Privilege in the Animal Kingdom

The College Fix:

ANALYSIS: Increasingly, scholars and the media link so-called animal privilege with economic and sociological terms such as inequality and intergenerational wealth

“Squirrel privilege is real.” “Checking Privilege in the Animal Kingdom.” “Even Hermit Crabs Have Wealth Inequality.”

These headlines hail from Salon and The New York Times, respectively, and represent a growing trend among scholars and the media to tackle animal “inequality” — and also argue humans can learn important lessons about income inequality and privilege from such studies.

“Inequality is a threat to our social fabric, but it’s not just a human problem,” argued the World Economic Forum in January in a piece that connected human and non-human inequality.