Ijeoma Oluo

Writer and speaker, 1980–present

In her New York Times bestseller, So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo writes about the power of privilege to make change in her chapter titled, “Why am I always being told to ‘check my privilege’?”, she names a variety of privileges—education, economic status, gender, physical abilities, and race, among others—and how privilege of any sort is the result of someone else’s disadvantage. The author shares that as a light-skinned Black woman, she is regularly viewed as “more intelligent” than her dark-skinned counterparts. However, if all shades of skin were viewed equally, there would not be privilege given to one group and disadvantage to another.

“When we are willing to check our privilege, we are not only identifying areas where we are perpetuating oppression in order to stop personally perpetuating that oppression, but we are also identifying areas where we have the power and access to change the system as a whole. Where I benefit most from being able-bodied is where I have the most power and access to change a system that disadvantages disabled people … When we identify where our privilege intersects with somebody else's oppression, we'll find our opportunities to make real change.”