For woke activists, privileges are the central mechanism for power and oppression. Privileges are undeserved structural advantages granted to dominant groups but denied to oppressed groups due to systemic power structures.353
It is often assumed that members of dominant groups are not (sufficiently) aware of their privileges. By taking their privileges for granted, they maintain them consciously or unconsciously.354
The societal structure of privileges is described by the authors Robin DiAngelo and Özlem Sensoy:
“The definition of privilege that we use in critical social justice education may differ from the way our readers use the word… The lay use of ‘privilege’ means to be lucky, to have lucky opportunities, and to benefit from that luck and opportunity. These definitions suggest that privileges are a positive outcome of chance. When scholars use this term, however, to describe how a society works, they refer to the rights, advantages, and protections that some enjoy at the expense of and over the rights, advantages, and protections available to others. Privileges are not a product of luck, fortune, or chance, but a product of structural advantages. One automatically receives privileges when one is a member of a dominant group (e.g. men, whites, heterosexuals, non-disabled, Christians, upper class).” 355
Not only rich persons are considered privileged, but all who, due to their identity, are not affected by specific power structures. Privileges form a kind of original sin that obliges allyship: privileged persons are to act solidaristically by using their privileges for woke activism.356
Critical consciousness is required to develop understanding of the way the system privileges or oppresses groups of persons (see Identity).