Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

• Category

  Education

[szeal]

I fall under the category of what is considered white in the united states. Any white person who claims that white privelege does not exist, or that racism against whites is a bigger problem than the racism against nonwhites in our country's culture, is blind. The refusal to believe that white privelege exists is yet another example of the willful ignorance that is at the heart of white privelege and behavioral codes of a white supremacist society. Guilt is not the aim or answer.Awareness is!

[bitchezBEhatin92]

You clearly don't understand the concept of racism. Racism can only exist where there is discrimination AND power. That's why it is impossible in most circumstances, for a person of colour of the same class, status, gender identification and influence to be racist. Racism is institutionalised discrimination. If you are not white, then you don't have white privilege, so being racist to a white person is impossible because no matter what you say or do, they will always have that privilege.

[streetsofsouthphilly]

This is painful to watch. Peggy Mcintosh lives and teaches in Wellesley, Mass. hardly a bastion of black and brown people. She states here that she wrote this essay in 1980...19friggen80! 33 years ago! Some of her list was outdated even then--music being played in public places being all white? Where does she live, 1955? Let's see her move to 67th and Kingsessing in Southwest Philly and see how far being white gets her.

[Clover Field]

Of course. I'm privileged from being white and oppressed from being a woman.

[punkz1794]

so can one be privileged and oppressed at the same time?

[mmcdonald043]

One would have thought it was so obvious saying it wouldn't have batted an eye. At the very least, being the majority in a democratic country gives you considerable privileges. Most of the institutions and legislation's support you and your peoples needs. The needs of minorities come second. That's usually why they are called minorities. The whole concept simply asks that you be aware and have consideration for the minority, but apparently this is an insufferable outrage.

[Keith H]

If you can read this, and especially if you can read this on your own computer, you have some privileges that others do not. Instead of using "privilege" as a weapon we ought to use it as a tool for expanding self and social awareness; to recognize the mostly invisible ways that racism works both historically and structurally to "privilege" one group over another. Guilt is a dead end.

[Volf99]

except if they go abroad in which case those things can happen.

[Sean Dawson]

This is unbelievable. They say not only is it wrong to discriminate, but you are wrong for not being discriminated against...and must pay for the luxury of not being wronged. It's not the fault of those discriminating, but everyone else for being white.

Make no mistake, this is about money and only money. Imagine someone is robbed. It's not enough to find the robber and punish him, but to make others who were not robbed to pay restitution they themselves were not robbed as well.

[lacedemonians]

I did not define “privilege”. I noted that “privilege” implies unfairly getting something, which Ms. Mcintosh herself alludes: “If I have anything I didn’t earn in contrast with my African American friends in this building, show me!”

Yes, whites were socially & culturally dominant in Western societies. Yes, leftist ideology is Western.

Ms. Mcintosh's list is primarily social & emotional advantages to racial & cultural dominance.

Afrikaners & white farmers are learning a much harsher lesson.

[lacedemonians]

The poor are not inherently criminal. The wealthy & educated are not inherently decent.

The 1942 Wannsee Conference had 16 signatories to the Final Solution to round up and mass murder Jews. 8 of these men had PhDs.

Asian & Jewish shtetl communities in the West had few rights, were impoverished, but yet had low crime.

Grinding poverty can break down society. It is the breakdown of society that brings crime.

Yes, education can end poverty. But social stability is necessary before education.