The essay is based on the studies of McIntosh, Wise, Shams, DiAngelo, Graham, and Dyson. According to the studies of these authors, privilege is considered as a communal theory which states that exceptional rights or compensations are obtainable only to a group of people. Furthermore, privilege is regularly used in the framework of social inequity, mainly in regard to ethnic, gender, and racial category.
1. White Privilege
According to authors, the practices that make white privilege is that the political sector including healthcare organizations and school gives more source of pride to the Native Americans. The authors in their particular essay have illustrated that White Americans can easily acquire financial assistance to pay for medical expenses whereas people with a darker skin tone will have to pay the bills on their own. The author illustrates that the racial discrimination that is present in the schools, workplaces, and on streets proves that Afro-Americans in the American society have always been considered as inferior and outsider.
Peggy McIntosh states that Whites in a Western society enjoy high compensations that Blacks fail to experience. The practice of giving more value to Whites in society gives rise to social inequity.
On the other hand, the claim that whiteness is advantaged and regularized in modern U.S. society indicates that the Native Americans have not been able to understand that they are doing injustice with the Blacks.
Moreover, the authors describe that they are being taught to become racist from the childhood. Therefore, they do not realize the consequences of being racist. Correspondingly, the claim also illustrates that racism has now become so common that people have stopped classifying it as an issue in American society.
2. The Invisibility of Privilege
The invisibility of privilege means that people do not understand that what they are doing. In this concern, they can be considered as visionless people who fail to realize that they are doing injustice to the people belonging from different racial and ethical background. Correspondingly, people in society even find it acceptable to give privilege to one group while dishonoring the other group is considered as an invisibility of privilege as they fail to see the prejudice happening in society.
However, the invisibility of privilege is still sustained in the modern society by all White officials and ordinary citizens as it evident that Whites get more respect and opportunities to excel in society as compared to non-Native White Americans. Furthermore, it could be analyzed in the study of that the invisibility of privilege has given rise to issues of racism and discrimination in the modern society of the United States of America.
3. Relation of Class and Race
The class is demarcated as the scheme of ordering a civilization in which individuals are distributed into groups based on professed communal or financial status, whereas race is considered as main disunions of humankind with distinctive physical structures. The correlation between class and race is that people still tend to categorize general public on the basis of the skin color and economic situation which unfortunately gives rise to racism and social inequality in society.
I believe that the financial schemes of capitalism encourage Native White American citizens to take advantages of privileges as they can easily acquire health insurance and other financial assistance whereas non-Native or Afro-American have to go through the long-enduring process to acquire financial help from the government.
The privileges had played a vital role in my upbringing as I observed it during my school days when the teachers used to treat the students based on their class and race. Moreover, it has made me more sensitive as I feel insecure that people possibly will hate me if I travel to a new state. I also feel that the educational institutes, public parks are also unsafe for the non-Native Americans as they are treated differently in all fields of life.
4. Personal Reflection
I have personally experienced many incidents that will exemplify that privilege of whiteness still predominantly exists in the Western society. When I was hired as an HR manager at an American advertising agency, I was astonished to observe that the HR Team used to give preference to White candidates over Blacks.
In many cases, I saw my colleagues asking harsh questions about their nationality and home country. Furthermore, the blacks were asked about their legal status in the American society. The officers mostly rejected Blacks, and after getting hired they used to get low-graded positions.
I have seen how harshly non-Native American employees were treated at the company. In this concern, it becomes evident that the concept of White privilege still exists in the modern society. The authors in their respective essays have evidently explained that people have now considered the perceptions of white privilege as a normalized concept which has created more issues for the non-Native Americans that includes Africans and Asians.
References
Kendall, F. E. (2013). Understanding white privilege. New York: Routledge Publishers.
Rothenberg, P. S. (2005). White privilege: Essential readings on the other side of racism. New York: Worth Publishers.
Saunders, P. (2006). Social class and stratification. New York: Routledge Publishers.
Vavrus, M. J. (2002). Transforming the multicultural education of teachers. New York: Teachers College Press.
Wise, T. (2000). Membership has its privileges: Seeing and challenging the benefits of whiteness. Retrieved from http://www.timwise.org/2000/06/membership-has-its-privileges-seeing-and-challenging-the-benefits-of-whiteness/
