Focused on Certain Privilages

        "I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege." (page 1).

                This is one of the first quotes that stood out to me while reading Peggy McIntosh's article named White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. The title says white privilege because that is was McIntosh focuses on most, but in the beginning of the article and a little bit throughout it she talks about male privilege.When she had gotten to talking about men knowing that women need more privileges but were not willing to give up any of their own, she made the smart connecting to white privilege. It makes sense that whatever privileges we have had all of our lives do not seem like that to us, but McIntosh has paid attention to what aspects of life come easier for her than for some colored people.
             Although McIntosh first wanted to point out how men have more privileges than women, it must have made her think of how we as women are not all entirely unprivileged. It made her realize that the color of her skin has given her more advantages than some people of color which she had neglected to notice before.

        "I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race." (page 3).

             To prove her point of white privilege, Peggy McIntosh wrote a list of 26 advantages that we as whites have in the world today. I chose advantage number 14 which was the one that stuck out to me the most because it was one of the most true in my opinion. One big example of this is how Obama became most famous for being the first black president not so much for being the next president of the United States. But all of the presidents before him were just well known for being great presidents or something they had done wrong; never anything to do with their race.

           If you have the time to read something really interesting, Gina Crosley-Corcoran wrote an essay named "Explaining White Privilege to a Broke Person" and she talks about White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack in complete detail.

       "I have met very few men who truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance, and, if so, what we will do to lessen them." (page 5).

             This quote towards the end of the article reminded me of Johnson's piece about racism that we read for class in the first week of the semester. In his piece he admits that he has white privilege but also admits that he gets male privilege too. He does not seem to distress about it but does say that he is acknowledging that he as a white male gets the most privileges but wants to work towards racism and different races having different advantages in life. Over all Johnson and McIntosh seem to have the same goals.