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Understanding White Privilege Reflection

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I have many specific highlights from the workshop that I would like to reflect on. Over the course of the weekend I found myself moving through different cycles of understanding and growth. When I find myself with larger numbers of people I often experience a state of “otherness,” generated by the initial anxiety of being with hundreds of people I don’t know. After some of the exercises I noticed my anxiety lessen, the work helped me reconnect with my place in humanity, through a sense of camaraderie with others, realizing our sameness instead of focusing on differences.

During the first evening, a vin diagram was drawn which outlined ways to slow down Industrial Growth Society, combining Holding Actions, New Ways of Doing Things and Shift …show more content…

In the article, Understanding White Privilege, by Francis Kendall, two comments that stand out as related to this are; “Most of us go through our days unaware that we are white or that it matters.” (Kendall, 2) “We participate, intentionally or not, in the purposeful construction of a system that deflates the value of one people’s culture while inflating the value of another’s.” (Kendall, 3) When I observe the terrible state of the world most of this is due to the dominant culture, capitalist culture, the Business as Usual, largely white-centric culture that is rapidly taking over the whole planet. Many of the healing systems and cultures that for centuries lived in harmony with the earth are being oppressed and eliminated. Learning to listen and provide space for the voices of these other cultures to be heard and acknowledged is extremely important at this time. Not only from a social and restorative justice standpoint, but also for the preservation of all life. Being willing to learn from and collaborate with those who are different from us is very essential. I found that The Work That Reconnects legitimizes and incorporates other non-western ways of knowing and being which are supportive to collaboration across

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This week we were assigned to read to different articles. The first article was written by Peggy McIntosh titled, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”. Throughout the article, Peggy showed the readers what it means to have white privilege. She showed the readers 50 different types of “advantages” that whites get over other races, such as African Americans. This is the biggest theme throughout her entire piece.

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In Andrea Smith’s article “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy”, Smith argues from three different perspectives on how different people are oppressed and are victimized together. She presents three scenarios involving people of color and how they can modernize to become unified. The three pillars she uses to try to understand white supremacy describe the logic behind: slavery and how it deals with capitalism, genocide in the United States colonialism, and orientalism during wartime. In the first pillar presented, slavery is used to understand white supremacy by saying black people are innately thought of as property, which serves as the anchor for capitalism.

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White privilege is the societal privilege that benefits individuals whom society recognizes as white in some countries, beyond what is generally experienced by non-white individuals under a similar social, political, or financial conditions. Peggy Mcintosh explains white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets. White privilege denotes the subtle or sometimes obvious passive advantages that white people may not notice that they receive, which originates from overt bias and prejudice. These incorporates cultural affirmations of one’s own worth; presumed greater social status; and freedom to move, buy, work, play, and speak freely. A lot of the time people feel guilty about being the beneficiaries of some form of privilege, but a lot of the time they do not understand that having privileges is not the result of what we have done as an individual but should be seen more like a membership given upon birth.

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I sometimes get irritated when people don’t agree on the same ideas that I have or when the other person says something that I don’t agree with. The objective of this chapter made me comprehend that based on an individual’s experiences and viewpoints impacts the person’s behavior. Some experience may deal with the oppressions and privileges a person has, the article “Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person…” made me realize that I am more privilege than what I thought. The author didn’t think she was privilege until she read a book she got recommended and from her article she summarizes

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White Privilege: Essay 1 White privilege is a systemic issue that has roots in our history as far back as the creators of our country. Searching back, we see our norms and values created into habits that have been woven into how we view and act around specific groups such as African Americans. This essay is going to explain how the average Caucasian individual experiences white privilege on a day to day basis and the solutions to insure that white privilege will stop and true equality can be handed out. This paper views the latter issues through symbolic interactionism, with supporting sub theories such as; labeling theory, looking glass self, and selective perception.

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Over the past decade the term white privilege has emerged in our American history. White privilege is the concept that one particular group is benefited which is typically identified as white people. Most of the victims experiencing harsh conditions are non-white people under the same social, political, or economic circumstances of mistreatment. A conversation took place with a few people about white privilege whose race is identified as white. An interviewer started that “the belief that being white comes with unearned advantages and everyday perks”.

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Whites are the dominant group in America. People of color are the subordinate groups in America. This saddens me and it has to change in our society. We have to overcome these changes and grow equal as a society. Whites feel a sense of superiority against the people of color.

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White are attached to their own identity and violate the civic solidary of others because they expect others conform to these ideas or be oppressed and have to feel unwelcomed. Many people like Sam Huntington “calls for immigrants to assimilate into America 's “Anglo Protestant culture” (Song). If this culture seems to be violated then people can become defensive of it and violent. As Lorde says, “there must always be some group of people who, through systemized oppression, can be made to feel surplus, to occupy the place of the dehumanized inferior” (Lorde). This group was blacks for many years and in the future any other minority could take the mantle as the oppressed because it violates one’s ideals and expectations of others.

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New York, New York - Who ever said; "When Opportunity knocks, open the door?" Whomever uttered that statement should be shot and gagged. That's the problem we face in this egotistical society! Opportunity is a fundamental gift that reserves itself for those who take and embrace a situation by exherating effort to make it happen. Charlamagne Tha God, the co-host of Power 105.1's The Breakfast Club explains in his new book Black Privilege: Opportunity Comes to Those Who Create It, how embracing one's truths is the fundamental key to success and happiness.

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Critical Whiteness Studies responds to the invisible and normative nature of whiteness in predominantly white societies, criticizing racial and ethnic attribution of non-white subjects who have to grapple with their deviation from the set norm, and opening the discussion on white privilege that results from being the unmarked norm (Kerner: 278). As Conway and Steyn elaborate, Critical Whiteness Studies aims to “redirect[...] the scholarly gaze from the margins to the centre” (283) and, more specifically, to interrogat[e][...] the centre of power and privilege from which racialization emanates but which operates more or less invisibly as it constructs itself as both the norm and ideal of what it means to be human. (ibid.) Thus, Critical Whiteness

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People see whiteness because they experience its effects. A useful comparison can be drawn between the unrecognised privileges of males, and those of white people (McIntosh, 1988). It is not unusual for men to acknowledge that women are disadvantaged. With that said, McIntosh (1988) argues that white privilege is in the same manner without recognition and thus preserved. McIntosh (1988) views white privilege as an invisible collection of unearned assets that is of benefit to white people on a daily basis.

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