...White American Privileges and Social Class Aieleen Lanot University of Hawaii – West Oahu White American Privileges and Social Class Privilege is a concept of sociology used to implicate that there are certain groups of individuals that have an advantage over others. “Social liberties use the term to mean benefits according to white people under economic, political, and social circumstance. (Anyon 17)” I agree with his stance because there is no extension of such privileges to individuals of other races such as Blacks, Hispanics or Asians. The use of this term is mainly in the social inequality context primarily in relation to social class, sexual orientation, race, age, and gender. Several recorded privileged elements show the advantageous that White America has in getting access to better housing, jobs, and education. This paper will explore the issue of White American privileges and how social class status is based on color of your skin and the financial means of your family. In the article by Peggy McIntosh, she defines, “White privileges as a package of unearth assets, invisible in nature and are obvious” (McIntosh 10). There is a comparison of white privilege to an undetectable light knapsack of assurance, maps, tools, guidance, visa, codebooks, clothes, passbooks, emergency gear, blank checks, etc. I concur with Peggy McIntosh analysis since there are several functions brought about by white privileges. These functions include provisions of “perks”...
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...What White Privilege?!! Explanation! I'm not saying that privilege doesn't exist, I'm saying that as far as White Privilege goes in Modern Society, it is an anthill being transformed into a Mountain to push an agenda. I agree with Black Conservative and Economist Thomas Sowell when he argues that moral condemnation of discrimination doesn't automatically make it causally crucial, that having a majority in any society is a given, that the idea of a homogonized "white" group in society that is accepted and given privileges is erroneous. The theory of White Privilege fails to give an accurate definition/ analysis of barriers in society and the idea that large amounts of minorities or lagging majorities (in other countries) is due to a privilege ethnic or race group, is flawed and racist. First, while the idea of condemning discrimination against members of our species is important, it is by no means causally crucial. People forget sometimes that there are other races outside black and white when it comes to this subject. Once other races are involved you start getting different results, stats and causes. What about the difference in test scores for Japanese and Mexican American kids for example. In his essay Race, Culture and Equality, Mr. Sowell writes: Japanese and Mexican immigrants began arriving in California at about the same time and initially worked in very similar occupations as agricultural laborers. Yet a study of a school district in which their children...
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...Civil Rights movement in America, but would his view differ if he was living as a black boy in the 21st century? Many things are happening today, and people argue that equal rights are non-existent to this day. If living today, Richard Wright would be able to attain a proper education and would explore the truth behind myths about equality. In his autobiography, Richard would write about his experiences to tell his shifting views on Black Lives Matter, impact of education has on living condition, and that white privilege is false. Black Lives Matter was created in July 13,2013 with...
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...First, we must understand the background of the author. I am a thirty-something white married male with two children. I was born in Florida, raised around the rural outskirts of the St. Louis area, moved to the “Big City” (inner-city) when newly married, and then fled to farm country when the inner-city crime became too much to bare to raise a family. When in the educational system, I wasn’t completely isolated from racial concerns. There was a black family with kids in grade school and a couple of black kids in high school. We thought we were high society, progressive “color-blind” people, though I can’t remember ever going to their houses, or seeing them outside of school, or even hanging out with them in school. My parents were not always the first to step up and claim “ain’t racist” but they would when pressed. They enjoyed a good joke or two or twenty and stereotypes a-plenty. It was when I went to college straight out of high school, and let a racist slang term slip amongst a group of my multicultural friends that I realized how much my parents tainted my worldview. That was my first realization and my first step towards being anti-racist. The purpose of this reflective paper is to examine what confrontations are experienced in recognizing institutionalized racism and white privilege. In order to understand today’s institutional racism, we must define. That is a difficult task and we were unable to fully define it amongst a group of my peers and that I turn to an authority...
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...Running Head: BLACK AND WHITE PRIVILEGE IN AMERICA 1 Black and White Privilege in America Jacki Barnes Davenport University Diversity in Society – SOSC201 Professor Narketta Sparkman October 21, 2012 Black and White Privilege in America There are many definitions of “white Privilege” in text books, media, and on the internet, but all of those definitions include one common thread: It allows white persons advantages over non-whites and it is a form of social privilege. According to Akbar (Koppelman, 2011, p. 44), white privilege originated with the arrival of the white man in America. He states that, “They began to effectively eliminate any contradiction to the imposed redefinition of reality that they dictated.” White privilege has been referred to as rightness of white, meaning that white is normal and any deviation from that is abnormal (Koppelman & Goodhart, 2011, p. 189). It offers economic benefits as well as cultural benefits. Being white means you will most likely be paid a higher salary, receive promotions, and have loans approved. In classrooms, anything that happened prior to white people arriving in America is referred to as prehistory (2011, p. 191). Because of white privilege, there are many things that white people take for granted that people of color have no access to. For example, whites can choose to purchase a home in an area they can afford and want to live in. Researchers at Dartmouth, the University of Georgia...
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...Whites Swim in Racial Preference Nathan Wood Sociology 111-001-F1 Ivy Tech Community College Muncie, Indiana The article “Whites swim in racial preference” is a phraseology comparison of fish and water in regards to the privilege of being white or Caucasian. The article by Tim Wise points to the ignorance of the most powerful man in the world in regards to the racial divide in this country even at the highest level of education. Wise also mentions a government loan program in the form of FHA loans to as many as 15 million white Americans for over thirty years. Today FHA loans are now mainly used by low income families of African American and Hispanic homebuyers. (Dedman, 1998) Privileged whites now label FHA as a form of welfare, which is amusing since so many whites benefitted from the program from the 1930’s to 1960’s. Another reference in the article referred to hard working whites, differentiating themselves from minority groups that dot the labor landscape working as maids, garbage collectors etc…as if they care not hard working due them these workers being from a specific ethnic group. While some articles I have researched seem to think The FHA loan program, was a form of social control. However, I see this more as Social Stratification as A segment of society (15 million whites) shared a distinctive pattern of rules (FHA Loans) that differed from the pattern of the larger society. Obviously other social tags could...
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...White privilege is a topic that I never really heard about or grasped the concept of until I became older, maybe around late middle school or early high school years. Coming from a very small, railroad town in western Virginia, white privilege was not apparent or noticeable to me. It was not a topic that was commonly discussed unless you were taking a history class or another class that addressed racism in our country. Even in those classes, racism in our country was talked about, but rarely was the topic of white privilege and what it stands for brought up in discussion. My initial thoughts about white privilege are that I think it is unfair and morally wrong to have such a difference in treatment and opportunities between races. However, I’m not surprised that it exists in our world today and it doesn’t shock me to hear and see that white privilege is still embedded in the crevices of everything we do. We live in a world where racism is still...
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...I have never in my life have experienced white privilege. It is because I am a Chinese descent and I am also part of the minority in our population. Even though I have not experienced white privilege, but I have observed some of my white classmates to experience white privilege. I went to an elementary school that was pretty diverse, but there were some white children in the school. There were some in my class, and I remember there was a time where I had noticed white privilege had appeared. It happened in grade five, I was playing with one of the white girls and I think we were laughing at something that had offended one of our classmates even though we didn’t mean to. Then our teacher had called us out in the hall and started to give a lecture to us about why we should have not done that. My white classmate had made an excuse on why she did that and the teacher had let her back into the classroom without getting into trouble. I saw her made an excuse and I did the same thing thinking that I might get out of trouble. Instead I wasn’t off the hook and the teacher had to give me a light punishment. Then I have become aware that whatever trouble she made, she would be able to get out of it. While on the other hand, if I...
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...Privilege is the Greatest Enemy of Equality Educators most often consider multicultural education as teaching their pupils about Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, and other descendants of color. However, multicultural education is not complete if it doesn’t challenge the root of structural racism and racial oppression: the matter of white privilege. It’s vital to understand white privilege and the role it plays in affecting society. In essence, white privilege is an unwilling and non-owned racism that has been ingrained into our mindset throughout history, and it affects how we interact with each other and how those who don’t share such advantages are affected. It’s a permeating factor responsible for many inequalities faced among races, widening the social gap between white and nonwhite Americans. Accessibility to education, jobs, and housing are all directly affected by societal inconsistencies of privilege and power. Ultimately, racism isn’t caused by white privilege; white privilege is caused by racism. Yet racism isn't a problem that resides in the minds of individuals; it lies rooted deep in our social institutions. It is necessary we reconstruct the societal ideologies of race and class to expel this self-perpetuating cycle. In this essay I will address these racial struggles for power and privilege, the role it plays in education, and my personal experience towards racism and how it has affected me as a person. Privilege, as defined by Websters Dictionary...
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...Racism Still Exist in the 21st Century Many are oblivious that racism still exists today. We are often taught that racism is a thing of the past. In school we study the notorious figures of Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. The concepts of segregation and inequality are often taught in a historical context. However, if you take a look around racism is very present in today’s society and can be found by looking at the achievement gap, and mass incarceration system. Another representation that racism exists today is the concept of white privilege, which is deeply immersed into society. The achievement gap is a major aspect when we think of racism in the twenty-first century. According to the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), there are large gaps in test scores between African American students and White students (Vanneman, A., Hamilton, L., Baldwin Anderson, J., and Rahman, T. 2009). At the age of nine and thirteen students are given a test in both reading and mathematics to determine the level at which they are performing (Vannerman, et al., 2009). The results are then translated to a scale by the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). From this scale experts have gathered valuable information that confirms the achievement gap is still present today. Many say that the achievement gap is due to various reasons. One main reason that seems to be associated with achievement gap is the stability of the parents (Vannerman, et...
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...dominant, Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” explores the special circumstances and benefits she experiences as a white person, which she outlines to be often analogous to the unearned advantage of men in the patriarchal system. These societal advantages were not earned but were given on the basis of skin colour, which are often denied and protected by those experiencing white privilege, despite creating a very real influence on society. These notions of a disadvantage for one race and an advantage for another are developed and backed by different sociological studies throughout the paper. The race to which someone...
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...In McIntosh’s profound essay’ “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”, she states “I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege” (78). McIntosh characterizes the many allowances whites are allowed to enjoy without any questionable justification of consequence. Individually, being a person of color, it is easy for me to identify with these statements; growing up as and African American I was constantly justifying the way I live my own life in the strict confinements of having an exponentially higher melanin content. However, for Caucasians they are never questioned or confronted regarding “certain stereotypes”. How many times have you ever heard a white person have to defend “why do all white people shoot up schools or do crack?” but you can’t go five minutes on CNN without hearing people of color having to defend against why “all African Americans live in huts, why all black people do drugs and live in the hood, why all black people don’t go to school and sag their pants”. This also goes for achievements and positive recognition; their accomplishments never are undermined to correlation of race. White people are allowed to excel and even fail miserably; there is no limitation in the ability to express oneself, they are free to have erratic or even rude inappropriate behavior and moreover their expressibility is never accursed to race....
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...standard of American lifestyle, while being invisible to those who possess the privileges and benefits of meeting its requirements. Communication must be done with a level sense of purpose and reason; conversely, the mindset of Blacks and Whites is not necessarily “Black and White”. a) In Peggy McIntosh’s work “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”, she emphasizes the effort Whites must take to simply comprehend and acknowledge that their lives, in general, are not the same as those of color. (McIntosh, YEAR???) The article continues to express White privilege as a force of supremacy and dominance that is underlined by a large array of benefits and favors packaged together in an “invisible knapsack”. Much like male privilege, rather than release some of the power of being White, the actions taken are often to raise the glass ceiling of non-Whites to a higher level. What this does, consequently, is maintain the White superiority and...
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...racial order organized. Other paradigms in history have shown that someone’s race associates with their socioeconomic status. However, we learned earlier that that is not true. Our social interactions with other people from other backgrounds, challenges our minds to work together to create a difference. Some individuals are still stuck in their ways of the white race having dominance within the country. However, racism is not only a “white problem”. Minorities have gained some power and has definitely demonstrated racism. When it comes to race and racism in...
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...have worked hard and earned what they have; other times it comes as a result of privilege. Privilege comes in many forms and sizes. In our society, privilege is spread among many social classes in many forms. However, privileges seem to favor specific types of races and class. Three examples of privileges are white privilege, wealthy privilege, and privilege of beauty. Our lives consist of multiple privileges that are unrecognized because they are considered a norm in society. As mentioned privilege comes in many forms and sizes; one of which is white privilege. White privilege is so common that many white people themselves do not even recognized it. This is described by Erin Parker, in the Huffington Post, “White privilege is real, and those of us who have it have no idea it’s even happening” (huffingtonpost.com). This leads people of races other than white to be put at a disadvantage, and the people who obtain the benefits are oblivious to the problem. These people do not see it as a problem, and granted without thinking about the issue; there is no problem. A person with “white privileges” goes about their day and doesn’t even realize that...
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