Check Your Privilege

I've mentioned it before and I probably will again but I love my job. The Writing Center at Pitt State is just such a blast, the conversations and learning that happens there is incredible. In the past 4 months I have learned more about writing and people than I have in the past three years in college.

I was casually chatting with on of my bosses about another class, we started discussing the idea of checking one's privilege. Different people with different circumstances have different privileges. The simplest example I can think is a greeting card aisle, how many of those cards feature black or Asian couples, or mixed couples. Are there cards for even less conventional couples or families? Very rarely.

Check your privilege LeAnn.

That made me consider what I've been taking for granted lately:

• higher education
• my house 
• my friends
• my family
• opportunities 
• choices

Being a Caucasian female, a United States citizen, with an incredibly supportive family and friend group. I have monetary support and an occupation that many don't. I have kind, loving, trustworthy, reliable friends and extended family. How often do I truly appreciate what I have? How often do I consider that by simply living in America I have clean water, food, and freedoms that the majority of the world does not.

Check your privilege LeAnn.

I am currently warm. Safe. Comfortable. Typing on a computer. Chewing gum. I have a full stomach and clean home.

Check your privilege LeAnn.

I am encouraged to pursue my own interests. My value is not in my ability to produce children or my family lineage. I am allowed to roam freely unchaperoned and unguarded. I have the political rights to make my own choices for my body. I have the political ability to hold an office, vote, and express my own opinions in whatever form I desire.

Check your privilege LeAnn.

I am daughter of God, a person with the rights and dignities of a human life that only a human life deserves. I am child of God, with a soul no different than anyone else in the world and yet completely different at the same time. I am of this world, entirely focused on my survival and yet I am of another world, another Kingdom that I will not be a part of for many years. I am smaller than the smallest particle, part of a great and infinite universe yet I am a most precious person to the One who made it all. I am His, and He is mine. I am Hers, and She is mine. God knows no gender, God is the Word.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God

John 1:1

Check your privilege world.

We are all unique and precious. But not one of us is more valuable than another.

Totus tuus,

LeAnn