What is privilege?

I see within my family a certain perspective that poor people are poor (regardless of race) because they're bad with money. And it's "not my problem" if those people can't handle their money. "Why should I pay the price for their foolishness?"

I feel differently. I am the beneficiary of a number of important characteristics -- I'm white, male, married, straight, cisgender, never divorced, raised with two parents at home (except for a few years), and middle class. The whole system that's been built over the past 100+ years was designed to benefit people like me. Why?

Because it was designed by people like me.

Other people aren't in the same situation. And for every one of those characteristics that's different, there's a decreased chance of that person attaining equality with someone like me. Possible, sure, but less probable.

I think about Everlast's song "What It's Like" a lot these days. The whole song leads up to the 3:45 mark, and I wonder how much those people in the crowd would have paid to have what they are looking at.
I got it for free. THAT's privilege.