Last Talking Points!

Allan Johnson "Privlege,Power, and Difference"

Premise

• privilege
• saying the words
• voacbulary
• oppression
• racism
• sexism
• hatred
• acceptance
• positive attitude
• proactive decsisions
• solutions

Argument : Johnson argues that the more society pays attention to problems of privilege and oppression the more aware and proactive we will be toward breaking the cycle that causes privilege and oppression.

Evidence

1. "Dare to make people feel uncomfortable, beginning with yourself." (Pg. 145) This supports Johnson's argument of recognizing the problem because he asks people to recognize the problem themselves and then make other people aware of it. He wants people address uncomfortable issues such as race so that other people will think about the issue and reevaluate how they view and think about the issue.
2. "You don't have to mount an expedition to find opportunities, they're all over the place, beginning with you." (pg. 142) Johnson does not expect us to go out into the streets, market places, and malls and scream that racism and sexism is wrong, he just wants us to start with something small within ourselves and help change. He wants their personal outlooks to change and reevalute issues before helping other people reevaluate theirs. There are many opportunities to help others change their ways of thinking, you do not need to look to hard.
3. "As powerful as systems of privilege are, they cannot stand the strain of lots of people doing something about it, beginning with the simpliest act of naming the system out loud." (pg. 153) Johnson is trying to say that if lots of people start to realize that our society has problems then society will be forced to change. Society is made up of a lot of different people and because of the diversity it will allow us to change the problems. All we need is the support from the people.

Comments

I really liked this Johnson piece because he wasn't asking us to change the world, just change ourselves first then help others. One thing I didn't understand was when he used the words "tin cup approach" and "Buisness case argument" , what did he mean by that? It was really easy to read this article and after reading it , it made me rethink how I look at society and how many problems are really in society. If people focus on changing themselves first then they can focus on changing society after.