University is a place where we all come to so that our career and future prospects can be elevated. For a lot of us, it is an essential stepping stone to coming out of disadvantaged backgrounds. Poverty is a vicious cycle and coming out of it is not as easy as just finding a better paying job. On the other side of the extreme lives privilege. Privilege is often quantified in terms of money, because poverty, or lack of privilege, can often be expressed in terms of a lack of money. However, while money often facilitates privilege and perpetuates it, it is not the key that opens all of the doors.
According to Amartya Sen, an economist and scholar, true development happens when people have access to the freedom to realize their capabilities. These freedoms can be seen as ‘real opportunities’. As with coming out of poverty, development cannot be achieved by just throwing money at the poor. Real change requires substantial change of circumstances. And those changes sadly do not depend on individual choice. They are external factors that are out of control for most. If you are eager to pursue a career as an artist but you come from a working class background where you cannot afford expensive training that may or may not culminate in an insecure, often scarcely paid employment that you can’t depend on, this is simply not an option. In this case, your options are limited, and you need to decide on your future based on the hand you’ve been dealt. And this hand might be pretty bleak.
For a lot of us in this situation, university is the only choice reasonably within reach that can alter the circumstances that we have virtually no control over. It does not give you privilege but it extends the realm of options you have. Privilege cannot be measured because it is not a tangible feature of anyone’s life. Sen’s vision of development is powered through multiplying the amount of ‘real opportunity’ that people may enjoy and realize themselves in and privilege is exactly that – opportunity. The perception that privilege is money is a surface level observation – money enables opportunity and makes it easier to access, but at the end of the day, the ability to grow and to access chances that others cannot is what makes privilege lasting.
Why is it important to be aware of it? It seems that awareness of privilege is often taunted as an act of humble acknowledgment of your roots. This excuses it from being anything more than a passive pursuit, something that can be done without really doing anything. Privilege is not about choice because the control of what happens to you is often independent from you. However, privilege gives you the power to multiply other’s choices and enable other’s opportunities. The power of privilege is not in the money, or in the career prospects, or in the secure future. It is in the ability to multiply and share it with others.