White Privilege - it's unsettling

The text I have chosen to dive into is White Privilege by Peggy McIntosh. In summary, she says in order for someone to gain power, someone else must be relinquishing or losing that power. Although I have always understood and believed there is domination and privilege in society, I have never really thought about the oppressors, only the oppressed. After this reading, I realize as a white middle class person, I am one of the oppressors, even if it is unintentional and inadvertent.

McIntosh stunned me with her list of white privileges. Of course I agree with her list and I agree they are all privileges, but I had never really thought about the number of privileges someone gets just by having a certain skin color, or the opposite: the number of privileges someone is denied because of their skin color. I realize I completely take for granted almost everything she lists including being able to “protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them,” or being able to buy bandaids and makeup “in flesh color and have them more or less match my skin”. It is upsetting to be confronted with the knowledge that some people don’t have these opportunities. Honestly I’ve always known these things in the back of my head, but that’s where the knowledge has been kept - in the back of my head.

One of the statements I disagree with is that obliviousness about white advantage is kept strongly inculturated to maintain the myth that meritocracy is still thriving. I may be naive, but I don’t believe people of our generation are intentionally keeping themselves or their children oblivious to white advantage. I think a lot of people are ignorant because they simply are not aware or exposed to it, not because someone else is doing this intentionally. I feel I have learned so much in the few weeks I have been in LC’s MAT program - things I have never been overtly exposed to before, and now my path will never be the same. What I intend to do with this knowledge is first off educate my own children! I will also continue to educate myself on other cultures and in turn let other cultures educate me. I hope to have a classroom that allows for reciprocal learning of cultures, race, and other divisive issues. I feel I am just scratching the surface.