Medium 2

This week’s main theme was privilege. Not only talking about how men don’t like to recognize they are privileged for their sex, white’s hate to be told they have privilege because of their race. As a white woman I understand how I never quite would see how I’m privileged or what I get out of being white, however being a woman shows me how men might not see their privilege and think women are just using it as excuses. As Peggy McIntosh said, privilege and not experiencing it is like a bird cage. Since we are on the outside we can’t experience what the others on the inside face. We think why they can’t just pass that barrier that’s holding them back but what we need to think of is how a cage is round and holds them in, in more aspects than just one, while we have room in society to do more. Disadvantages experienced by minorities vary across areas in which they live in, not only countries but cities. As McIntosh wrote it is like when whites cannot fully experience urban life or the different cultures that come together in the cities.

But like said before, the ones that oppress are oppressed themselves. Everyone in a way has privilege whether it is western culture privilege or gender privilege. Some places being white isn’t a privilege in my opinion such as once you enter the “ghettos” of cities. You are now the minority race in the area you are in and because of today’s culture most African Americans and Hispanics hate you just because of your race. Here you are seen as a target and unwanted, bullied, and sometimes even acted aggressively against. Whites are not oppressed in the larger society if that’s what we are looking at but once you look at black society there is anger going on towards not how society treated them but instead blamed on how whites have. So while I understand what this article is talking about, I think her theories about white privilege is soon to be outdated.

Like the video we watched in class privilege does make the person it is pointed at angry. While the word is simply stating a fact and not supposed to be an attack, saying someone else has a privilege is sometimes used as an excuse of what they do not have. Women are still fighting for the rights of equal pay, however in today’s age if someone is paid less because of their race, they can get in serious trouble for it is against the law. Although there is still aggression against minorities in some places, they are now more integrated with the population more than ever in the western cultures. In eastern countries they do not have the opportunities we do and being white would be a privilege there, but to say white privilege is so dominant is very naive to say. My opinion is skewed from what everything else was discussed in this week’s classes and posts. We are all oppressed in today’s society for if you are white you are bland, if you are dark you are too dark, if you have an Appalachian accent you are dumb, if you have a foreign accent you are illegal, there is no correct mold anymore. This will help us see multi diversity better later on in life when I think eventually no one will have a mold in mind, but McIntosh’s argument of white privilege is outdated. Saying everyone has different privileges at different parts or times is more or less true.