Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege Free Essay Example, 1000 words

People in our society can go through life without knowing about white privilege or realization that they too have this privilege. This means that the non-particularity of whiteness or normalcy of whiteness makes it transparent . This transparency nature of privilege is what entails invisibility of privilege. For instance, the white people have racial identities as well as an invisible privilege of being white. This is because they do possess unseen powers as the dominant race in the social world: a perception created by individuals and groups of people which then stick as a social reality. These socially constructed realities become institutionalized and made into tradition. This kind of invisibility is then perpetuated into the modern society since the representation of white people and white culture are everywhere. McIntosh (1988) describes how whites carry an invisible privilege. As a white woman, she drew an analogy from her frustrations with males who are taught not to recogni ze their gender privilege. Plus she discovered she had learned to ignore her own white privilege. However, now she is aware of white privilege as an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions which includes, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks (1989, p. We will write a custom essay sample on Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/page Born because all I knew is the people raising me are the only parents I had. They did not fall short of being excellent parents and between me and my other two white sisters there was no difference in terms of who was loved more than the others.