Privilege 101: An Introduction

Greetings! My name is Rachel Sondgeroth and I am absolutely ecstatic to be writing the first post for Privilege 101! Today's post is mostly house-keeping. Before we officially kick things off, there are a few questions that need to be answered.

First, what is Privilege 101?
Privilege 101 is an offshoot of a series called "Perils & Perks of Privilege" by a program called Project Humanities. The Goal of Project Humanities is to promote members of the community to basically get more in touch with their humanity by talking, listening and connecting with those around us.The Perils & Perks of Privilege series, along with this blog, Privilege 101, convey these very values by encouraging others to reflect upon their own privileges, create strategies to fight their own bias, and build a better personal grasp of the diversity in our global community that way we can more effectively co-exist. As our diverse world makes more and more connections, it becomes exponentially more important that we as a society get to understand not only these cultures, but what it is within ourselves that prevent us from fully understanding them. Privilege is more than just a couple of lucky scratch-offs in the lottery of birth, it is an obstacle to empathy. That is why here at Project Humanities, we feel the need to write an entire blog about it! Our goal here is to raise awareness and promote understanding.

Who am I?

Once again, my name is Rachel. I am eighteen years old, and a senior at Mountain View High School. I got into contact with Dr. Neal Lester last December while researching for a competitive speech I was writing (See: Original Oratory) . My topic: Are We Losing Our Humanity? It just so happened that Dr. Lester hosted a panel discussing this very topic in Washington D.C. two years ago. I emailed him some questions, the Project came up and I instantly wanted a part of it. Since I just moved back to Arizona in July and my extra-curriculars have no trouble soaking up every second of my free time, actually getting involved has been, well, a work in progress. But! Lo and behold here I am, co-writing this blog and I could not be any more excited. I'm happy to finally be helping out and I'm eager to see what I learn along the way!


I'll be posting every Tuesday, while my co-authors, Yvette Johnson and Neal Lester, along with some other guest-posters will be updating the blog here and there on different days of the week. Overall, it's going to be a lot of fun.  Did I mention that I'm excited? I'm really excited.