Examining awareness of privilege among midwestern college students: An analysis of race/ethnicity, gender, and religion.

Dominant group members often are not aware of the privileges they benefit from due to their dominant group membership. Yet individuals are members of multiple groups and may simultaneously occupy multiple categories of dominance and marginality, raising the question of how different group memberships work in concert to facilitate or inhibit awareness of multiple forms of privilege. Examining awareness of privilege is important as awareness may be linked to action to dismantle systems of privilege that maintain oppression and inequality. Grounded in intersectional scholarship, in this study we examined how occupying intersecting categories of race/ethnicity, gender, and religion corresponded to an awareness of White, male, and Christian privilege. In a sample of 2321 Midwestern college students, we demonstrated that students from marginalized groups broadly reported greater awareness of all forms of privilege than students from dominant groups, and the difference between marginalized and dominant groups was most pronounced when the specific group category (e.g., gender) aligned with the type of privilege (e.g., male privilege). We also tested interactions among race/ethnicity, gender, and religion, only finding an interaction between race/ethnicity and religion for awareness of White and male privilege. These findings helped to clarify that multiple group memberships tended to contribute to awareness as multiple main effects rather than as multiplicative. Finally, we examined mean differences among the eight intersected groups to explore similarities and differences among groups in awareness of all types of privilege. Taken together, these findings quantitatively demonstrate the ways in which group memberships work together to contribute to awareness of multiple forms of privilege. We discuss study limitations and implications for community psychology research and practice.

Christian and Political Conservatism Predict Opposition to Sexual and Gender Minority Rights through Support for Christian Hegemony.

Although significant strides have been made for sexual and gender minority (SGM) rights in the United States, there continues to be opposition to SGM rights from many conservative Christians and political conservatives. In this study, we investigate this opposition by examining support for Christian hegemony (i.e., the idea that Christianity should be the norm and Christians should be in power in the United States) and unawareness of Christian privilege (i.e., unearned advantages for Christians) as religiopolitical variables that help to explain the association between Christian and political conservatism and opposition to a host of SGM rights (same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption, nondiscrimination policies in jobs and housing for SGMs, and bills regarding transgender public bathroom use). Based on structural equation modeling analysis with heterosexual cisgender Christian (n = 688) and Areligious (n = 327) students, we demonstrate that support for Christian hegemony and unawareness of Christian privilege help to explain the association between Christian and political conservatism and opposition to SGM rights. These findings advance our understanding of a new type of religious-based variable focused on religious power and privilege to help understand conservative religious and political opposition to SGM rights. Limitations, implications, and directions for future research also are discussed.