If you are the member of a privileged group AND call yourself progressive

[frazzled]

242. Re: the concept of privileged

If you have a white face, you are privileged (with respect to those who don't).
If you furthermore have male parts, you are privileged (with respect to those who don't).
If you furthermore are heterosexual, you are privileged (with respect to those who aren't).
The concept is relational.

This is a simple concept I was taught as a child, and it has stuck in my mind for many years. I remember once after Sunday school we were having a Purim Party (how apt, considering the news of the other day about the creep who showed up in black face). Our rabbi came to talk to us. He'd just returned from marching in Selma, with Dr. King, and since the story of Purim has to do with discrimination against a people, he thought it apt to talk about it. He spoke about, yes, how Jews had endured discrimination; it wasn't a remote topic for many of us in that era: friends of our parents had concentration camp numbers tattooed on their forearms; some of our fathers had been denied jobs because Jews weren't hired in certain places; redlining was still a practice in many neighborhoods. But despite all that, he told us how privileged we were: we were a new generation, and our faces were white; we could fit in—we could pass. He asked us to think about what it would be like to have a black face, which you could not change. Before anyone knew anything about you, about who you were as a person, they would know you were black, and would judge you because of that. It made a heck of an impression on me. It struck home.

What the OP is saying is that you should listen to people's experiences carefully, realizing that you have not had to face those issues. You need to imagine, like I did as a kid, what it would be like to be that color, that gender, that orientation. And you should respect what people have to say about their lives.