First, it might be interesting to wonder about why being not aware is a bad thing. And I mean to use the ambiguous "bad" because I think people's tendency (at least based on my own observations) to disapprove of being not aware is equally ambiguous. It is simply irresponsible for a person with privilege to not acknowledge the fact. I can think of some reasons that might give this "bad" feeling deeper contours. Not being aware of your own privilege, whether by passive indifference or active protest, maintains a personal view of "how the world works" that is false and possibly dangerous. There is of course the lurking assumption that there is an actual, correct view of the world. Admittedly, then, maybe more focus should be situated on the fact that this personal view is dangerous. In a sense, a privileged person's education, wealth, reputation, power--they are artificial. More precisely, how the privileged person comes to her position of advantage is arguably a cumulative process of chance and the efforts of antecedents. ("Artificial," then, would go to show that the privileged person is privileged not entirely because of her own investment.) And if the privileged person ignores the non-personal nature of her advantage, then a false sense of entitlement may emerge to separate herself from the unprivileged: "I earned this position. I have no responsibility toward those who have not worked as hard as me. They should be more like me." The sense of entitlement, then, both atomizes the privileged person and dissolves any sense of social responsibility that might be necessary for a community to become better.

On the other hand, I can imagine why being aware of one's privilege might undermine collective efforts to improve a community. Once a privileged person becomes aware that her advantage is artificial, she might guard it on the knowledge that privilege may be largely out of any individual's control. Instead of the self-congratulating egoist who isolates herself from others who she thinks should "try harder," this formulation is the self-conscious hoarder who thinks that privilege is a scarce commodity that is, to a large extent, arbitrarily distributed in a competitive market of privilege-seeking people. Being aware of one's (arbitrarily acquired) privilege, then, leads now to a sense of entitlement to guard one's advantage. Moreover, is being aware of one's privilege simply a personal feat of introspection that humbles the sense of self? If so, at what point, if ever, does this awareness become outward-oriented? Bottom line--how does this awareness actually translate into helping the community? Under this "hoarder" formulation, it is possible that privilege becomes sequestered in a corner of the community in a way that it keeps the haves having and the have-nots otherwise.

-- JosephLu - 09 Feb 2009