White Privilege Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack Analysis

How come history books don’t really say how bad slaves were treated and how bad they were beaten by their slave masters? White America knows what they did and what they did wrong. History classes should teach about whitewashing of American history because it would end misinformation on colonialism, it could end racial inequality, and there would be no more false history. Exposing students to the real Whitewashing of American history impacts the lives of minorities and Native Americans. “Samantha Manchac is concerned about the new materials.”

“But because of affirmative action or minority something—she is not sure what they are calling it these days and weren’t they supposed to get rid of it?,” writes Claudia Rankine in her critically acclaimed American book, Citizen. Within this quote, Rankine begins to showcase the narrative of a black women in a society that strives to be color blind. Affirmative action has caused controversy as it threatens white supremacy since it favors diversity. The bitter attitude towards affirmative action expressed by whites, causes people of color to feel apologetic for their achievements and opportunities. Claudia Rankine reveals how white supremacist attitudes trigger people of color to live their life in an apologetic nature through the short stories of the cafeteria, the neighbor calling the police, and the Serena William’s celebratory dance.

The main difference that we see between both racial ethnic groups is that white Americans believed that they could strip Native Americans from their culture and civilize them while “nurture could not improve the nature of blacks” (67). Although some Native Americans did try to live under the laws of white Americans, they were eventually betrayed and forced to leave the

Peggy McIntosh wants to differentiate between "earned strength" and "unearned power" on her essay White Privilege: The Invisible Knapsack. She believes that conferred privilege is essentially a given advantage, unearned power through privilege can look like strength when it is just a form of oppression. By saying “humanity” she refers to treating others as less powerful. McIntosh is most likely referring to whites having a subconscious superiority over other social groups, therefore making the ignored groups feel distorted.

In The Posionwood Bible, a novel by Barbara Kingsolver, Rachel’s arrogant attitude and perception of the Congo can be seen as ignorance which can be compared to the human condition. Instead of learning the culture she was thrown into, she chose to settle with ignorance as humans are conditioned to do today. If you take an open-minded look at society you will see that the majority of people know that there are underlying issues yet they choose to dismiss it similar to Rachel Price. Knowing that Rachel is the oldest of the four daughters, I went into this book having this notion that she would be the most aware nevertheless she is completely unaware and filled with nothing but ignorance and certainly indifference certain parts of the novel.

Charles Chesnutt tackles the concept of racial identity in the novel The House Behind the Cedars by using his characters to attack the myth of race as a biological concept. In the novel, characters like John Warwick and Rena perform whiteness by adopting the mentality of whites in their area. Their performance did not include just passing using their skin color, but it also included adopting an attitude of racial superiority towards their black counterparts. This racial superiority includes adopting the mentality that white blood is superior to black blood. After Warwick meets with his mother and sister secretly, the novel expounds on this mentality stating: Warwick . . .

In his article “White Ignorance, ” Charles Mills argues that ignorance has largely contributed to the creation and segregation of racial and gender groups. He supports his case by identifying the “originally solitary Cartesian cognizer,” which is the imperialistic British state of mind where whites, especially white males, were dominant, and the historical implications of that state of mind, specifically the idea that all non-whites were inferior in thought process and mannerisms therefore do not deserve the time of day required to be understood. Although he labels this ignorance “white ignorance,” he does not limit this intentional ignorance to just white males or the repercussions to racial separation. Instead he designates it as a specific way of thinking that encourages ignorance in favor of the dominant party in a given situation. At the end of his article, Mills comes to the conclusion that ignorance, in general, is damaging to society, specifically interactions between people, and comes up with

McLeigh starts off by giving some background context of historical trauma and the effects of it. She states that the effects are domestic violence, alcoholism, depression, child neglect, etc. She provides evidence from a cultural psychiatrist from the historical event of forcefully assimilating indigenous populations into boarding schools. It shows that the emotional distress, loss of language, and systematic oppression from this event is prevailing in populations today through transgenerational effects. She brings to attention the mental health problems created by this, and explains how social and political actions should be the solution to fixing these.

He continues by arguing how professors are following the wrong way about doing their correct job and how they only focused on the academic intelligence that they sustainably avoid the wonderful advantages of being “street” smart. In other hands, In the essay “Blue Collar Brilliance”, Rose exposes his beliefs to his readers about the blue collar jobs and how it not right that they are seen by others as having a useless job. He mentions, “I’ve since studied the working habits of blue-collar workers and have come to understand how much my mother’s kind of work demands of both body and brain” (Rose 1034). Rose’s mother, Rosie did not only memorize strategies but she learned both psychologically and emotionally (1034). She treated her work place as her own classroom where she would learn and when she had a problem, both technical or human, she would solve it in a hurry (1034).

The essay Disability shows the consequences of a single story towards disability, disabled people, and able-bodied people, and my own experiences show how a single story affects the number of women in the field of science, technology, engineering, and math. Firstly, the dangers of a single story

when it came to their rights as citizens and treatment in society compared to whites. Segregation of blacks from whites in public spaces such as schools was protected under the law. In 1954, the supreme court overruled the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision which allowed for segregation of schools often referred to as “separate but equal”, this decision was called Brown vs. Board of education. It ruled that separation of educational facilities was unconstitutional and put black student at a disadvantage socially and educationally. This decision being made was largely due to the young black student’s fierce protest against the injustice.

I believe that the African American’s history should be highlighted as much as the white person’s; there should not be any erasure of their culture. This includes everything they’ve been through, like the harsh treatment they have received from the white American. Students should not be given a false or bias view of the African American. They should not be generalized as a people, when they have all gone through different experiences. At the end of

Introduction In this paper I intend to look at racism and the ethical issues that came into motion for the African American population. I will look at why African Americans are less likely to be medically treated, how the their rights as clients were often not looked at when deciding how to treat or use the information gathered from the African American population, and what the long term effects were from the Henreietta Lachs case. Ethical Issues Not in the too distant past, African American patients often had less than equal care to their white counter parts. Segregation was an often-used way to keep the races apart and was used in all parts of the world that we see.

In the McIntosh article, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” my overview of this article for the reading assignment is that “white privilege,” as McIntosh states, is “an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was meant to remain oblivious.” This revelation came as she was writing an observation article on white male privilege in America. Her reviews in this area began in her discoveries of men’s unwillingness to recognize their over-advantage status, however they would concede the impediment condition of women. These denials protected male privilege from being acknowledged, diminished, or abridged. Her findings concerning unattended white privilege may be key to bigotry.

The two identities that I have decided to evaluate are my race (white) and my gender (female). These two identities make up a huge portion of who I am. For that reason, I feel that it is important for me to delve into these identities to better understand myself. In regards to my race I have never felt very impacted.