...White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack “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,” is the twelfth item on a list written by Peggy McIntosh who is caucasian. She wrote this list to show some of the daily effects of white privilege in her life. This example that was used in her list can still be seen in today's society with how people act. Even though it is very wrong and racist, some people can do it unknowingly by appropriating culture. There are some racist people in this world that to this day still take from other cultures to try to make it their...
Words: 554 - Pages: 3
...This article examines different ways that people experience the world based on privileges gained at birth such as race, gender identity, class, citizenship, and ability. The author shows that these factors can lead to inequality or privileges. The author examines Peggy McIntosh’s 1988 piece, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” in which she claims that being born white in America provides individuals with privileges that other races are denied. The author claims that although there are privileges associated with being born white, his skin color did not prevent his suffering from poverty. This author claims that race is just one factor that could lend to privileges at birth. Intersectionality is the concept that “recognizes...
Words: 378 - Pages: 2
...After reading “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh, I experienced pangs of shame about the underserved benefits that I have received my whole life just for being white. Although I consider myself to be a culturally aware student and am extremely aware of active racism, I have not only failed to recognize passive racism but have adamantly denied that it is the norm in American society. This article effectively conveyed to me how blind I have been to the biased societal system that affects every individual’s daily life. The white as normative concept especially hit home because I realize how often I act as if white people are the rule and all others are the exceptions which is a divisive and harmful way of thinking....
Words: 654 - Pages: 3
...experience is seen by white people, but what white people do not see is how they are less likely to experience the same inequalities. When the idea of white privilege is brought up to white people, they often come off as defensive and contend that “you people” are the ones bringing it upon yourselves. The system is set up to empower white people since they are the majority and the ones holding most of the power. Peggy McIntosh’s article, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, exposes the problematic issue of white privilege, the daily struggles minority groups face, and how the United States must fix the system to truly bring equality for all....
Words: 681 - Pages: 3
...In “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” Peggy McIntosh describes the conditions that her white privilege provides for her on a daily basis. McIntosh explains white privilege as a transparent backpack of sorts, full of objects that would make life somewhat easier, such as maps, passports, and blank checks. She lists fifty items that she could often find true in her own life, but not true for African Americans she knew in the 1980s. These fifty things are powerful and most whites, such as myself, never even sat down and thought about how many advantages their skin color gets them, let alone wrote them down on paper. McIntosh notes that on multiple occasions she forgot the points on her list until she began to write them all down. The advantages of white people are oblivious to white people, and that is what shocked me the most. Knowing that this paper was written in relation to McIntosh and...
Words: 630 - Pages: 3
...Nobody really likes to talk about racism, oppression, and privilege. The article, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh, introduced the concept of privilege. Most white people don’t consciously intend to behave in ways that can be experienced by their students or colleagues of color as racist; they simply go along with a system that is already biased in their favor, thus they do not notice the privileges built into their daily lives. For example, in “The Promise” video, when the woman gives an advice to her black waitress, only to realize the waitress cannot relate because the advice is subject to whites. She did not understand the pain that the black lady was going through at first with her son having to grow...
Words: 349 - Pages: 2
...Privilege is like having some built-in advantages just because of who you are, like your race, gender, or how much money you've got. It's not about anything you've earned, but more about the way society's set up to give some folks a leg up while holding others back. In everyday life and especially in healthcare, privilege can really mess with how we treat people. Peggy McIntosh's idea of white privilege in her article "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" shows how privilege works, often without people even realizing it, shaping how we see and deal with others. Say you're a doctor or nurse who's got it pretty good because of your race or money. You might not even know it, but that could affect how you treat patients. You might...
Words: 357 - Pages: 2
...In the excerpt, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh, the author commences the paper with her current work on women’s studies. McIntosh enlightens us on her findings on how men are over privileged and are reluctant to admit so. They are aware of their current advantage over women, but rather than acknowledging they are privileged, men simply indicate their support towards fighting for a better-quality status for women. Yet, they will never support the reduction of their standing. This incident approached McIntosh’s awareness to a similar occurrence with the idea of white privilege. She began to realize that just as men acknowledge their advantage over women, whites acknowledge their benefits over people of...
Words: 405 - Pages: 2
...The relationship between reader and writer goes hand in hand with each other. Even though a writer can write a paper or article without the reader in their presence, but they have to keep them in mind. But if they’re writing and leave words unread and unexplored, then the whole sentence or paragraph can end up meaning nothing in the long run. But on the other hand a reader cannot exist without a writer. Therefore the relationship between the two is a relationship of mutual benefit or even dependence. According to Deborah Tanner, author of “Talk in the Intimate Relationship: His and Hers,” she says, “A lot of trouble is caused between women and men by, of all things, pronouns” (437). If a writer used the same noun over and over again, a reader might become bored quickly before he or she had gotten past the first paragraph. If someone keeps hearing the same thing over and over then they’ll eventually tune it out and get annoyed of it quicker and feel disinterested. Know that if I’m reading something that’s repetitive I will get bored and not read fully into the document and kind of just read it, just to read it and not really process it because it gets boring and not interesting anymore. An example of this is parents that repeat themselves a lot to their kids and wonder why the kids brush them off or look uninterested in what they are saying. Whatever the reader takes from the writing that they are reader may or may not be what the author wanted them to think. Nobodies view...
Words: 1352 - Pages: 6
...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...
Words: 748 - Pages: 3
...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...
Words: 675 - Pages: 3
...Nathan Salupo Professor Vann WMST 231-001 Privilege For my mini paper topic I focused on privilege. Before enrolling in this class I had no idea of what privileges were, who had which privileges, how we get our privileges, and the role that privileges play in our everyday lives. The topic of privileges shows up in Shaw and Lee chapter two which is the main focus. Privilege as defined by Shaw and Lee is defined as “Advantages that people have by virtue of their status or position in society.” For example males have advantages that are inherent just because they are males that females do not have. In the case of my topic I focused mainly on the privilege that white people have over black people. In early August in Ferguson, Missouri, 18 year old Michael Brown, an unarmed African American male was shot multiple times and killed after a confrontation with a cop. The officer, Darren Wilson, drove by the boys walking in the road and told them to move onto the sidewalk. Wilson then reversed his car back to the two boys where there was an apparent confrontation as Wilson recognized Brown as a suspect for a convenience store robbery days prior and the boys split off running in separate directions. It later became known that the robbery was not the reasons for the encounter that led to Brown’s death. (Washington Post) When Brown was killed there was a public outcry for him because he had been unarmed and was shot by a white police officer, Darren Wilson after what witnesses...
Words: 1246 - Pages: 5
...White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack Peggy McIntosh states that the privilege that Whites have is not seen as an advantage by them where as it is seen as an advantage by different races. Whites, as a race, do not take into account what they do not have to overcome in order to live life in the way that they do. This lack of acknowledgement of the domination that the White race has is closely related to the domination that males have in the US. If you are in this elite class you do not think of yourself as having more advantages, you just see others as having disadvantages. Unlike many individuals of the White race, McIntosh is attempting to place herself in the shoes of those that have a different skin. Her analysis of the factors that allow a White person to lead a life with less speed bumps is not all inclusive; however it does assist to paint a picture in the mind of the reader. Each of the 26 points may not fit in every sector of the US, although the most likely fit the majority of communities. When specifically we look at the African American perspective, it can seem that the world around them is not reflective of them. This melting pot that we call the US is still controlled by a dominate race, even though our population percentages grow smaller and smaller every year. McIntosh also references that the White races has an unearned entitlement and advantage simply due to the course of history and the mindset that it implemented since. When we speak of...
Words: 730 - Pages: 3
...White privilege is an advantage in society that is unmerited. Though it is practiced in every day life (whether it’s subtle or not), the majority views it as “absurd” and “non-existent”. Whiteness and white privilege are taboos that create feelings of guilt, hostility and anger whenever discussed by people of colour (hooks, 339), but it must be addressed and understood in order to be eradicated. Racism shapes the lives of white people, not only the lives of people of colour (Frankenberg, 1). When white privilege is ignored, white people are able to maintain power and dominance in our “post-racial” society. (Mcintosh, 33). In this essay, I will argue that widespread media representation and housing opportunities are the most important features of white privilege, using ideas from Peggy McIntosh’s White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, bell hooks’ Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination and Ruth Frankenberg’s Introduction: Points of Origin, Points of Departure. Widespread representation is the most important feature of white privilege because we live in an age where the media not only reflects our real worldviews and attitudes, but also controls them. The second most important feature of white privilege is adequate housing opportunities. It is necessary for white people to acknowledge their part in benefiting from a society that has thrived on racial hierarchy and white supremacy for centuries and these two aspects are key in reaching that. Firstly, white...
Words: 1972 - Pages: 8
...the norm, a 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...
Words: 848 - Pages: 4
