White Privilege Reflection

Through experience it has been learned that White people do not typically identify strongly with race nor are they typically impacted by it. Very few White people acknowledge white privilege or have felt white guilt. I am a White girl however who has experienced both. I was always very racially aware from a young age, I knew that people around the world lived very different lives, had drastically opposite beliefs, and had a particular way of viewing the world, all of this fascinated me and I craved to know more. But as I learned more about the history of the world and the country I originated in, I discovered a recurring theme of White people forcibly removing, enslaving, or exterminating the Indigenous people of the country they planned …show more content…
This shame was only increased when I learned while researching my ancestry that one of my ancestors had owned over 200 slaves. I felt that being connected to such a man made me feel personally responsible for the atrocities that non-whites in America had faced. However as I developed and matured I realized that the acts that one’s ancestors had committed should have no effect on how others viewed me or how I viewed myself. This concern for inequality however did not end there, I studied other people’s experiences and read research on minorities experiences, I learned about the term “white privilege” and how it benefited me everywhere I went to have white skin. A lot of White people have never heard of white privilege and if they have they refuse to admit it exist, they like to pretend that racism doesn 't occur anymore; that all of the inequality that has happened was fixed by MLK’s speeches. Unfortunately they’re wrong. Just because a person is White but had nothing to do with the brutalities in the past does not mean they should be blind to the current ones. I never truly realized I was White however until I was invited to a birthday party and was the only White person