Privilege Through the Looking-Glass

Patricia Leavy

• Publisher: Myers Education Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781975508524
• eBook ISBN:
  9781975508548
• Edition: 3
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology

Privilege Through the Looking-Glass, Third Edition is a revised and expanded collection of essays that explore privilege and status characteristics in daily life.

This collection seeks to make visible that which is often invisible. It seeks to sensitize us to things we have been taught not to see. Privilege, power, oppression, and domination operate in complex and insidious ways, impacting groups and individuals. And yet, these forces that affect our lives so deeply seem to at once operate in plain sight and lurk in the shadows, making them difficult to discern. Like water to a fish, environments are nearly impossible to perceive when we are immersed in them. This book attempts to expose our environments.

With engaging and powerful writing, the contributors share their personal stories as a means of connecting the personal and the public. This volume applies an intersectional perspective to explore how race, class, gender, sexuality, education, and ableness converge, creating the basis for privilege and oppression. Privilege Through the Looking-Glass encourages readers to engage in self and social reflection and can be used in a range of courses in sociology, social work, communication, education, gender studies, and Black studies. Each chapter includes discussion questions and/or activities for further engagement, making it a perfect classroom text.

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Halftitle page
• Title page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• One: Introduction to Privilege Through the Looking-Glass Third Edition
• Two: Unpacking (Un)privilege or Flesh Tones, Red Bones, and Sepia Shades of Brown
• Three: Men Hug Me at Work: Juxtaposing Privilege with Everyday Sexism
• Four: The Voice of White Male Power and Privilege: An Autoethnography
• Five: I Am My Grandmother’s Child: Becoming a Black Woman Scholar
• Six: #AngryBlackScholars: Unpacking White Privilege as Black Females Unapologetically Claiming and Asserting Our Right to Live Our Dreams
• Seven: My Responsibility to Change
• Eight: Black Here, Borɔnyi There: Differentials in Race and Privilege in the United States and West Africa
• Nine: Buying a Better World? The Intersections of Consumerism, Class, and Privilege in Global Women’s Rights Activism
• Ten: Reflections on Rural: Why Place Can Be Privilege and How “Common Sense” Understandings Hurt Rural Students
• Eleven: Being a (Gay) Duck in a Family of (Heterosexual) Swans
• Twelve: Swirling Shades of Right and Wrong
• Thirteen: Male or Female?: Everyday Life When the ‘Or’ is ‘And’
• Fourteen: Transcending Gender Binarization: The Systematic Policing of Genderfluid Identity and Presentation
• Fifteen: Titanium Tits
• Sixteen: On Not Being a Victoria’s Secret Model: A Critical Analysis of My Struggle With Social Comparison and Objectification
• Seventeen: The Ephemeral Passport
• Eighteen: It’s a Small World: The Metabletics of Size
• Nineteen: The Pen Stops
• Twenty: The Skull Beneath the Skin: Biting Back at Racist and Classist Stereotypes of Chronic Illness
• Twenty-One: Responsive Stories: Sharing Evocative Tales from the Inside, Out
• Twenty-Two: Death by a Thousand Cuts: From Self-Hatred to Acceptance
• About the Contributors
• About the Editor