You have class privilege if the following applies to you:
You can readily find accurate (not caricatured) representations of members of your class depicted in films, television, and other media. Experts appearing on mass media are from your social class. New consumer products are designed and marketed with your social class in mind. If you find yourself involved in a police situation, you can easily hire an attorney to ensure your perspective is heard justly. You can choose to eat healthy food if you wish, and it is readily available. Your eyesight, smile, and general health aren’t inhibited by your income. If you become sick in the United States, you can seek medical care immediately and not just “hope it goes away.” As a child, you were able to participate in organized sports, clubs, music, and other extracurricular activities. Your decision to go to college, and the type of college you chose, wasn’t based entirely on financial determinants. Your parents are college graduates and could help you navigate the application process, as well as pay for college and living expenses. An annual raise in pay at your job is measured in dollars, not cents. Whenever you’ve moved out of your home it has been voluntary, and you had another home to move into.
Class may arguably be the foundational form of oppression as it is
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ultimately about the distribution of resources. This does not mean, however, that if we eliminate class all other forms of oppression will disappear, but that we cannot understand social inequality without understanding class. How we justify the distribution of resources is shaped and rationalized by how we socially construct various groups and our ideas about what these groups do or don’t deserve. Given this, we have barely scratched the surface of the complex ways that classism works. However, our goal has been to provide a basic framework for understanding classism so that we may continue the lifelong work of personal reflection, political analysis, and ultimately, action.