The New Privileged Class: Right-Handed People
Right-handed people have privilege and need to check it, opined a student at the University of New Orleans.
Writing for the student newspaper, Darius Miner observed that “nearly everything is structured for convenient use by right handed people,” including both school supplies and home architecture.
“Don’t try to silence a left-handed person who complains about scissors hurting their hand or how uncomfortable school desks are to sit in, or the struggle of having dirty hands from writing in pencil,” he said.Miner observed that right-handed privilege “may seem petty” compared to, say, male privilege, heterosexual and cisgender privilege or white privilege. Nonetheless, he says, “the world is made for right-handed people.”
Left-handed people– a small minority — have historically been the subject of suspicion: the word “sinister” derives from the Latin word for left handed. In earlier decades in the U.S., left-handed children would often have their hand tied behind their backs in failed efforts to “retrain them”. To this day, studies show that left handed people are more prone to accidents and early death due to traffic rules, hand railings, etc. being geared towards right handed people.
Acknowledging the obstacles that “lefties” face, Miner writes that right-handed people should also “acknowledge the privilege you have” and “learn how to be an advocate to help” left-handed people.
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