With the recent leak of a draft opinion from the Supreme Court, I would be remiss to not bring up what privilege means. Now, I am not asking for individuals to feel guilty about their lives, nor am I telling people their lives were easy. Privilege, as the University of Michigan School of Social Work defines it on their website, is “types of advantages or unearned access that are granted based on how we are identified in terms of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, sexuality, and ability status.”

I ask that we notice two things from this definition. First, there is a broad range of identities that play into privilege, and just because you hold one privileged identity does not mean you don’t hold a non-privileged one. Second, it states this privilege is granted based on how we are identified within society, not on how we, as an individual, identify ourselves.

This means that it is based on outside perception of one’s identity, not how we hold ourselves. And, for some, that perception is hard to escape. In the case of the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade, we see that people in the highest court of our country have decided that, no matter how strong and independent a woman is, she is unable to make her own decisions when it comes to her own health care. There is an absurd amount of power over people’s lives with no accountability from the people the court resides over. And, until the concern of systemic oppression is addressed, minority individuals will not be able to escape the ever-looming and outright terrifying power of the Supreme Court of the United States.

MITCHEL DIPZINSKI,

Alpena