My Whe Experience

I am standing here today talking to you about this issue because I consider myself to be a very privileged person. I have received an internationally acclaimed education, am of full physical and mental health and i have never had to worry for my safety because of my skin colour or religious beliefs. I have been exposed to a multitude of cultures and ethnicities throughout my life which is why privilege is something that I have always been very conscious of.

For the majority of my life, I had never really known of the diverse lifestyles of others. I could only infer that every person I met was raised in a nurturing environment like mine. As I hit adolescence I began to see the surprisingly harsh as well as the fortunate realities that exist in lives of people just like me. I also became aware of the beliefs of others and I was willing to accept and be tolerable to individuals whose circumstances and beliefs differed from mine; however, my new-found perception would not be put to the test until I joined a Career and Technical Education organization called SkillsUSA.

Being a low-income Mexican-American woman has not been easy. I have to work twice as hard to get the same recognition, acknowledgment, and attention that a white male would get in our society. I am constantly reminded that I have no privilege and neither do my parents. I have lived in fear of my parents being deported and they have lived like prisoners in a country that offers unity and freedom. My accent has made it easy for others to discriminate and make fun of me. These issues have brought up many challenges while growing up.

The Peculiar Benefits essay talks about how “you have to surrender to kinds of privilege you hold. Nearly everyone, particularly in the developed world, has something someone else doesn’t, something someone else yearns for.” In Peculiar Benefits essay Roxane Gay gives the reader background information from her childhood going to Haiti during the summer and seeing the poverty that ran throughout the country. How she realized how much privilege she had back at home in the United States. Privilege is a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit. Not everyone has the same privilege therefore people will view life different. There are many privileges in the world we live: racial, gender, identity, heterosexual, economic, able bodied, educational, religious and etc…

We are all a product of our environment. What we hear and see while we are growing up, becomes the norm. This was the case for me. Since being removed from that environment, I have realized that this is a big world that we live in and I have to share it with a lot of people, no matter what our differences are.

This paper is about my reflection of White Privilege in the United States. I got my information from four resources. The first resource was the handout provided for this assignment; White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, by Peggy McIntosh. The second resource was the website, www.jstor.com. Access is provided via Northeastern State University as a resource for peer-reviewed articles. Thirdly, the textbook, Cultural Diversity, by Jerry Diller was used as a resource. The fourth resource is the most important, in my opinion. That resource is my mind. This is an opinion/reflection paper; therefore the mind of the author is most

To be a person, requires intersectionality. Intersectionality is the idea that people do not function on only one aspect of their being, but instead, function on every aspect. Aspects that include race, gender, ability, etc. With this intersectionality comes innumerable categories that lie on the scale of privileged, oppressed, or somewhere in between. To be privileged is to have advantages that are not necessarily earned, and instead come with a specific, usually uncontrollable feature, such as race, gender, class, and ability. To be oppressed is to have disadvantages that are not earned, but instead come with the same uncontrollable categories as privilege. Even cis-gendered, heterosexual, white, men have aspects of their intersectionality that might not place them at the top of the privilege hierarchy. And it is in these complications where people start to place doubts on their own privileges. It is important to realize that it is nearly impossible to have privilege in every single way or oppression in every single way, yet, this is not an excuse to deny privileges. Even with some oppressions, some are still granted more advantages than others. To delve into this deeper, analyzing writings from established writers, such as Peggy McIntosh and Devon Carbado become necessary.

To my family we always saw the inequality, it was a part of our daily lives and we had to deal with it as best as we could. The inequality was always an inconvenience, a part of my daily life that had less resources, stricter rules, less to no privileges, which made no sense to me where in the country we live in is supposedly free and equal for everyone. Growing up we always had to be careful around cops and made sure that we come fully prepared with papers to any meeting foe healthcare, or government benefits because weren’t given the benefit of the doubt. A prime example for the inequalities my family went through was extra processes for car insurance, dental care, and medical care. We always had to make sure to dot our I’s and cross our T’s or else it could be taken away in an instant. It just didn’t affect my family but my community as well. Having a community of Hispanics and African Americans we had to make sure not to make too much noise during parties or in an instant we would have cops on our blocks. These kinds of small things snowball into such a massive effect and influence our tremendously to the point where we think it’s “just another day” and not an attack against our

Being Privilege is something many of us do not realize we have on an everyday basis. Privilege is something you can get over time, but others are born with the natural ability to be privileged. Anybody who is “white” descent is born with what is known as white privilege. Many of us do not recognize this the privilege that comes with being white in society. We go on everyday taking advantage of other races by being white without even knowing it. Whether it is housing, education, jobs, the list goes on and on. Just like Tim Wise states in his video, is the idea we as white Americans are blind to the fact and in denial we have an advantage compared to any of race. We look at ourselves as everyone else and have zero privileges like everyone else. The family, the education system, the political system and many other influences in daily life, do not teach that the white race is privileged, but that the white race is the norm, not advantaged, just normal.

Socially and Historically. For example during the year of 2012 when 17 year old Trayvon Martin was gun down and killed for the color his skin. He was visiting his father in Sanford Florida when he left the home on foot to buy a snack. As he was returning, George Zimerrman, a white Hispanic male and community neighborhood watch program coordinator, noticed him. In light of a recent break-in he called the police and reported a person acting suspicious. George Zimmerman followed the young teen and one thing led to another. It’s heart breaking knowing that racial profiling in our society could result in matter of life and death but it happens everyday. Another example is Segregation. Times were very hard for African Americans in the 1950’s. They were treated unfairly, and Jim Crows Laws made segregation legal. African Americans were segregated from society. They had to use restrooms for blacks only, water fountains for blacks only, and even schools for blacks only. Even hospitals had segregations. Picturing my life during this era makes me grateful for the life that I'm blessed to live now. I have the same goals and opportunities that any minority should have. Simultaneously Latin americans experienced almost the same treatment as the Indians did in Mexico. Their social status always seems to fall to the lowest. Latino American, those who are here illegally, are at the center of national debate about

Many whites today don’t see these things as s privilege because they hear stories of their great ancestors who worked hard for everything they had, not realizing that a person of color who worked just as hard or harder didn’t have the same capability of achieving “The American Dream.” Our ancestors had an undeniable road paved with privileges for being white and oppression for being of color. It’s easy today to ignore that we (white people) got to where we are based on privileges for the color of our skin, but if you think about it, it’s like running a race where one group starts at the halfway point. Those that start at the

I have learned that I was born into a life full of privilege, although many times in my life I have felt as if that was not the case. Mary E. Swigonski notes several aspects of privilege in her article "Challenging Privilege Through Africentric Social Work Practice", all of which I can identify with. Some examples are: "I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race, I will feel welcome and normal in the usual walks of public life, and I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systematic racism for their daily protection" (Swingonski,1996). These kinds of privilege had never really occurred to me until I began studying social work and especially while working on this assignment, which definitely shows just how much privilege I am accustomed to

Roxane Gay concedes that “One of the hardest things [she has] ever had to do is accept and acknowledge [her] privilege” and that “It’s also really difficult for [her] to accept [her] privilege when [she] consider[s] the ways in which [she] lack[s] privilege or the ways in which [her] privilege hasn’t magically rescued [her] from a world of hurt.” We must reach this very epiphany that Gay has in her essay. It is that, as humans, we are all in some way advantaged and disadvantaged. We are all in some way powerful and

Ethnicity: As an African American male in the US I feel like I’m more privileged than latinos and Native Americans. With job opportunities in the sports, music, and fashion industry as well, if you look at all the A

As a child, I only got presents and gifts twice a year - on christmas and on my birthday. Meanwhile - some children brought a new toy to school every week, while others could not even afford to buy candy in cafeteria. Because of the steep upwards social and economic mobility of my family, I was able to go to college in the US, which made me even more aware of my social class. Comparing myself to my peers in Georgia and in the USA, I am member of the upper middle class at home but would be considered part of the lower middle class if I were a US citizen. I grew up in a monoracial culture. I only saw people of other races in movies and on TV, so I never developed schemata - positive and negative stereotypes and biases associated with certain races that many americans internalized as children. The USA and especially Clark made me highly aware of my skin color and privileges I get here because of