This week I learned about racism from a different perspective. Peggy McIntosh brilliantly described the circumstances of racism in our day and age. One interesting sentence that McIntosh writes is, “white privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.” This sentence brings attention to how white people already have an intrinsic aspect of privilege inside of them. White people might not realize it, but they have “unacknowledged privilege” just like men think they have unacknowledged privilege over women. This issue is not only an issue of race, but also an issue of gender equality. People tend to argue and fight over broader topics like gender equality and racism, meanwhile they don’t focus on the minor issues that bring rise to those large social problems and conflicts in this universe. As McIntosh explained, white people, just like men, unconsciously live their lives feeling privileged over other races and women, respectively. One of the privileges that McIntosh unconsciously has is that she “will feel welcomes and normal in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.” It’s unfortunate to know that white people will always feel that they are socially protected in any type of class or hierarchy while the colored people, seemingly, will have a hard time finding neighborhoods that approve of them and walking in public freely and not worried. I think that the ultimate solution to these subtopic problems is to realize how much white people have and compare the advantages and disadvantages between the two races and genders. While white people have the “unearned privileges” over others, they have to reflect on their lives and appreciate what they have. When a person appreciates what s/he has, s/he will be more open to the analysis of his/her life with respect to other lives. White people should realize the powers and privileges they have and the disadvantages other races have, and through that, white people will hopefully come to acknowledge other people that may not be their ‘type’ or their ‘color’. In addition to this unique approach to the problem of unconscious racism, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva introduces a few methods that help alleviate the racial problem growing in America. As more immigrants arrive at America, more of the collective population is being segregated and mixed. A large influx of immigrants of a certain race may inhabit a specific neighborhood or city and deem it theirs as to exclude other races. These tiny communities built within the collective population is what exacerbates the racial conflict. Three methods proposed by Bonilla-Silva are to “create an intermediate racial group to buffer racial conflict, allow some newcomers into the white racial strata, and incorporate most immigrant into the collective black strata.” These innovative methods may alleviate the racial conflict and reality that is present in America nowadays. I think that immigrants should be dealt with more respect. Immigrants should be granted more privileges and be treated as real citizens. Nonpolitically speaking, the general population should realize and acknowledge immigrants’ rights and privileges as well as their own. That some people acknowledge their rights over others adds more gas to the racial engine. As a community, we shall all appreciate what we have and grant others the same privilege to appreciate what they have. We shall appreciate them and the advantages that they provide for us and they shall appreciate us and the advantages that we provide for them, rather than unconsciously acknowledging the disadvantages that they have and the advantages we have over them!