Discrimination is one of the major problems in our society today. This discrimination is not only limited to race but further extends to gender, nationality, education, physical appearance and even social status. According to the article “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh the heart of this problem rests in our basic understanding of these […]
Reading McIntosh’s article about white privilege, ironically, reminded me of another article with the title “Why I’ll Never Apologize for my White Male Privilege,” written by Tal Fortgang, a former Princeton student. He opens the narrative by mocking the popular saying “check your privilege,” which suggests that whites should be “apologetic” for the invisible power […]
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 […]
I’m very lucky to belong to a social group that talks about privilege– a lot. Coming into these conversations for the first time, as outsiders tend to occasionally, isn’t a comfortable process. It is painful to realize that so much of what you thought was your own hard work, what you thought you accomplished yourself, […]
I should start by saying that I noticed the criticism towards the Eduardo Bonilla-Silva document, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States, first. Thus I do not deny the possibility of bias. I can see why people find Bonilla-Silva’s article to be rather horrible. In 2006, Bonilla-Silva couldn’t […]
In “Racism Without Racists”, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva sheds light a means of social stratification regarded as Latin Americanization. Through this proposed model, a triracial divide forms between those deemed white, honorary white, and collective black (Bonilla-Silva 180). Purportedly, those who occupy a high space in this racial ladder, those in the white and high level honorary […]
The systems of white privilege and male privilege are very prevalent features of modern day society in the United States despite many people’s objections. In her paper, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” Peggy McIntosh identifies how certain groups of people are unaware of inherit privileges that they have due to race or gender. McIntosh […]
When did white become the default race? In today’s society it seems as though you’re “diverse” if you aren’t Caucasian. And you’re ethnic if you don’t fit into the standard mold of being white or black. Taking all of these things into account, it’s hard not to wonder how this all came to be? In […]
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva offered an interesting plan to assuage racial conflicts in Racism without Racists. He proposed something he called a “triracial system”. Explaining the structure of the system he writes, “the emerging triracial system will be comprised of ‘whites’ at the top, an intermediary group of ‘honorary whites’-similar to the coloreds in South Africa during formal […]
While McIntosh explicitly discusses white privilege and Bonilla-Silva draws the readers attention towards structures built to maintain said privilege, the two pieces appear to have a parallel in their recognition of the rationally paradoxical. Bonilla-Silva speaks at length on perception of current racist constructs, thoroughly disentangling racial colorblindness from the ideology it claims to support. […]
