- Advantage
- Disadvantage
- Denial
- Unacknowledged
- Privilege
- Power
- Race
- Protection
- Comfort
- Alienated
Peggy McIntosh argues that white middle class men and women are nurtured into denying privilege simple to protect him or her from fully acknowledging, lessening, or ending their privilege completely.
- "I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day..." "White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special previsions, maps, passports, code books, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks."
- "My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture"
- "It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all."
McIntosh's piece reminds me of our first analysis we did on Johnson. She, like Johnson, is speaking about how "power" is unacknowledged. But once we recognize and accept where the power has originated and continues to thrive, then we can start to correct the problem and balance the power. I like how McIntosh began her argument with a comparison between the powers of race to the power of different sex; men verses women. It reinforced my understanding of power and made it clearer because she related this to an issue I could relate with. Relating this drastic change to the question we debated in our previous class, how will the child change his or her outlook on race and power when they have been taught by their parents who have believed in "white privilege" for so many years?
