This Is 2 Separate Assignments, 1 Reflection, 1 Discussion

This Is 2 Separate Assignments 1 Reflection 1 Discussionat The Botto

This is 2 separate assignments 1 reflection, 1 discussion(at the bottom of page) Assignment 1 Reflection: Please follow grammatical conventions when you write although this is not an APA Paper. This article (see article below) is a classic article and well worth the reading. When you have read it, answer the following questions in words: What is White Privilege? Is this an attempt to make all white people feel bad or look bad? What is the inherent purpose of an article like this?

Why does it make a difference to our understanding of multiculturalism? Does this idea make a difference in your own understanding of the power structure of racism? Do you think that reading this article helps you see multiculturalism in a different light? How do we make society work so that there is more of a feeling of ‘people privilege’ than White privilege? Does this author make valid points? Or do you disagree with the author? Have race relations improved in the time since this article was written? Give a reason why you think so or not.

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack By Peggy McIntosh This article is now considered a ‘classic’ by anti-racist educators. It has been used in workshops and classes throughout the United States and Canada for many years. While people of color have described for years how whites benefit from unearned privileges, this is one of the first articles written by a white person on the topics. It is suggested that participants read the article and discuss it. Participants can then write a list of additional ways in which whites are privileged in their own school and community setting. Or participants can be asked to keep a diary for the following week of white privilege that they notice (and in some cases challenge) in their daily lives. These can be shared and discussed the following week.

Through work to bring materials from Women’s Studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are over privileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to improve women’s status, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can’t or won’t support the idea of lessening men’s. Denials, which amount to taboos, surround the subject of advantages, which men gain from women’s disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened or ended. Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of white privilege, which was similarly denied and protected.

As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege which puts me at an advantage. I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.

Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in Women’s Studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, “Having described it what will I do to lessen or end it?’ After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are justly seen as oppressive, even when we don’t see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.

My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which will allow “them“ to be more like “us.” I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege on my life. I have chosen those conditions which I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographical location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined.

As far as I can see, my African American co-workers, friends and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and line of work cannot count on most of these conditions. 1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time. 2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area, which I can afford and in which I would want to live. 3. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me. 4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed. 5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented. 6. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is. 7. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race. 8. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege. 9. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can cut my hair. 10. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of my financial reliability. 11. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them. 12. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race. 13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial. 14. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race. 15. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group. 16. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion. 17. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider. 18. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race. 19. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race. 20. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazines featuring people of my race. 21. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared. 22. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on the job suspect that I got it because of race. 23. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the place I have chosen. 24. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help my race will not work against me. 25. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones. 26. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin. I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one’s life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own. In unpacking this invisible backpack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience which I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant and destructive.

I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions which were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turf, and I was among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways, and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely. In proportion as my racial group was being confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit in turn upon people of color. For this reason, the word ‘privilege’ now seems to be misleading. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work to systematically over empower certain groups.

Paper For Above instruction

In her influential article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” Peggy McIntosh explores the concept of white privilege as an unearned advantage that benefits white individuals in various aspects of daily life. The core idea is that white privilege operates subconsciously, conferring systemic dominance and advantages upon white people purely due to their racial identity, often without their awareness. McIntosh’s purpose is to illuminate these invisible advantages to foster self-awareness and encourage systemic change towards racial equality. The article aims not to shame but to challenge white individuals to recognize their unearned benefits and consider how these can be used to promote social justice.

White privilege is not about individual guilt but about understanding systemic patterns that confer unearned benefits. McIntosh argues that acknowledging white privilege is essential for dismantling racist systems and fostering genuine multicultural understanding. Recognizing these privileges makes it possible to address inequalities systematically rather than through guilt or blame. Understanding white privilege alters perceptions of multiculturalism by highlighting how systemic disparities uphold racial hierarchies, which often remain invisible to those benefiting from them. It emphasizes that true multiculturalism requires active efforts to dismantle these systemic advantages and promote equity for all racial groups.

Personally, reading McIntosh’s work expands my awareness of the pervasive nature of white privilege and its subtle impacts. It highlights the importance of examining everyday experiences and societal norms that reinforce racial disparities. For example, McIntosh lists privileges such as being able to see oneself reflected positively in media, living without fear of harassment based on race, and having the assurance that one’s race will not influence law enforcement interactions. Recognizing these privileges helps me see systemic racism not just as individual acts of prejudice but as embedded social structures that privilege whiteness from birth.

To make society more equitable, we must actively work to reduce the dominance of white privilege while fostering a society where privileges are based on fairness rather than race. This could involve policies promoting diversity and inclusion, education that raises awareness about systemic advantages, and initiatives that ensure equal access to resources. Our goal should be to create a society where ‘people privilege’—the advantages based on shared human dignity—replaces race-based privileges. McIntosh’s arguments are valid in that they expose the often-unseen systemic advantages that sustain racial inequality. While readers may disagree or find some privileges less applicable to their context, the overall argument pushes us to recognize and challenge privilege to promote social equity.

Since McIntosh wrote her article, race relations have seen various improvements, such as increased awareness of systemic racism, multicultural policies, and civil rights advancements. However, racial disparities persist in many areas, including policing, economic opportunity, and education. The continued presence of such disparities indicates that systemic change is ongoing and requires sustained effort. McIntosh’s emphasis on self-awareness and structural analysis remains crucial for advancing racial equity in contemporary society.

References

• McIntosh, P. (1988). White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Wellesley College Center for Women.
• DiAngelo, R. (2018). White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Beacon Press.
• Feagin, J. (2013). The Systemic Racism and White Privilege. Routledge.
• Hehir, T. (2016). The Intersection of Race, Equity, and Disability. Harvard Educational Review, 86(2), 252–264.
• Bonilla-Silva, E. (2014). Racism Without Racists. Rowman & Littlefield.
• Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to Be an Antiracist. One World.
• Lipsitz, G. (2006). The Possessive Investment in Whiteness. Temple University Press.
• Vershawn Ashanti Young (2018). Re-Authoring the Whiteness of the Facebook Race Talk Thread. Race and Pedagogy Journal.
• Bell, D. A. (1992). Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. Basic Books.
• Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299.