilege

Confronting our privilege as students abroad is one of the most challenging parts of an international experience. We are often exposed to poverty, prejudice, or stories from marginalized communities of which we were totally unaware. Privilege is not something that can be shaken off and not something that can be ignored. At the same time, it's not something easy to talk about. Before you get started in this section, take into consideration a few moments of your time abroad when you were suddenly awakened to your position in the world, or your power as a young college student coming from the US. If you've had an experience where you've realized others have privilege you don't, reflect on that as well.

Defining Privilege

Privilege, according to Open Source Leadership Strategies, is the unearned benefit conferred upon members of mainstream or dominant groups (in the US, these include male, white, heterosexual, affluent, young, able-bodied, and/or Christian) at the expense of others.

• Privilege exists when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they’ve done or failed to do (Peggy McIntosh).
• Privilege can manifest through visible advantages such as access to wealth, professional opportunities, and social status, as well as more subtly through, for example, freedom of behavior and setting the standard of normality against which others are judged (Open Source).
  
• Dominant group members may be unaware of their privilege or take it for granted (Open Source).

Peggy McIntosh gives dozens of examples of white privilege (the privilege that Anglo-European communities have in the US) in her article "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." Some of them are listed below:

---

4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
6. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

24. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help my race will not work against me.
25. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.
26. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin. (Read more on this topic.)

---

Can you relate to these statements? Why or why not? In the context of study abroad, privilege is something that every student brings with them, in spite of overweight baggage limits! Just as Peggy McIntosh discusses the privilege afforded by white Americans, "Study Abroad Privilege" also exists.

One academic comments on his time abroad, highlighting the privilege of being a foreigner studying abroad: “The Mexico I knew existed on in the imagination of a foreigner, an outsider left on his own to observe and interpret an apparently convivial Mexico without ever sensing its rigid social norms that isolated class from class, family from family, coworker from colleague ” (Selby, 2008, p. 5).

Here are some benefits of privilege in study abroad, which other border-crossers such as economic immigrants or refugees are less likely to enjoy.

Examples:
Study
Abroad
Privilege

---

• I am paying for my study abroad program, so I have a sense of ultimate authority/ownership of my experience. I am part of a larger system that many students have come through before, with a trained staff to help me in emergencies.
• When I really need to communicate, there is almost always someone who speaks my language (English), especially in bureaucratic settings.
• Even though locals may have mixed feelings towards the US, they understand that Americans are diverse and don't expect us to all be the same. If I am harassed, it is usually because people assume I am wealthy and influential and not because they think I am ethnically inferior to them.
• Throughout most of the world, the exchange rate helps me rather than hurts me. The tourism industry is designed to meet my every need, and I am often able to "consume" the local culture in restaurants, performances, and holidays.
  
• Doing something simple, like volunteering for an afternoon or cooking dinner, can earn me overflowing amounts of gratitude from local people, as well as self-gratification. I can be constantly affirmed that I am "becoming a local" by wearing local clothes and learning a few words in the local language.
  
• I can apply for a visa from the United States to go abroad and be almost positive I will receive it.
• If I am fair-skinned and/or blonde, I can be almost positive that my physical appearance is considered superior by local standards of beauty.
• Leisure activities such as walking around, taking a drive, or sightseeing are considered "learning activities" and not an opportunity cost for "real work." In these activities, and in others where I am more closely interacting with local people, I am not constricted within the local gender norms or class barriers as a local of my age and gender would be.
  
• In any city, I can usually find an oasis of comfort: American pop music playing in a bar, a familiar fast food restaurant, or a setting where majority foreigners hang out.

Take a breather...

Jot down some notes to these questions in another window or a notebook.

1. How do you relate to these examples? Do any stick out to you as particularly true or untrue? Why?
2. How is intercultural contact different for a student abroad than it is for...

• A migrant worker from Mexico living in Arizona
• An international student at a US university
• A high-level diplomat from an African country at a UN summit
• An Indian child adopted into an American family

Please post your answers to the Forum.

Confronting privilege by taking responsibility

So what does this all mean for you?
As a student abroad, what can you do about all of this 'privilege' business?

LADDER OF DEVELOPMENT
________________________________
I’m Normal
_________________________________
What Are You?
first contact
_________________________________
Be Like Me
we’re all the same, you’re the problem
________________________________
Denial and Defensiveness
I am not the problem
_________________________________
Guilt and Shame
white is not right / I’m bad
_________________________________
Open Up / Acknowledgement
Houston, we’ve got a problem
_________________________________
Taking Responsibility / Self-Righteousness
white can do right / especially me
_________________________________
Collective Action

Community of Love and Resistance

(source)

The ladder on left displays the steps to confronting privilege. Starting from the top, we first see the world from our worldview alone, and we only see people like ourselves. After contact with someone different, we still only know how to evaluate them on our own terms, from our own frame of reference.

Maybe it comes from a good place in our heart, but we often believe that if others were more like us, everything would sort itself out. This is the root of sympathy and comes from an ethnocentric mindset.

After spending time abroad, it may occur to us that cultures are relative, and cannot be judged absolutely. This is when we enter the "Denial and Defensiveness" stage. We are studying abroad, we are globally engaged -- a GLOBAL CITIZEN! Surely there are gads of "ugly Americans" but we aren't one of those!

Oh wait.....

As an individual we may be just fine, but privilege is systemic. Centuries of history, the global news media, US foreign policy and Westernization all inform the way that our home and host cultures interact on a systemic level. How can we change our daily practices and behaviors to take responsibility for privilege?

Let's pause with the narrative there for now. On the next page, Empathy, we will be addressing privilege in study abroad and positive ways of dismantling systems that promote unearned access.