Glossary of Keywords:
- Privilege: Privilege as such can include the analysis of oppression. This can be overt, covert, deliberate and/or unconscious.There are different types of privilege (white, male Privilege).
McMahon argues it ‘captures the unearned benefits and advantages that accrue to members of dominant groups as a result of the ongoing exploitation and oppression of members of dominated groups’ (McMohan 2014).
For eg., ‘Rothenberg refers to white privilege as ‘the other side of racism’ (Rothenberg 2002: p. 1), while Shannon Sullivan makes the same distinction between unconscious,habitual white privilege, and more explicit and overt ‘white supremacy’ (Sullivan 2006: p. 5). Privilege, in this context, is just part and parcel of occupying the dominant position within an oppressive social hierarchy, and is indifferent to individual volition or belief’ (cited in McMohan 2014).
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Other definitions of privilege refer to‘pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions which were passed on to me as a white person. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways, and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly free’.
- Oppression:Three are different types of oppression. They are institutionalized and internal oppression.
Institutionalized Oppression:
‘Oppression takes place when a person acts or a policy is enacted unjustly against an individual (or group) because of their affiliation to a specific group. This includes depriving people of way to make a fair living, to participate in all aspects of social life, or to experience basic freedoms and human rights, It also includes imposing belief systems, values, laws and ways of life on other groups through peaceful or violent means’ (Baines 2011).
Internal Oppression:
‘When groups start to believe and acts as id the dominant belief system, values and life ways are the best and exclusive reality, internal oppression involves, self-hate, self-censorship shame and the disowning of individual and cultural realities’ (Baines 2011).
- Racism: ‘Racism can be defined as a process of racial differentiation enacted in and through social interactions and exchanges embedded in daily routines or everyday lie practises, Racism is a socially constructed phenomenon that varies in form over time and different locations’ (Dominelli 2008).
- Critical Reflection: ‘Critical reflection is defined in various ways. There are two main ways of being ‘critical’ with reflection. The first involves the ability to unearth, examine and change very deeply held or fundamental assumptions (Mezirow 1991). Brookfield (1995, p.8) however, emphasizes a second meaning which is that what makes reflection critical is the focus on power’ (Fook, p.441).
- Intersectionality: Intersectionality in its simplest meanings refers to locating oneself in terms of gender, ethnicity, race and class.
Case (2016) conceptualizes intersectionality in the teaching of inter sectional pedagogy as, ‘ a complex analysis of both privileged and oppressed social identities that simultaneously interact to create systemic inequalities, and therefore, alter lived experiences of prejudice and discrimination, privilege and opportunities, and perspectives from particular social locations’ (Case 2016, p.9).
- Whiteness: Within whiteness studies there are different schools of thought, namely whiteness and critical whiteness.
Definitions of Whiteness:
‘Whiteness is often rendered invisible through its process of normalization and influence of deeply entrenched dominant structures, and the permanence of skin color as a salient marker of identity through human history has influenced the structural dynamics of Whiteness as well as the mythology of “racelessness,” which has been the hallmark of Canadian identity’ (Carr, 2016)
Walter defines whiteness as ‘the invisible norm against the “other” races are judged in the construction of identity, representation, subjectivity, nationalism and the law’ (Walter 2011)
Critical Whiteness Studies:
‘whiteness is only invisible for those who inhabit it. For those who don’t, it is hard not to see whiteness; it even seems everywhere. Seeing whiteness is about living its effects’. (Ahmad 2004)