Last week on our bus ride out to visit the rural elementary school, which was a little over an hour long, we discussed the privileges that we are afforded based on our language, citizenship, education, race, gender, religion, socioeconomic status, etc. During this discussion, I noticed that my main privileges are that I am a straight, caucasian, American male who's first language was English and that I am atheist. Since these are all considered to be "normal," with the slight exception being my atheism, I do not experience hardly any prejudice and never have to really think about my personal identities or how they might affect the way people view me and interact with me, which is exactly what makes them privileges for me.
On the other hand, being a Caucasian male in today's society can also have some negative effects, especially when it comes to graduate school admissions. Since engineering is predominately male and America is predominately white, minortity students tend to get a lot of special considerations when it comes to graduate school admissions for engineering degree programs. As a result of this, it is necessary for me to have higher grades in order to get into the same institutions that a minority student would be able to do with lower grades. Furthermore, as a white male living in Ann Arbor, which is a very liberal city, it is difficult to express opinions or arguments against basically any social justice movement, especially against affirmative action and about gender equality topics, because if I do I am instantly considered a chauvinistic asshole. To solve my first challenge, I just work hard to maintain exceptionally high grades, however I still have not found a reliable way to deal with the second challenge other than avoiding interactions with left-wing and right-wing extremists.
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