Christian Privilege: Breaking a Sacred Taboo discusses the dominance of Christianity in America, including a privilege checklist, and a longer standalone list was previously linked. More writing focuses on secular college campuses. In American jurisprudence, such as in the case of Sheri Klouda, fired as a language instructor from a Baptist seminary when a new president decided she should not be teaching men, religious freedom often supersedes other rights. Moving away from the specific case of Christianity, some articles from a British secularist viewpoint criticize the special consideration given to religious views and practices. When the last article was reprinted by Kolkata newspaper The Statesman, there were riots and the editor was arrested under a law against "deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings."
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim on May 31, 2009 - 148 comments

Beyond even the outrageously broad "state secrets" privilege invented by the Bush administration and now embraced fully by the Obama administration, the Obama DOJ has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and -- even if what they're doing is blatantly illegal and they know it's illegal -- you are barred from suing them unless they "willfully disclose" to the public what they have learned. - Glenn Greenwald. [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Apr 7, 2009 - 102 comments

Privileges: Gender: 10 things only men can do (Askmen.com), male privilege (wiki), 21 Things Women Can Do That Guys Can't (Cosmo), female privilege (2 3 4 5). Race: white privilege (wiki). Sexual orientation: straight privilege (2) (wiki), cisgendered privilege. Body: able-bodied privilege, non-fat privilege. Money: non-poor privilege (2), class privilege (PDF). Demographics: Christian privilege, American privilege, adult privilege, black male privilege, Muslim male privilege. Combo: gamer privilege, male programmer privilege. Criticism and essays: victim privilege, "Point of Privilege", "We can't be equal while ... ", "Where's My Extra Piece of the Pie?". And, lest this become too serious: pirate privilege and lolcat privilege (the latter via). (Covered in smaller scope previously.)
posted by WCityMike on Aug 15, 2008 - 156 comments

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack as illustrated by lolcats. Also, White Liberal Bingo.
posted by streetdreams on Apr 17, 2008 - 197 comments

"If feminism is about social change, white feminism -- a feminism of assimilation, of gentle reform and/or strengthening of institutions that are instrumental to economic exploitation and white supremacy, of ignorance and/or appropriation of the work of feminists of color -- is an oxymoron. And it is not a thing of some bygone era before everyone read bell hooks in college. It is happening now; you might be part of it."
posted by nasreddin on Apr 6, 2008 - 182 comments

Dr. Peggy McIntosh wrote a paper in 1989 titled White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies (later released as White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack), which she wrote because, "...have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was 'meant' to remain oblivious." Since then the lesson she sought to teach has inspired other lists, such as The Male Privilege and now The Daily Effect of Straight Privilege.
posted by FunkyHelix on Jul 10, 2006 - 130 comments

Next in the "America slowly slipping toward fascism" saga: Reporter Convicted for Refusing to Give Identity of a Source. Mr. Taricani would be one of only a handful of journalists to go to jail for refusing to identify a source. Mr. Taricani was convicted in connection with a long-running federal investigation called Operation Plunderdome, which resulted in the conviction of at least nine city officials, including Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., who was sentenced to 64 months for racketeering conspiracy. His bad: refusing to identify the person who leaked him an F.B.I. videotape in 2001 related to an investigation of government corruption in Providence.
posted by acrobat on Nov 19, 2004 - 59 comments

Gifted Students Despite her boarding-school education and a personal tutor, Maude Bunn's SAT scores weren't high enough for a typical student to earn admission to Duke University. But Ms. Bunn had something else going for her -- coffeemakers. Her Bunn forebears built a fortune on them and, with Duke hoping to woo her wealthy parents as donors, she was admitted. Afterward, her parents promptly became co-chairmen of a Duke fund-raising effort aimed at other Duke parents. "My child was given a gift, she got in, and now I'm giving back," says Maude's mother, Cissy Bunn, who declines to say how much the family has contributed to the university.
posted by orange swan on Apr 11, 2003 - 59 comments

The Global Privileges of Whiteness. "The average White American's attitudes about race and racism are a mixture of self-congratulation and defensiveness -- 'Yes, America has had some episodes of racism and racial bias, but that's all clearly in the past.'"
posted by queequeg on Jun 29, 2001 - 13 comments

Janna Bush's homework is funny on so many levels:

1. This is college-level work in Texas?
2. People in Texas think that people in Harlem attend dances at the VFW?
3. Dubya's daughter, having been sent to a state school to bolster dad's political image as a down-home Texan even though she could surely have legacy'd at Yale as he did (and Skull & Bones admits women now!), is getting just the sort of politically correct education that her father's cohort reviles.

posted by nicwolff on Dec 21, 2000 - 38 comments