White Privilege Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack

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. As I was reading down the 26 examples that she wrote down, I was in awe on how these examples that she gave completely relate to me. Unfortunately, white privilege comes to people naturally and since it comes to people naturally, they do not seem to be grateful for it. White privilege is not an achieved status but rather it is an ascribed status. They do not feel or experience the obstacles …show more content…
In the article “Is This a White Country, or What?” by Lillian B. Rubin, the author discusses how Europeans immigrants like the Jewish people faced adversity once they arrived to United States in the 19th century, but as time went by, they overcame that adversity and began to earn their white privilege because they were white. According to Rubin, “the immigrants-------no matter how they were labeled, no matter how reviled they may have been-------ultimately assimilable, if for no other reason than they were white”. Even though the Jewish people overcame some obstacles, they are still faced with blatant anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is to be prejudice and discriminate against Jewish people and it is so ironic to me that there is actually a word to be against Jewish people. This is one of the reasons why I use situational