White Privilege By Peggy McIntosh

Peggy McIntosh's White Privilege really gets her readers thinking about woman's studies and a white persons privilege. She examines day to day lifestyles from an african american person to someone who is white. I found it interesting on how she identified some daily effects of a white person. When she mentions #12 "I can swear or dress in second hand clothes or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race." That shows me if someone of African american decent swears a lot or dresses in second hand clothes they might be labeled as someone from poverty or bad morals. In my opinion that just doesn't seem fair to judge someone from the clothes on their back. Then #19 on her list really struck me. "If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race." Every single day that happens across america. It really grinds my gears that people of different race get pulled just on that principle alone. You cannot judge a book by its cover. Another one of McIntosh's effects struck me and made me think. Number 24 "I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me." This makes me think of a famous picture involving racism (in advance I apologize to anyone that finds the graphic nature of this picture tough to look at)  Medical attention should never be denied to anyone of any race. I feel that McIntosh is saying that the word privilege needs to be distributed to all. If privileges are only given to people who are White then we are failing as a nation. White privilege connected to Kozol's Amazing Grace. In my opinion, privilege plays a roll for the people of Mott Haven. Are they underprivileged people by fate? or do they actually have privileges to fight their way out of poverty. We need to analyze and study the word privilege down to its core meaning.

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