The "P" Word - Thoughts on Privilege

Lets acknowledge the obvious: the act of writing this post is itself an expression of privilege. I have reliable internet access, a college education, and the financial bandwidth to spend time reflecting and blogging rather than focusing on survival. That reality isn't lost on me. But it’s precisely because privilege is so baked into the structure of modern life and so inconsistently understood, that I think it's worth exploring more deeply.

Privilege. It appears in news headlines, HR trainings, Nextdoor debates, and LinkedIn thought pieces.

For something that wields such power, the term itself is surprisingly amorphous. Worse, it's often used as a blunt instrument, typically to point out a perceived advantage or injustice, rarely with curiosity or precision. That's why I want to take a step back and reframe the concept from first principles. What if privilege isn’t just about identity or access or upbringing? What if it’s simply about capacity?

When you strip away the moral weight and political assumptions, privilege in any form increases capacity. Capacity to choose. To pause. To pivot. To imagine. Whether it’s more time, more money, more social capital, or fewer survival-based stressors, privilege gives you more room to operate. It lets you focus on growth rather than survival.

That capacity might be financial, but it could also be mental, emotional, or even digital.

If that last one got your fight or flight senses tingling…reflect on the irony for three minutes before you let the automatic reaction take hold.

Privilege doesn’t always look like a yacht. Sometimes it looks like not needing to explain yourself.

I grew up in neighborhoods where most of us didn’t have a lot. But it wasn’t until much later that I realized I carried invisible forms of capacity. Despite the financial scarcity, I never carried the same anxiety around authority figures that some of my peers did. We had the same zip code, the same income bracket, and the same public schools. But I had a different skin tone, and that meant I could afford, emotionally and mentally, to relax in situations where they felt the need to stay alert. That’s capacity.

Later in my youth, we ended up living in a much higher income area due to our family’s Navy relocation and the area we ended up settling in. My relative poorness was striking in contrast to other teenagers who spent weeks in Ski School and drove brand new cars. It was at this time that I really understood the massive difference my surroundings and our relative wealth actually changed my experience of the world.

It’s easy to spot privilege in others and hard to see our own because it usually operates as the background noise of our lives. We’re less likely to notice it until it’s taken away or placed in contrast.

I served in the Army, an institution that tries (performatively) at leveling the playing field. Uniforms, ranks, protocols. And in many ways, it works. Basic training strips you down. You don’t get to flex your background, wealth, or education.

But even in that structured environment, privilege creeps in through the back door. Officers, often college-educated, get a different track from day one. Their capacity is institutionalized. Enlisted soldiers? Not so much. And yet, among soldiers at the same level, there was a kind of egalitarianism that made other forms of privilege less visible.

This duality showed me that privilege isn’t just about what you have. It’s about what you can afford not to worry about. Junior officers didn’t worry about awful housing choices or how long their extremely meager pay would last for the next two weeks. Junior enlisted soldiers did. Of course that’s not universally applicable, but will ring true for many who served.

A good friend of mine in the Army grew up poor in Arkansas. He thought he knew being poor. Then he deployed to Grenada for a brief assignment. When he returned, he was changed.

The poverty he witnessed there was so far beyond his frame of reference that it changed him. It was the first time he realized that his “American poverty” still came with infrastructure, drinking water, and some baseline opportunity. He’d had more capacity than he knew. Sometimes, you have to leave your context to see what you actually had.

We’re entering an era where capacity is shifting in real time. Digital literacy and access to AI tools are rapidly becoming new dividing lines. Those who understand how to leverage these technologies have a widening advantage. And it’s not just about access to devices or fast internet. It’s about knowing what questions to ask, what tools to trust, and what outputs to question.

This matters for business and nonprofit leaders. If privilege is capacity, then digital capability is now one of the most consequential forms of it. And it’s evolving faster than most institutions can keep up with.

So here’s the challenge: consider one form of privilege you enjoy that you’ve never really thought about. One area where your life has more capacity, not because you earned it, but because you happened to be born into the right geography, or language, or body, or moment. If you need help imagining it, picture waking up in a remote village with no access to clean water, formal education, or electricity. Now re-evaluate what you thought was "normal."

Privilege doesn’t make you a villain. But ignoring it might make you blind. And if you’re in a position of leadership, blindness is a risk you can’t afford. Wielding the word as a weapon against anybody who disagrees with you likewise increases your chances of not being heard at all.

Capacity is the currency of impact. The more you recognize it, the more wisely you can invest it; in yourself, your team, and the communities you serve.