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Arriya Uong

WR 37, Fall 2019

Professor Lynda Haas

14 November 2019

Two Sides of the Topic, White Privilege

The American conversation of race and power has been an issue within the United States

since America was first founded. Racism is socially constructed into our society and many

people don’t even realize it. In addition, for most of the time in American history, one type of

person was always the leader and had the most power, white males. An example would be our

current federal government, our president and his administration are majority all white males.

Plus, if you were to look back at all the presidents all of them were white men, with an exception

to Barack Obama. In 2016, Judge Aaron Perksy, a white male, sentenced a white college student

a lenient sentence for raping an unconscious girl (Cohen). He only gave Stanford student, Brock

Turner, six months in prison, when his maximum sentence was fourteen years (Astor). On the

other hand, in the beginning of 2012, an African American mom was sentenced for five years in

prison because she sent her child to to a school that was outside her district (“Mother Given…”).

Here shows an example of how many white people, especially males get away with so much

things. In addition, this shows how unfair the court system can be towards individuals of color.

The college student was given such a small sentence for raping an unconscious girl, and a

homeless mom who wanted her child to get a good education got five years in prison. Today,

American society struggles with stereotypes and prejudices, these lead to people jumping to

conclusions and being negative towards a certain group of people. An example would be that
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African Americans are drug dealers and criminals. These stereotypes were socially constructed

into society, people learned these things from society. Furthermore, a type of race and social

power is white privilege, which has been around for four hundred year, since 1619, when slaves

were brought to America (Guasco). Well, what exactly is whtie privilege? White privilege is “a

benefit that comes with having an ‘accepted’ skin color, regardless of other factors like class or

sexual orientation or gender” (Mejia). After the civil rights act of 1964, discrimination was still

present in society and that’s why people started to think that white privilege was a mental thing

and the idea is subconsciously present and makes white people have this “lack of awareness” of

the power they have (Collins). It’s having advantages and opportunities because of the color of

one’s skin. Having white privilege is not having to go through the hardships that most people of

color have to go through (Liggins). Hardships might include having to deal with racism, being

the least likely to be selected for a job, and to be thought of as a criminal for no reason.

Throughout most of America’s history up until present day America, white Americans

have always been considered superior, they have better opportunities and are more ideal.

However, white privilege isn’t about a person’s economic status, it’s about how because they are

white they are given more advantages than someone who has a different colored skin (Mejia).

For example, segregation was written into the law to discriminate against African Americans

before the passage of the civil rights law of 1964. McIntosh and Lorde are both females born into

the pre-civil rights era and both lived dramatically different lives. McIntosh is a white feminist

and anti-racism activist and Lorde is an African American writer, poet, feminist, and civil rights

activist. Peggy McIntosh focuses on unearned advantages she had when growing up. Audre

Lorde on the other hand focuses on a family trip that made her realize that America is white and
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people of color don’t have the same rights as them. Although they are just life stories written

over 20 years ago, they contribute to the ongoing conversation of white privilege. Furthermore,

in her text, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” Peggy talks about education

and unearned advantages she and many other white Americans have. She explains that

“knowledge is white and knowledge is male” (McIntosh). She lists unearned advantages she has

based on her skin color and then explains how her group makes themselves confident and

comfortable while oppressing other groups. Lorde in her text, “The Fourth of July,” expresses

her anger through her story of her family trip to Washington D.C. Her story is about pre-Civil

Rights and happened during the Jim Crow era of US history. She expresses how she found out

that America was white and that African Americans don’t have the same opportunities or rights

as white people. She finds out what the American reality was at the time. As she slowly realizes

the reality she gets angrier and angrier.

People don’t get to choose their skin color, they are born into their destiny and how the

world will treat them; people were born into slavery because of the dark color of their skin. Some

people were born into poverty. Sixteen percent of white Americans born into poverty will

eventually end up in the top one-fifth before they are forty years old; while for African

Americans, that percentage is just three (Mejia). It’s not just luck: white Americans have more

opportunities and are considered the ideal employees for companies and more. It’s easier for a

white American to climb their way up than an African American. The stereotype of an African

American employee is that they are lazy, not hard workers, and might steal things. These

stereotypes are not true, but society makes it seem that way, society makes African Americans

seem like bad people.

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Both authors express this same idea in their texts. McIntosh’s work is about equality and

how white men have power, and how people of color are treated differently, or have different

experiences than whites. Plus, she mentions how whites are different from others and how they

treat other races. In her text, she mentions how being a white female made her life easier

compared to that of a person of color, and to help support this quote she lists a bunch of

unearned advantages she has because of the color of her skin. Some advantages are knowing that

her neighbors will always be kind and pleasant towards her and that when she’s in a meeting for

an organization she feels like she belongs (McIntosh). Having white skin has helped her all her

life. Lorde on the other hand, noticed that white Americans have had more opportunities and

assets. In her memoir, she talks about how her sister, even though she went to a white school,

had fewer opportunities, she couldn’t even go on the school trip because she was black (Lorde

240). Also, because of her and her family’s skin, they were limited to what they could do and

had less freedom than a person with light, white skin. Even though her mom had a lighter tone of

dark skin, she still didn’t have the same opportunities (Lorde). Her family was born into

segregation and the lack of freedom and opportunities. During the time period of when she wrote

her poem about, 1947, African Americans had no equal opportunities. During 1947, there was

African American segregation and discrimination, and lynching. However, some black students

did go to school with white students but very few, according to Lorde’s memoir and how she

states her sister was the only African American student in her class (240). This was when they

had to sit in the back of the bus, when they had different fountains, hotels, and couldn’t sit in

bars and restaurants. She really was spreading how bad times were back then when she was a

child and tried to address it to modern people and how things should change. McIntosh quotes in
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her essay that “a ‘white’ skin in the United States opens many doors for white.” She is saying

that because a person is white they are given more opportunities than a person of color. Those

doors that are open to white Americans are jobs, government power (especially for men), and

freedom. Lorde, on the other hand mentioned that her family, “straight-backed and indignant,

one by one...got down from the counter stools and turned around and marched out of the store,

quiet and outraged as if we had never been black before” (242). This just shows the opposite of

what McIntosh said. Instead of the hypothetical door being open for them to eat at the diner, it

was closed and they weren’t allowed to eat there, just because of the color of their skin. People

of color had to and still have to face closed doors, they still feel unwelcomed. She and Peggy

McIntosh were born into this era of separation, yet they have very different experiences.

White people are oblivious to the fact that white privilege is a thing. However, minority

groups are the only ones who can see it because they are the ones being oppressed. McIntosh’s

piece was written during the 1980’s, which was a time when important leaders realized that they

“must not choose between quality and equality”, that schools should help boost their students’

knowledge, and “that America could not afford to neglect its schools, nor any part of the rising

generation“ (Ravitch). In her text she lets her main audience of fellow professors and scholars

know that at first she didn’t even realize that she oppressed others and that she didn’t know she

had all of these advantages. White privilege only stood out to her when she realized that male’s

oppressiveness was unconscious, then she realized that women of color have said that the white

females they work with can be oppressive too (McIntosh). At first she didn’t realize it because

she was unconscious of her advantages like men were to theirs. McIntosh says “my schooling

gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a

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participant in a damaged culture.” McIntosh explains that she didn’t learn that she was an

oppressor, she wasn’t taught to oppress. However, she was taught, indirectly, that she was

considered a norm, that she was the normal type compared to people of color. Lorde wasn’t

taught that she was oppressed until she went out and realized it for herself. Her parents tried to

keep it a secret from her, to try to save her from reality. After her trip to Washington D.C. she

furiously expresses that “the waitress was white, and the counter was white, and the ice cream I

never ate in Washington, D.C ...was white, and the white heat and the white pavement and the

white stone monuments of my first Washington summer made me sick to my stomach for the

whole rest of that trip and it wasn’t much of a graduation present after all” (242). Lorde saw all

the advantages and privileges white people have and had. She realized that they couldn’t say in

the nice hotels because they were meant for white people, they couldn’t eat in the dining car of

the train, nor the diners and restaurants, because they were black. They were prevented from

doing many things because of the color of their skin. Expressing to her main audience of fellow

black communities, she showcases the anger she felt at the time. She expresses how mad she was

when she realized the reality of society at the time. Her main topic for this writing is civil rights

and how blacks were treated so differently back when she was growing up. She talks about the

things her and her family couldn’t do during that time because of the color of their skin. She felt

like white people were oblivious to white advantages and wanted to show them that it’s not right

and not fair. She even expresses how she wrote a letter to the president because the laws at the

time were so cruel and wanted to tell the president that these segregation laws were not right and

unjustified (Lorde 242). Back then, white people would just go on with their days and not even

realize how cruel they treated people of color. They wanted to segregate from anybody who was
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different and not like them. They didn’t realize how much they were oppressing African

Americans.For example, in Thomas C. Holts piece, “Knowledge is Power: The Black Struggle

for Literacy,” where he talks about slavery and what happened after it, he expresses that “if

blacks were to receive any education at all, it had to be of a type that wouldn’t change anything

fundamental in the southern labor and social systems” (97). Holt talks about how if slaves were

to receive an education, it wouldn’t be one that they could grow from. Whites only gave the

African Americans used books and didn’t help them to build schools or gave them many

teachers, and if they did provide teachers, the teachers would say that the black students don’t

have the ability to learn and belittle the African American students (Holt 101). The black

community couldn’t have grown with used materials that had missing pages and inaccurate

information. However, white people got new materials, clean and nicely-built schools. White

people sometimes don’t even realize they have these advantages and don’t even realize they are

oppressing others.

White Americans have always had more opportunities and advantages than people of

color. In America 2009, African American low-waged job applicants get called at half the rate as

a white American with the same qualifications (Campos). In addition, white Americans who just

got out of prison have a better chance at getting a job than African Americans and Latinos who

have a clean record (Campos). This just shows how much more opportunity white Americans get

compared to minority groups. Companies and employers are mainly calling back white

Americans and aren’t giving much people of color opportunities for the jobs the provide. A

reason for this is because if they gave more jobs to people of color the community of white

Americans can’t rise and have more “economic opportunities” (Collins). Another example of this
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is looking at the current government officials who are high in the line. They’re all old white

males. Today, President Trump being an example, “Legislative bodies, corporate leaders and

educators are still disproportionately white and often make conscious choices...that keep this

cycle on repeat” (Collins).

Society has been shaped like this for all of American history and it seems like the

government and all the white men in charge want to keep it that way. McIntosh mentions in her

text the many advantages she has because of the color of her skin. She lists unearned advantages

such as criticizing the government and not being judged because of her skin color, and if she was

ever pulled over it wouldn’t be because of her skin color (McIntosh). Sometimes African

American people are pulled over for no reason and are searched for no such reason based off of

all the videos on social media. Plus, if a person of color was to slander or insult the government

people would think that they don’t belong and aren’t true Americans. McIntosh started realizing

these opportunities and assets she believes her and many other white people don’t deserve or

haven’t earned. She says “white privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special

provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.” She realized

these are most of all the assets she has received easily just because she was born white. Many

people of color have to apply for passports and visas. They have to wait years to get these things,

however, white people, get it so easily because they were born white in America. Lorde on the

other hand experienced many events in her life that showed the many opportunities she didn’t get

to share with white people. She says in her text that her “mother never mentioned that black

people were not allowed into railroad dining cars headed south in 1947” (239). Even one tiny

thing as being in the same dining car as white people wasn’t allowed. If something so small
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wasn’t allowed, then it can be implied that they weren’t allowed to do many other things,

especially big things like having a government position. In addition, she mentions how they

couldn’t sleep in the same hotel as white people and had to go to their own, and that they weren’t

even allowed to eat at the same diners or restaurants (Lorde 240-242). These were some of the

many rules back then during the Jim Crow era. African Americans were only allowed into shops,

diners, or hotels that belonged to fellow African Americans. Today, there are no segregation

laws that make white people and people of color use different bathrooms and eat at different

restaurants, however, there are places where many black people feel like they don’t belong, and

they still do feel segregated. Even today, even though our population is so diverse, schools are

still so segregated. Plus, schools that contain mostly minority groups don’t have efficient and

beneficial resources and teachers to provide the education needed to prepare students for college

and life. This is because these schools don’t have the funding for these materials like white

neighborhood schools whose community has the money to donate and provide these materials.

Not gaining the knowledge and education they need, minority students will have a hard time

trying to succeed in life, leading them to less likely be accepted to favorable schools and get

well-supporting jobs. Minority groups can’t really grow in society because white males in power

make it hard for them.

Even though Peggy McIntosh and Audre Lorde were born into the same era, they both

express the same idea of white privilege and white power. In their texts that were made twenty

plus years ago, they both contribute materials and ideas to the current conversation of white

privilege. White privilege has been around for pretty much all of United States history. That is

why it is subconsciously embedded into white people’s minds. Many white people don’t see it
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and get rather very offensive when the topic of white privilege is talked about. White fragility is

when a little bit of racial stress becomes intolerable and white people start getting defensive and

feel guilty and try to self-pity themselves (Alder-Bell). It’s when white people try to defend

themselves and say they don’t have privileges, that they’re poor and have worked so hard to get

where they are today. However, they don’t realize that the color of their skin has opened up so

many doors for them and that because of their skin color they have twice, probably even more,

the amount of opportunities a person of color has. Today, people are struggling to grow in power

and white people, especially white men, make it challenging for people of color and women to

rise in society and become better and successful. White men are in charge and have always been

in charge. White privilege does exist and has always excited from the start of American history.

White people have more advantages and opportunities than minority groups and many don’t see

how much they have oppressed other races and groups and have seen the damage they have done

and created.

Figure 1
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Works Cited

Alder-Bell, Sam. “America's White Fragility Complex: Why White People Get so Defensive

about Their Privilege.” ​Salon​, Salon.com, 18 Mar. 2015.

Astor, Maggie. “California Voters Remove Judge Aaron Persky, Who Gave a 6-Month Sentence

for Sexual Assault.” ​The New York Times, ​The New York Times, 6 June 2018.

Campos, Paul F. “White Economic Privilege Is Alive and Well.” ​The New York Times,​ The New

York Times, 29 July 2017.

Cohen, Claire. “Judge Who Gave Stanford Sex Attacker Brock Turner 6 Month Jail Sentence Is

Recalled from the Bench.” ​The Telegraph,​ Telegraph Media Group, 6 June 2018.

Collins, Cory. “What Is White Privilege, Really?” ​Teaching Tolerance,​ 2018.

Guasco, Michael. “The Misguided Focus on 1619 as the Beginning of Slavery in the U.S.

Damages Our Understanding of American History.” ​Smithsonian.com​, Smithsonian

Institution, 13 Sept. 2017.

Holt, Thomas “’Knowledge is Power’: The Black Struggle for Literacy.” The Right to Literacy,

Andrea A. Lunsford, Helene Moglen, and James Slevin, eds. New York: MLA, 1990.

91-102.

Lee. “What privilege are you not ashamed of having?” ​Quora. 2​ 5 Aug, 2019

Liggins, Carl. “​Bold Expressions w/ Carl: White Privilege on Apple Podcasts.” ​Apple Podcasts​,

30 Apr. 2019.

Lorde, Audre. “Full Text of ‘the_fourth_of_july’ .” ​Internet Archive​, 13 Feb. 2016.

McIntosh, Peggy. “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” ​Peace and Freedom

Magazine,​ July 1989, pp. 10-12.

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Mejia, Lisette. “We Must All Talk About White Privilege.” ​POPSUGAR News,​ 15 Mar. 2016.

“Mother Given 5 Yrs Prison for Sending Child to School Outside Her District.” ​Your Black

World​, An Elite Cafemedia Lifestyle, 6 Mar. 2012.

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3 Main Revision Elements

1. Scholarly Ethos/ Academic Discourse: I had to work on my language and made sure I

used a better language to express my ideas. I changed some words throughout my essay

to make them sound better and towards a more academic audience. Some examples are,

changing ​colored people​ to ​people of color,​ because ​colored people​ is a racial slur. I also

used the word ​good ​a lot in my first draft and I found other words to replace it. I also

changed the word number to percentage to ensure the number was a statistic and more.

2. Source Integration and Citation: I added more outside sources to better support my idea.

For example, in the first paragraph, I added another case to compare the first case I wrote

about, to make is seem more eye-opening and attention-grabbing. I also elaborated more

on some of the outside sources and how they connect back to my texts and ideas. For

example, I analyzed more on the excerpt I decided to include by Thomas C. Holt.

3. Textual Development: I added 6 quotes from the two texts I used, 3 from each, to fit into

the 3 main ideas I had. I did this to compare the texts more and show how similar and

different these two authors are. An example is adding this quote from McIntosh, “a

‘white’ skin in the United States opens many doors for white.” and Lorde saying

“straight-backed and indignant, one by one...got down from the counter stools and turned

around and marched out of the store, quiet and outraged as if we had never been black

before.” I compared these two quotes by saying that because McIntosh was white she had

many doors open for her and because Lorde was black, she had many doors closed for

her.