Abstract
Privilege and discrimination are inextricably intertwined. After all, if some are unfairly disadvantaged, others must benefit, if only from reduced competition. Yet scholarship and pedagogy concerning discrimination are frequently disconnected from the study of privilege. The reasons for this disjunction are not trivial. Students can respond with strong feelings of defensiveness, shame, and entitlement, and faculty feel ill-prepared and may receive negative evaluations due to student discomfort (Boatright-Horowitz & Soeung, 2009). In Deconstructing Privilege: Teaching and Learning as Allies in the Classroom, Case and colleagues provide a much-needed guide for educators seeking to address issues of privilege. The essays in this edited volume accomplish that task in a manner that is highly readable, comprehensive, and practical, while also making the argument for the importance of addressing issues of privilege in our scholarship and teaching.
The book opens with a powerful introduction by Peggy McIntosh, one of the first contemporary scholars to call for the study of privilege, and a strong overview essay by editor Kim Case. The remainder is divided into three sections with four essays each. The first section, “Transformative Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning about Privilege,” provides a compelling rationale for the transformational effect of addressing privilege. The essays in “Intersectional Privilege Studies Pedagogy” argue for addressing privilege within an intersectional analysis while providing tools to prevent this from allowing participants to ignore their privilege. Finally, “Privilege in the Classroom: Strategies and Applications” focuses on classroom issues and exercises. However, every section and almost every essay includes empirical foundations, analysis, direct author experience, and material that can be directly applied in the classroom. The overall effect is a sense of practical hands-on learning.
Although all of the essays are well done, some have particular strengths. Rios and Stewart describe the abundant and freely accessible teaching resources provided by the Global Feminisms Project archives and suggest ways to enrich classroom experiences through their use. Ferber and Herrera include a concise but elegant introduction to Ferber’s matrix of privilege and oppression (Ferber, Herrera, & Samuels, 2007) and demonstrate how the stages-of-change model can be used as a pedagogical tool. The essays by Banks, Pliner, and Hopkins and by Williams and Melchiori include reflections concerning the effect of exposure to a pedagogy of privilege on students, providing evidence of its transformational impact. Finally, Platt’s concluding essay directly addresses the emotional impact that teaching about privilege may have upon the instructor. Although this topic is mentioned in passing in a few other chapters, only Platt addresses it at length. Considering the influence that such experience may have on the paucity of studies of privilege (Boatright-Horowitz & Soeung, 2009), it is a topic worthy of greater elaboration.
Like most collections of essays, the book also has some overlap and redundancy, particularly on the subjects of why teaching about privilege is important, why students may resist it, and why an intersectional framework is important. However, the repetition increases the ability for instructors to assign individual chapters and does not slow the reader down excessively. Additionally, the repetition serves to reinforce a message about privilege that has long been omitted from scholarly discourse and pedagogical practice. Perhaps the volumes’ biggest weakness is the absence of summary essays. Such essays could have played a useful role in advancing the pedagogy of privilege, particularly by identifying places of consensus and issues of discussion or debate among scholars and educators seeking to focus our attention on privilege. Additionally, suggestions for future scholarship and practice would have been a valuable addition.
Deconstructing Privilege is clearly intended for an audience of educators, but it would be unfortunate if its readership extended no further. Distribution of such a tool can support movement against a long-engrained societal context supporting the survival of privilege, even in the presence of discrimination advocacy. Case’s book would provide a meaningful introduction to this topic for students, scholars, organizational leaders, or anyone else interested in social justice and self-awareness.