Understanding White Privilege Analysis

Improved Essays
We live in a time where unfortunately, racism is still an issue that many people across many races deal with. In America, it is mainly African-Americans, Hispanics, and Middle Eastern people that deal with the pain and hatred that takes shape in many different forms. In “Understanding White Privilege” by Frances Kendall, Ph.D., the author explores the concept of white privilege with an informative, yet critical tone in order to persuade readers to think differently.
Kendall starts off by explaining the purpose of her article, which is to “to become clear about the basics of white privilege what it is and how it works” (2). In this paragraph, she introduces the concept of white privilege and then proceeds to “explore ways in which we can work

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    Peggy McIntosh (1989), Associate Director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women on her essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” Peggy argues how men have privilege of advantages and women have disadvantages. Her main focus is on “White Privilege” and how white people are unacknowledged that they have privileges that are unearned privilege, and that African American does not have. White privilege is hard to see for many white people who were lead to believe that whites are superior with access to many resources than African Americans. Peggy McIntosh essay mentions that many white people have a hard time acknowledging or know that they have unearned white privileges.…

    • 178 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Ph.D. Peggy McIntosh wrote an article in 1988 titled “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”. In the article, McIntosh explains a certain set of privileges that come with being white and living in the United States of America. The idea for the article came to her as she was writing another article about male privilege in America. To McIntosh, racism is something which puts another at a disadvantage. She realized that this omission had to mean that if one was inherently advantaged, another would be placed at a disadvantage.…

    • 1102 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In today’s society, I perceive myself as white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied, upper-class, college-educated, and Jewish. That is a gift in today’s world. I am fortunate to come from a privilege background, but I recently started to have more sense of appreciation of my white privilege ever since I started to take a Gender, Race, and Class course. One of the readings that really caught my eye was “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy Mcintosh, and in her article, she discusses how some people who have white privilege do not seem to recognize the privilege that they have. She gives numerous of examples on how white privilege helps in real life encounters.…

    • 1159 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In White Like Me, Tim Wise explains from a personal experience of the ways in which racial privilege shapes the lives of most African Americans and white American, openly racist or not. The book shows the broadness and deepness of the abnormality within institutions such as, education, employment, housing, healthcare, and criminal justice. By determining the importance of racial privilege and its cost, Wise provides an amazing that will inspire anyone in understanding the way that race shapes the experiences of people in the United…

    • 86 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Peggy McIntosh, author of the essay "White Privilege", gave a compelling argument and interview on the situation of race and how it plays in society. She discussed how white people don't address their "whiteness", the 5 impediments of US ideology, and the disadvantages of being a race other than white. Her argument is quite compelling and interesting to listen to, however, she used logical fallacies, making her argument weak. First, she addresses how white people don't accept their "whiteness" and their race. We often say "I don't see color" or try to defend how they are not racist human beings by not accepting their white race.…

    • 569 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In the selected article, Campbell describes his reflection on times in his life where he was met with challenges due to his race. These challenges directly attacked his perceived way of life based off of assumptions as opposed to facts and evidence. As a white male, Campbell argues that he has had no racial privilege and more so that privilege is not attached to race but many other attributes. Campbell refuses to acknowledge “white privilege” and prefers to address emotional stereotypes that are taken as fact. By applying reason over emotion the reader is able to see that “white privilege” is accordingly just a privilege and not inherent of race.…

    • 441 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    White Privilege and You When was the last time you heard a joke about a white person being called a thug or an illegal immigrant? When was the last time you heard a news story about a white person who committed a crime, and wasn’t mentally ill? If you apply these situations to people of color, you’ve most likely heard about almost everyone. Welcome to a society in which white people run, in which their supremacy is unfortunately, manifested.…

    • 763 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Tim Wise’s book “White Like Me Reflections on Race from a Privileged son” (2011), Wise tackles the controversial topic of white privilege and how racial identity and whiteness here in America shape the overall lives of white Americans and adversely affect people of color. He entwines stories from his own life experiences from birth to present to make it both an easy read and relatable. Wise explains exactly what white privilege means and how this privilege is systematically embedded into American society and because of this, racism and racial disparities are rampant. He writes this book, not for those people of color, as they already know and understand the effects that whiteness (or lack thereof) has on their lives; but he writes for his…

    • 1614 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    “White” Like Me At the heart of American culture is the concept of racism; a continuous cycle perpetuated through years of injustice by slavery, violence, segregation, and hatred. Much like the symbolic “tree of life”, racism’s roots extend deep into the earth, drawing sustenance from each member of society. Yet in that survival tactic, it unconsciously steals a little more from one side—this is white privilege. “White privilege” is a mere social construction by which the dominant white group justifies their advantages and higher quality of life through diminution of people of color. To be a member of the white race, it is easy to overlook subtle inequalities—such as the wealth gap, career opportunities, education, etc.…

    • 1432 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In conclusion, white and male privilege are still prevalent in our present day society. In order for this to change, we must start making more people aware that these privileges exist. We must also stop viewing racism as an act of discrimination but also as certain groups being privileged over others. It was interesting to read her point of view because it was conflicting to the societal norm for…

    • 773 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The author talks about how white privilege damages not only people of color, but white people as well, in the process providing an accessible, and powerful, introduction to the social construction…

    • 229 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In this paper I will discuss the differences among white people who have experienced white privilege by analyzing “white privilege to a broke white” and comparing it to other articles that deal with…

    • 1794 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Privilege is a right, advantage, favor, or immunity specially granted to a specific individual, group, or class, and withheld from certain or all others. White privilege is a form of social privileges that solely benefits white people and excludes people of color. For some apparent reason many people become blinded, ignorant, and oblivious when white privilege becomes the topic of conversation. “White Privilege is the other side of racism” (Rothenberg, 53). Although we live in a country where we are constantly told all men are created equal, there is an overt contradiction to the ideology simply because of conspicuous white privileges.…

    • 828 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism is a book of articles compiled by Paula Rothenberg. The book consists of nineteen articles by twenty-three different authors and is broken up into four different parts. The book deals with white privilege and how white people do not recognize that they have it or do anything about it, specifically anything against it. Part one is titled “Whiteness: The Power of Invisibility.” This section introduces the idea that people with white skin do not have to think about the fact that they are white.…

    • 1463 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    Admittedly, it is within human nature to group similar people together as a way of organizing and making sense of the vastly diverse world around us. Psychology provides an explanation for this through the term social-categorization: the innate cognitive process in which people make sense of the complex world they live in by allocating similar individuals into social groups. Albeit being a natural human tendency, social grouping, more often than not, turns into stereotyping and discrimination. Consequently leading to discrimination and incorrect rationalizations of select social groups: the most compelling example of inappropriate social-categorization being classism. Classism is defined according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary as…

    • 1215 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays