Privilege, Power, & Difference (Allan G. Johnson)

While reading Privilege, Power, and Difference by Allan G. Johnson, I was truthfully surprised by the abundance of thoughts I found myself thinking.  From the start of the reading, my eyes were opened to a new perspective of a variety of struggles.  While I am aware these issues are still happening everyday, it is not something I find myself thinking about too often because to me, these are not issues.  I still can not understand how or why people feel discriminated or uncomfortable with different races, genders, sexualities, social classes, etc.  Therefore, I felt very connected to Johnson in that I can relate to his feelings and have a similar background or "status" (i.e., straight, white, middle class).
Throughout chapter 1, Rodney King's Question, it made me feel hopeless in terms of deceasing discrimination in the world.  When Johnson says "the problem of 'getting along' doesn't stop there. It is also an issue across differences of gender, sexual orientation, and numerous lesser divides"(3), I couldn't help but think that there will unfortunately never be an end to this.  Once segregation and the major racism issues began to decease, people began to "come out" more in terms of homosexuality, and then that became more of a discrimination issue.  Now that homosexuality is starting to become more accepted (for the record, I am not saying either racism or discrimination against any of these things is completely abolished, I am well aware there are still many issues), people are having problems now accepting those who experiment with their genders, etc.  The strong and current controversy on Caitlyn Jenner is the most recent example of this (I apologize for the vulgarity of that article, but that exactly proves my point).  No matter what, I feel like people are going to continually find something to hate on.  And when that dies down, they'll move on to the next new thing and make that an issue.  I really loved when Johnson said "people can't help fearing the unfamiliar" (3).  That quote very much stuck with me after reading this; it hits the nail on the head of why we continually have all these issues today, and why we unfortunately will for years to come.
Before reading this, I was actually thinking of a conversation that I had with my best friend while she was home on winter break this month.  She is now living in Spain, and speaks fluent Spanish.  However, she is considered "white".  I really enjoyed chapter 3, The Trouble We're In, because his writing is almost exactly what we were talking about.  While she was in the airport traveling home, she was on the phone speaking in Spanish.  The man sitting next to her, for whatever reason, asked her when she was off the phone if she was white.  Like I previously said, this is not a subject I find myself thinking of too often, and neither does she.  She explained to me how that question made her really stop and think about it, and that she did not know how to answer that question herself.  She has always been considered "white", but then found herself wondering what "white" even is.  It is simply the color of your skin? Because there are certainly Spanish or Hispanic people that are even lighter than some "white" people.  Is it where your ancestors come from? We were talking about this for quite a while that day, and this is exactly what Johnson is saying in this chapter.  He explains that it is all made up.  He also brings up the point that many people consider people white if they look white. I found it interesting to see so many of our own points brought up in his book.
The bulleted list of privileges also makes me think a lot harder about such situations and perspectives from different peoples points of views, especially those in regards to heterosexuals.
In conclusion, I was very emotionally involved in this reading, and like I said in the beginning, I was pleasantly surprised by that.  I would be interested in how the author currently feels about this, because while these issues are still existent, I also feel like there has been a lot of improvement since this book was written in 2001.  Johnson wrote about the issues with women and the issues of their presence in the corporate world, explaining that they are not able to hold higher positions than men.  I feel like this example is one that has come a long way, because there are many powerful and higher women in the corporate world today.   The reading made a variety of strong points and caused me to think about things in a much different perspective.  I would definitely be interested in reading books by this author!