I mostly avoid discussions about privilege and social justice issues because I find the concepts confusing and I find the sureness with which people talk about them confusing.
However, I stumbled into this nice essay by the best selling author Marti Leimbach on the subject which I found well-written (unsurprisingly), moving, and thought-provoking.
The part that first grabbed me given my above-mentioned confusion on the subject:
Nonetheless, this whole notion of “privilege” vexes me. We talk about it as though we can all recognise what it is. I am not always so sure. I can tell one narrative of my life and it seems to describe someone who grew up without privilege, and I can tell another narrative and it seems almost as though my life was one of ease and privilege from the time I was born.
"Privilege" is easy. It is the opposite of "Victim".
As in. "I am a victim, therefore you are "privileged""
I agree that privilege is not easy to understand. We see this in people who, for example, expect others to "pick themselves up by the bootstraps" — said "bootstraps" being in varying measure practically given to the one who asserts such method!
One might ask the more openly contemptuous we encounter: Did you happen to benefit from having clean drinking water? Did your single mom have the presence of mind (and resources) to move away from a bad situation? Do you have the physical appearance people associate with "normal"? (etc etc)
It would seem the "difficulty" in the concept of "privilege" is directly related to the degree to which one benefits from what they never produced!