The NRA and Charlton Heston gifted us the slogan, “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.” Replace “gun” with “privilege” and I can’t think of a better way to describe how Americans feel about our culture of privilege and the prospect of losing it.
Privilege exists, not because of anything we have done or failed to do. Instead, privilege reflects how society assigns disparate value to all of us based on social identities and how we, consciously or unconsciously, assign value to ourselves. With that value comes certain benefits, freedoms, and advantages. Even the most well-intended, self-aware person struggles with the mere mention of relinquishing their privilege because they mainly see it as a sacrifice on behalf of someone else (Who knows if they deserve it right?) and although it may feel like the right thing to do, it still feels like the death of something we love.
[For more of this story, written by Natalie S. Burke, go to https://medium.com/@natalie4health/5-stages-of-grief-1-f90137b756#.isrk0o870]
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