White Privilege The Invisible Knapsack

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. Counter to the following source, this article addresses how humans can achieve a better understanding of equality through reason and understanding over emotion.
McIntosh, Peggy. “White Privilege: The Invisible Knapsack.” From Inquiry to Academic Writing. Ed. Stuart Greene and April Lidinsky. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016. 536-543. Print. …show more content…
Many of McIntosh’s examples of these advantages seem to be based off of personal assumptions in very controlled environments that do not reflect larger scale scenarios. She continues to create a list of fifty daily effects of her privilege in life that she perceives her African American coworkers, friends, and acquaintances to not have. A serious flaw in her work is that these are all based off of perception and not tangible facts or reason. On multiple micro levels her commentary can absolutely be construed as prejudice due to the level of unconfirmed assumptions she places against others based on race