White Privilege: The Invisible Knapsack, by Peggy Mcintosh illustrates an image of white superiority over other colored people. Peggy knapsack is lecturer and associate director at the Wellesley College Center where she does her research. Specifically focusing on women, gender equality and multi culture. Her legitimacy derives out of being some of the firsts scholars to examine whites to be measured in racial categories. Beginning with one of her first arguments, the author states that much like men having hierarchy over women, white colored people have immunities that people of colored skin do not. Just as she said “Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in women’s studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men…
In this Tim Wise discusses how the so called white privilege came about in the United States and how it was a big joke. He talks about how especially back during the Civil War that the world was off balance. White people were clearly more privileged and they may not have realized it until slavery came about. He mentions that the middle class people were fooled by those of the Elite class. The Elite class made them feel as though they were more important than there servants, which were normally African Americans, even though, the Elite did not care what everyone thought, they just wanted to stay on top. They felt that to stay on top they must create a class system. Elite was better than the Middle and Lower class, the Middle class was better than the Lower class, and if you were in the lower class you were nothing. Whites tended to be in both the Elite class and the Middle class while the African Americans fell in the Lower class, thus creating privilege.…
In America, privileged is something we see every day whether it is gender, sexuality, age, socioeconomics, or religion. Tim Wise documentary on White Privilege discuss inequality of race between blacks and whites. In this paper I will discuss other privilege beside raced that are enjoyed by a preferred category. People of a particular category are in denial of privilege, such as rich people feel people of poverty put themselves in that predicament. Rich people feel there should be no government assistance that includes: public housing, food stamps, federal grants, and Medicare. In America women are paid 79 percent of what men make. I notice that women are chosen more for teaching and secretarial jobs while men get chosen for manual labor jobs.…
She uses her observation of men’s attitude toward their privileges, and their unwillingness to accept that they are over privileged, as an analogy to introduce her claim that white privileges are alike to male privileges. By transferring the importance and the seriousness of the women’s rights movement to her topic of white privilege, she combines ethos and pathos to persuade the readers that this is an important issue in our…
In White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, Peggy McIntosh provides vivid examples on how "white privilege" is considered to be unapparent for many white individuals and negatively affects people of color. White privilege is an “unearned advantage” given to Caucasian individuals, as it “confers dominance” by establishing that the is white race is superior (McIntosh, 1990). With white privilege, white individuals are protected from the “hostility, distress, and violence,” which is often associated with individuals of color (McIntosh, p. 332). White privilege gives these individuals the opportunity to receive vital educational, political, and social resources that may possibly be inaccessible for people of color. By providing awareness on how white privilege works and how it can be detrimental in the attempt to gain racial equity for individuals of color, this concept can work to improve racial equity by establishing educational programs that inform individuals on white privilege and ending political policies that serve as a measure to oppress individuals of color.…
As I was reading her article, it remains me of a quote: “ fish don't know they are in water.” It makes me think of the white people as a fish and the white privilege as the water. Ones lose the sense to identify a certain element in their daily life. The white people overlooked the community's selective advantage for them and take it for granted. In the beginning of the passage, McIntosh talks about how men are unwilling to admit to their superior advantage to the women's.…
“Prison sentences for black men are nearly 20% longer than those of white men conducted for similar crimes”(Blake 1). Privilege is something that people can have and get taken away, like a rule. Since it is a choice to have, it is not a mandatory use. The issue with cross cultures in the word is that Europeans do not realize they are more privileged than they think they are. While European men and women argue that racial privilege does not concern them, African American men and women may implore that racial privilege has everything to do with them, and its negative impact.…
The concept that all men are created equal and have the right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, is true if you were born a white, upper class male. If you were born of another gender or of a different skin color, or both, you face an uphill battle to thrive, let alone survive. Women face an uphill battle for equal rights, control over their own body, equal pay, respect, and a voice. If you were born a woman of color, the battle you face is also racism and prejudice, which even in today’s time and history, is a huge struggle every day. However, if you entered this world as a white man, especially into the privileged upper class, you have all the rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness…
Cited: McIntosh, Peggy. "Daily effects of white privilege." White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, 1988. Tues. 19 Feb 2013. .…
This has been the case in America with White Privilege. It started when whites first immigrated to other countries besides Europe and began taking land and enslaving people. They enslaved many people among these people were Africans. People were not able to defend against these foreigners for they were better equipped and had the only guns. When the White immigrants came to America they conducted mass genocide to the natives and conquered the land there for when they decided it was time to write history then they wrote it to make them seem a favorable is possible and also established laws only benefiting the White man and white women alike although at the time women were still subordinates to White men.…
Throughout the course of C&T 235, I have learned a vast amount of information regarding the aspect and ideas of race. During the first few weeks of class we dissected races and talked about all the stereotypes about it. We even talked about white privilege which was a term I was aware of from other classes that I have taken here at The University of Kansas. I had prior knowledge of this term, but this class allowed me to really unpack and understand the meaning of this concept. The term white privilege addresses the ways or means that white individuals benefits from not being the racial minority group.…
In Peggy McIntosh’s article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible backpack” we see detailed examples of how white people are extremely privileged in ways that people of other races may never understand. Even though sometimes we do not realize this is happening it has been seen to be true in many things throughout history and in the world today.…
In this spellbinding lecture, the author of the bestselling White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son offers a powerful inside out look at race and racism in America, surveying the damage white privilege has done not only to people of color, but to white people themselves.…
As white privilege different ethnicity groups have privilege too but do they have the same privileges? Maybe they do but they do not put too much thought to them. That is the case with me I have many privileges that can relate to race, religion, ethnicity, and social class. For example, the privilege of assisting and have some relations with the church. I just go to church like once a month because I do not put much effort on going and having some free time to go and spend at least an hour in church. Also spending time with my entire family as a daughter, sister, granddaughter, etc., I rather spend time reading or doing homework. Those are some of my personal privileges but other privileges like having the right to vote, to speak up and say what I think about the government not doing anything about discrimination between citizens and non-citizens. I do think and try to say what I think about the stereotyping between this ethical groups but sometimes I’m scared because even though I know I have that privilege I belong to the group that have not much privilege here in the United States, which belong to the Hispanics. Even though not all the people have the same privileges or they do not put too much thought to all the privilege they have, other people do not have the right to prejudice or take advantage of them. We can also relate…
In Peggy McIntosh's "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" one of the first appeals to text I see is logos. We see such techniques in the first few paragraphs were she goes on to use logic to explain that because male privilege obviously exists and because men, while admitting women do have a disadvantage in society, can't see their advantage in being male, then, because of interlocking hierarchies in our society, the same must go for whites when it comes to white privilege. Meanwhile for ethos, she clearly states multiple times that she is indeed white and is able to use her race as a source of credibility for the article. McIntosh uses her experience as a white citizen to list down some of the advantages she has had, or will…