Social Privileges 101 – Being A Jerk Without Consequences
January 11, 2009 by SocProf and tagged Social Privilege
Case in point:
Oh sure, he’ll apologize for it (just like he did when he used a Nazi uniform at a costume party). The newspaper will be all over him for a while. But truly, one of the markers of social privilege is that there is no real cost for behaviors that would be very costly for individuals less privileged especially in their labor or professional capacities.
Consider this the flip side of what Robert Merton called the Matthew Effect. Merton called this process the Matthew effect in reference to the first book of the New Testament:
"For unto everyone that hath shall be given, that he may have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath."
As Hayagreeva Rao explains in Market Rebels:
"The Matthew effect simply means that higher-status actors derive greater rewards than lower-status actors for performing an identical task." (37)
In this case, negative behavior receives lower sanctions (largely of the symbolic nature) than similar behavior from lower-status individuals.
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