McIntosh; All Lives Matter

Blog Post 2
Reflection

The text "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" by Peggy McIntosh makes me think about how the whites are so privileged compared to others. Many people don't even realize the amount of advantages we have. When you really think about it and read about white privilege it is all true and makes sense. Males and whites are blind to the privileges they have and don't want to admit they have them. Reading the list of everyday privileges that us whites have it really is true whether we realize it or not. Even by the littlest things we are privileged. We have access to everything based on our race. People take things for granted but you really shouldn't because we are privileged to many things everyday of our life. Some people don't have that privilege because of their race and it takes them a lot of hard work to even try and compare to what we have. Many people don't realize this and what we really have given to us in this world because we were just born to know we are free and open to everything. We don't realize all the opportunities we really have and criticize other cultures and think nothing of it. Our race feels power and dominance over all the others but that is not how it should be. Everyone should be given the same privileges and be equal. It is not fair to someone of another race to have to work twice as hard as us to get what we have. Then the question that comes to mind is that, is this really a free country? This text relates to me because I realized how privileged we actually are compared to others and in my family I have an adopted little cousin who is of another race so compared to him we have many more advantages. The whites deny the fact that there is a sense of power and dominance of them and I relate to that because you never really think of it this way unless you read about it or hear a story about it. We think everything is just here for us and only us and forget about equality for everyone else because we think we are all that matter. The social powers have to change in order for everyone to have equality and opportunities.

The text "The next time someone says 'all lives matter', show them these five paragraphs" by Kevin Roose made me think about how when something happens people act like they addressed the problem and tried to correct it or do something so that it doesn't happen the same way but it just gets put off. Just like all the school shootings, when they happen everyone is chaotic about it but nothing is set in stone and they don't  take action until another tragedy happens. The problems happen and then get put to the side. Just like the black lives. They try and do better and get better for themselves but someone always has a say and it just gets put off. When people are faced with a problem like the "Black Lives Matter", they make a saying to include everyone so then it defeats the purpose of the blacks trying to get help, have their voices heard and move up in this world. Life isn't the same for everybody as it should be but we don't see it that way. This article explained how many more blacks are shot or even killed by police but we don't often hear news about that. But if a white person is shot or killed by police it is all over the news. This is such a true example because whenever I look at the news you see blacks either committing crimes or doing something wrong so it puts a label on their race where the whites are very rarely on the news for doing the same thing. This is just one example of how whites have privilege and power over another race. There needs to be change, we can't be in denial forever.

Link:

https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2018/what-is-white-privilege-really
This is an article that is based off of Peggy McIntosh's article that I read about. It goes more in depth about what she is explaining and explains about the understanding of white privilege and how it has occurred through the years. I found this article interesting as it relates to these topics very well.


Discussion:
How we are so oblivious to white privilege and power and how it has been going on for many years and these articles still relate to the world today.