...White Privilege in America is real Imagine going to the gas station, and you seen a white man, that is underage, buying a pack of cigarettes. The cashier never asked for his ID or his license. And then you think to yourself, “maybe it is because he looks old enough,” but yet you know he’s not legal age. Then, you see an African american man going to buy the exact same thing, but he’s legal age. And then the cashier says, “May I see your ID please?” So then, you're just wondering,“is this white privilege?” White privilege can be little things in our society, that can be changed. White privilege in America is real. White people are less likely to be arrested by police. If you are a person of color you are most likely going to be accused of committing a crime than a person of white color is. According to Human Rights Watch, “people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites, but they have much higher rates of arrests. While only 14% of black people use drugs regularly, 37% of those arrested for drugs...
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...Focus on Pellow's discussion of stakeholders and ways in which companies maneuver to obtain approval and minimize opposition. How do these strategies connect to "colonial" hierarchies and institutionalized racism? As Pellow states, the causes of environmental injustice referenced in the scholarly literature include institutional racism in housing… and the exclusion of low-income individuals and people of color from the dominant environmental movement” (Pellow, 13). And the environmental inequality is a social process involving and impacting many stakeholders, such as social movement organizations, private sector firms, the state, residents, and workers. “When different stakeholders struggle for access to valuable resources within the political economy, the benefits and costs of those resources become distributed unevenly” (Pellow, 14). Which means that, those stakeholders with less power suffers from environmental inequality, such as living and working under dangerous conditions; those stakeholders with greater power are able to deprive other stakeholders. Thus, workers and residents with minimal political power are the most vulnerable to environmental inequality. In order to obtain approval and minimize opposition, companies adopt many strategies, which are connected to "colonial" hierarchies and institutionalized racism. “Throughout history, one of the most effective ways of controlling a colony was to create hierarchies (or intensify existing ones) between social classes...
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...“White Privilege” Topic: McIntosh, Peggy “White Privilege” The author made use of the phenomenon of male privilege to bring out the fact that white privilege is similarly denied and unconsciously protected. By describing how male privilege has rooted in our society, and how men denied this phenomenon by avoiding acknowledgement of the issue, the author explained the development of white privilege. According to the author, whites are taught not to recognize their privileges. They are disciplined in a way that they are unable to recognize racism as something that puts them at an advantage while as a result, put others at a disadvantage. They do not realize the existence of unearned skin privilege and therefore do not feel the need to stop it. By identifying the daily experiences granted by their skin privilege, whites can help themselves to reveal this distorted culture. They have to recognize the problem before they can lessen it and work to end it. The most obvious privileges are that white individuals are assumed to be affluence, civilized and morally neutral. The white community is perceived as a group of people who interact pleasantly and peacefully and that their country enjoys a widely represented state and its people enjoy many of its freedom. These perceived and unearned privileges are not only preserved from other people, they are also used as weapons to oppress others. However, even if white individuals do not approve the way which white dominance has been...
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...White privilege otherwise known as white skin privilege is a term for societal privileges that benefit white people in western countries beyond what is commonly experienced by the non-white people under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. These privileges are unearned and are distributed based on values of the dominant group, which in the west is white people. According to McIntosh and Lee, whites in a society considered culturally a part of the Western World enjoy advantages that non-whites do not experience. This leads to the controversy over whether or not White people should be able to enjoy these privileges. The term denotes both obvious and less obvious passive advantages that white persons may not recognize they have, which distinguishes it from overt bias or prejudice. These include cultural affirmations of one's own worth; presumed greater social status; and freedom to move, buy, work, play, and speak freely. The effects can be seen in professional, educational, and personal contexts. The concept of white privilege also implies the right to assume the universality of one's own experiences, marking others as different or exceptional while perceiving oneself as normal. Some critics argue that the term uses the concept of "whiteness" as a proxy for class or other social privilege or as a distraction from deeper underlying problems of inequality. Others argue that it is not that whiteness is a proxy but that many other social...
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...discrimination, disadvantages, worthless, and the list could go on with even more words that relate to racism. Jobs, acceptance, equality, benefits, this list is harder to label is it not? White Privilege is just as real as racism, but not as apparent. According the University of Dayton’s online dictionary, White Privilege is defined as, “a right, advantage, or immunity granted to or enjoyed by white persons beyond the common advantage of all others; an exemption in many particular cases from certain burdens or liabilities,” (“white privilege”). White Privilege is a subject rarely covered by educators due to the difficulty students’ have understanding it; therefore, resulting in a lack of awareness. White Privilege, unlike racism,...
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...For my first research project source I chose Andrea Ayvazian’s essay “Interrupting the Cycle of Oppression: The Role of Allies as Agents of Change”. For my specific research topic, I thought this interesting essay will be a great starting source in talking about the inequality between being part of the white and black community. The author defines the word ally of being an individual who is a member of a group of our society who acts in a dominant way. For the community, it’s kind of a person you look up, maybe in a type of way of as a role model. We could read out of this essay, allies have a greater authority to others or can influence others better and because of that allies are fighting for their own beliefs. “Allied behavior is intentional,...
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...What White Privilege?!! Explanation! I'm not saying that privilege doesn't exist, I'm saying that as far as White Privilege goes in Modern Society, it is an anthill being transformed into a Mountain to push an agenda. I agree with Black Conservative and Economist Thomas Sowell when he argues that moral condemnation of discrimination doesn't automatically make it causally crucial, that having a majority in any society is a given, that the idea of a homogonized "white" group in society that is accepted and given privileges is erroneous. The theory of White Privilege fails to give an accurate definition/ analysis of barriers in society and the idea that large amounts of minorities or lagging majorities (in other countries) is due to a privilege ethnic or race group, is flawed and racist. First, while the idea of condemning discrimination against members of our species is important, it is by no means causally crucial. People forget sometimes that there are other races outside black and white when it comes to this subject. Once other races are involved you start getting different results, stats and causes. What about the difference in test scores for Japanese and Mexican American kids for example. In his essay Race, Culture and Equality, Mr. Sowell writes: Japanese and Mexican immigrants began arriving in California at about the same time and initially worked in very similar occupations as agricultural laborers. Yet a study of a school district in which their children...
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...Running Head: BLACK AND WHITE PRIVILEGE IN AMERICA 1 Black and White Privilege in America Jacki Barnes Davenport University Diversity in Society – SOSC201 Professor Narketta Sparkman October 21, 2012 Black and White Privilege in America There are many definitions of “white Privilege” in text books, media, and on the internet, but all of those definitions include one common thread: It allows white persons advantages over non-whites and it is a form of social privilege. According to Akbar (Koppelman, 2011, p. 44), white privilege originated with the arrival of the white man in America. He states that, “They began to effectively eliminate any contradiction to the imposed redefinition of reality that they dictated.” White privilege has been referred to as rightness of white, meaning that white is normal and any deviation from that is abnormal (Koppelman & Goodhart, 2011, p. 189). It offers economic benefits as well as cultural benefits. Being white means you will most likely be paid a higher salary, receive promotions, and have loans approved. In classrooms, anything that happened prior to white people arriving in America is referred to as prehistory (2011, p. 191). Because of white privilege, there are many things that white people take for granted that people of color have no access to. For example, whites can choose to purchase a home in an area they can afford and want to live in. Researchers at Dartmouth, the University of Georgia...
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...In McIntosh’s profound essay’ “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”, she states “I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege” (78). McIntosh characterizes the many allowances whites are allowed to enjoy without any questionable justification of consequence. Individually, being a person of color, it is easy for me to identify with these statements; growing up as and African American I was constantly justifying the way I live my own life in the strict confinements of having an exponentially higher melanin content. However, for Caucasians they are never questioned or confronted regarding “certain stereotypes”. How many times have you ever heard a white person have to defend “why do all white people shoot up schools or do crack?” but you can’t go five minutes on CNN without hearing people of color having to defend against why “all African Americans live in huts, why all black people do drugs and live in the hood, why all black people don’t go to school and sag their pants”. This also goes for achievements and positive recognition; their accomplishments never are undermined to correlation of race. White people are allowed to excel and even fail miserably; there is no limitation in the ability to express oneself, they are free to have erratic or even rude inappropriate behavior and moreover their expressibility is never accursed to race....
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...In “A Looking Glass for the White Man”, William Apess expresses his dissatisfaction toward the hypocrisy of the white Christian. Apess finds it challenging to live in an order that condemns an “inferior race” by the color of their skin. He supports his claims by using a combination of valid and religious reasoning to appropriate the differences between Christians. The white Christians who live by the truths of Christianity neglect to give Indians respect and treat them as second-class citizens. It is appalling that they would believe to find themselves in heaven when, by the Bible, they would not be accepted there. By not only using Biblical references as one of many examples, Apess exposes those contradictions, thus encouraging his white audience to reconsider their ways and to begin living correspondingly to their beliefs. Apess begins his essay by asking the audience, “Why are we [Indians] not protected in our persons and property throughout the Union?” Here he questions the reasoning behind the dehumanization the Indian race. Not having the...
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...White men are commonly the most targeted group in terms of being privileged and are often times offended, but maybe the reason is not because it is false. The idea of white privilege is something whites seldom realize and colored people will never experience. It is the preference of one race over the other that exists in the many dimensions of society and it still exists today. People of color are at more risk of injustices due to this concept. The need to constantly be aware of one’s surroundings at all times can be found in some racial groups more than others. Peggy McIntosh wrote an essay called “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” in 1989 where she boldly brought to the attention of Americans this societal phenomenon. She refers to herself and indirectly mentions hardships faced by colored people in...
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...Kevin Richards Ms.Battle English 10 (3A/B) 1/5/13 My Essay This speech speaks about racial tension, white privilege, and race inequality and how the United States is not the union we want it to be. This speech was delivered by Senator Barack Obama, a father to two daughters and a husband to a wonderful woman. Senator Barack Obama feels that the United States is not how it said it will be due to racism, unfairness to each other races and privileges white people had over races, he felt that it was unbalanced and needed to make a change right away. I think he wanted to tap in to the audience emotions, so for them, they can make a change to form a more perfect union, he also explained that with enough effort, anything can happen as he made an example towards Ashley. One of the significant phrase a, liked was when he said “I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas.” He is saying that he was raised by both African and White, so he is confused to why the United States is like this? Senator Barack Obama was arguing about racial issues that was occurring in the United States, and why is not everyone treated equality. In his speech h often switch to topic to topic, for example. He talked about the racial issues to Reverend Wright...
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...been trodden without contact with thorns and thistles. While we take pride in what we exhibit as a result of our independent efforts, we do not for a moment forget that our part in this exhibition would fall far short of your expectations but for the constant help that has come to our educational life, not only from the Southern States, but especially from Northern philanthropists, who have made their gifts a constant stream of blessing and encouragement. The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more...
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...been trodden without contact with thorns and thistles. While we take pride in what we exhibit as a result of our independent efforts, we do not for a moment forget that our part in this exhibition would fall far short of your expectations but for the constant help that has come to our educational life, not only from the Southern States, but especially from Northern philanthropists, who have made their gifts a constant stream of blessing and encouragement. The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges of...
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...Relying on examples from your own experience and from Staples’ essay, write an essay discussing what parts you think race plays in people's reactions to Staples. Do you think his perceptions are accurate? Make sure that you document Staples’ words and ideas and that you include a works cited page. (See Chapter 18 of the Patterns text for information on MLA documentation.) A White Man’s Privilege Alters Public Spaces “My first victim was a woman – white, well dressed, probably in her early twenties, I came upon her late one evening on a deserted street in Hyde Park, a relatively affluent neighborhood in an otherwise mean, impoverished section of Chicago.” Staples begins his essay very powerfully. Upon reading the first paragraph, one would think they were about to read about a thrilling crime. Unfortunately, Staples was recounting a time he was judged by the color of his skin, as he walked through the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. “I was indistinguishable from the muggers who occasionally seeped into the area from the surrounding ghetto.” Staples’s naivety is sadly endearing, as he has clearly hadn't experienced any deep form of racism until he was almost twenty two years old. Why does Staples evoke this reaction? My story begins in Chicago as well, the year is 2008 and I was walking down Belmont; heading east from Sheffield. It was 4:30am and the streets were dark and distant. I was still getting to know the city and was walking extra cautiously, as not to slip...
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