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Essay On Experience Of Race

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The experience of race is very different depending on the person experiencing it. This experience can be loosely broken down into two main categories, conscious disadvantage and unconscious advantage. The majority of people experience race through one of these categories and there are numerous factors that play into these two different experiences of race. The first way that race is experienced is as an unconscious advantage. This is the experience of the majority of white people in this country. This means that as white people move through their life they will receive a number of benefits for being white, most of which they will not be conscious of. This theory is broken down very well in Peggy McIntosh’s article on White Privilege. In this …show more content…

This is the experience for the majority of people who are not white. In this type of experience people are very aware of the impact that race is having on them in their lives and it is mostly negative. This type of experience is reinforced through clear racial equalities seen in life and in the media. One example of this that has received attention recently is the difference in how different races are treated by law enforcement officers. After seeing and experiencing abuses by the system it is difficult not to become increasingly conscious of race as an important factor in life. In this category race is experienced in a much more active sense as it is seen to effect everything around a person. Under this category of experience, it becomes very easy to see that there is an advantaged and a disadvantaged group in this country and that race is a key determining factor. Race and racism can be experienced very differently by different people. This experience can be shaped by a number of factors including the media, education and family. In general, these experiences can be categorized into two loose groups, unconscious advantage and conscious disadvantage. Under this categorization system race is much more consciously experienced by minorities than it is by white people who have been intentionally distanced from the

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