White Privilege

For our first blog post, I chose to reflect on the White Privilege reading, written by Peggy McIntosh. I found the idea behind this reading was very powerful. I loved the list of examples of "White Privilege" in McIntosh's everyday life. I see a lot of these examples in my everyday life as well. For example, "if a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race" and  "I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me." These two phrases I have heard in my everyday life as well. I come from a town that is not very diverse. Out of my whole High School, there were only about three or four African Americans, and very limited Chinese and Japanese students. There was almost no variety, not only in my High School, but in my town's community as well. I am not sure why, but that was how it was. Thus I have heard these phrases on many occasions from members of the white population. It is very sad how stereotypical people can be. Especially with high schoolers, I found that the white students could be very harsh when it came to racial comments such as the "N" word or comments against African Americans without thinking about the meaning behind it. This frustrates me so much because growing up in my hometown I witnessed people grow up being afraid of other races as well as thinking they are better than them. I always knew they were wrong, but I was still surrounded by these thoughts everyday. Whites are brought up not recognizing white privilege, but it is everywhere. Thus this brings up the idea of equality, this just proves the lack of equality there truly is. 

 
One comment I would like to raise discussion with the class is, if they witnessed any acts of white privilege occurring around them in high school. If they did or did not, I also would like to bring up the discussion of the diversity in their school. As I said earlier, I went to an almost all white high school, where I saw a lot of thoughts and comments regarding white privilege whether they realized it or not. Also what are your opinion's on words like the "N" word, being thrown around by both whites and blacks. When does the use of that word turn into racism then? When whites say it blacks get offended, but when blacks say it, it is okay? There is so much to discuss on this topic, what are your opinions?