Race is a very sensitive topic in the U.S. and like Jay Smooth states people typically try do not like talking about race. Smooth starts of by giving advice on how to tell people that what they are saying is racist. Smooth makes an excellent point that people who at times might say something racist could be well intending people. That it is more important to focus on what you said instead of who you are as a person.
This Ted Talk relates to the privilege model that we learned about in the lecture. Smooth recognizes that racism is a systemic problem, that it is a social contract that is essentially created to benefit one party and harm the other. The privilege model shows that even though you as a person do not agree with racism you can still
First of all, it does not matter what race you are. In the world today we are completely segregated. We don't see each other as friends and neighbors and we don't judge people off of who they really are, instead we see each other as races and we judge people by how they
What I gained from the reading “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by McIntosh is that racism is not merely putting one group at a disadvantage, but simultaneously putting another group at an advantage. I learned that when you are a part of a privileged group, the privileges you receive are often unnoticeable. You do not view these things as privileges, and you do not realize how much easier they have made your life. Whether discussing racism, sexism, or any other -ism, removing the disadvantages from one group is not all that needs to be done. The unearned advantages given to other groups need to be taken away.
But in reality, privilege confers dominance because of one’s race or sex. She also gives a list of different privileges that white people have over other people. With the list of privileges she says that if these are true, then this country is not free like people say and think it is. She explains that her skin color gives her different advantages like the education she wasn’t to take, the opportunities she will have because she is part of the “main” culture in
In this book Privilege, power, and difference, introduction the author, Allan G. Johnson, argues that differences in society that humans perceive each other are based on gender and race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and social class. John says in his introduction that "It is about how we think, but always the purpose is to change how we think so that we can change how we act and by changing how we participate in the world become part of the complex dynamic through which the world itself will change." His idea of changing how we think to change how we act could be very effective in many ways in which we can accept each other. His story of Rodney King's Question opens the idea of why "Can't we just all get along". Since the Civil War until
In “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”, Peggy McIntosh discusses how she, as a white person, had been taught that racism is “something that puts others at a disadvantage”, rather than something that gives her an advantage. She then lists some consequences of her white privilege, which she calls “unpacking [an] invisible knapsack of white privilege”. Among the items on this list are “I can turn on the television or open the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented” and “I can be pretty sure that if I asked to talk to ‘the person in charge’, I will be facing a person of my race”. These are advantages that white people take for granted and rarely – if ever – think about. Almost everyone has their own so-called invisible knapsack of privilege, though the effects of one’s privilege might not relate to their race, but instead to class, gender, religion, sexuality, geographical location, education or other aspects of social location. In this paper, I will begin to unpack my own invisible knapsack of privilege, focusing on race, class, religion and geographical location.
In our lifetime people are only consumed with the NBA and what the owners or players say but, it is never ok to talk about other peoples race. Especially because African Americans can't just take off their skin and replace it with a color that are generally public will approve.
The main problem that will be addressed in this paper is white privilege. We will look into how white privilege has been constructed today and throughout society. Due to the fact that we cannot see white privilege many find it hard to understand and even harder to wrap their head around it. White privilege, however doesn’t just happen in the education system, rather it happens in our daily lives and at our place of work. This means that people are being paid less because of their race and others are being treated unfairly and without equal respect. When have white privilege, people have a certain power over the society that we
Over the years, the face of racism has taken on many forms. In present day America, racism is a very taboo subject. It a common view that racism is not a big issue anymore, given the large strides that we, as a country have made towards equality. However, the inequalities that still exist between races point to a different situation. Instead of the blatantly discriminatory acts that our nation has witnessed in the past, modern racism practices are more covert and seemingly nonracial, making this kind of discrimination seem more acceptable and politically correct. The Civil Rights Movement forced society to implement a new, subtler way to perpetuate racial inequality. In Racism Without Racists, Bonilla-Silva describes the justification
Racism is a major social problem in the world. It is not restricted to a certain country or society. A lot of times, racism is portrayed in a subtle way. Like how certain races don’t get as much chances to get a good job. Or perhaps how certain races aren’t given an equal social reality than people with different backgrounds get. As an example, it may be harder for someone that is African American to get a job at a rich business than a person who is caucasian. That is the unfortunate reality in a lot of cases. Oscar A. Barbarin, in his book Institutional Racism and Community Competence, discusses and tackles racism in today 's world. Barbarin is the Chair and Professor of the African American Studies Department of
The power of white privilege is something that quite frankly isn’t talked about enough but as a society many people believe that racism doesn’t exist. However, there is this unspoken advantage that whites are given called privilege, which is something that gives them a step ahead in society. Tim Wise talks about it in the video using specific examples to back up his point that white privilege is so prevalent and how others don’t even recognize that it is a serious issue. A study that was done in 2006, showed that out of 100 white people that were asked only 6% of those people thought that racial discrimination still existed in society. He also went on to mention that 2/3 of the white people who were alive during the civil right movement
White people are afraid to talk about race because black people don't let them question things and to think for themselves. Thus, black people can't identify the problem because to discuss it, it means "they're racist" and they shame white people for it. So nobody say anything and all we get are cliches like "color doesn't matter" and "all colors are all the same".
In the early days of the 20th century, racism was mainly between black and white. Now, the face of racism has expanded to become multi-colored and multicultural. The excessive increase in diversity of the public has made racism unfold between people of many races. Just because someone is a different culture, ethnicity, or has economic power doesn’t make it okay for others to judge and make negative comments towards people of another race.
“Black people can not be racist, prejudice yes but not racist. Racism describes a system of disadvantage based on race. Black people can not be racist, since we can not stand to benefit from such a system,” (Dear White People). In the United States’ society, the oppression of black Americans is ingrained and rooted in history (“The Oppression”). With our country of immigrants, blacks were bought here by force and were kept as slaves for one-hundred fifty years (“The Oppression”). Granting that racism is a problem for many ethnicities, racism against black Americans is considered “justified” because racist ideologies borrowed from slavery, as well as the century old apartheid system called Jim Crow, which
President Obama said, “Racism, we are not cured of it, and it is not just a matter of it is not polite to say nigger in public. Society’s don’t overnight completely erase things that happened two to three hundred years’ prior.” (“Obama’s Candid Reflection”,2016). According to Shirley Better (2008) institutional racism denotes patterns, procedures, practices, and policies that operate within social institutions to consistently penalize, disadvantage, and exploit individuals who are members of the nonwhite racial/ethnic groups. It is a strategy made to maintain privilege and economic advantage. There is a basic injustice that exists in the United States, that overrides a basic right in this country to liberty, freedom and the pursuit of
Racism is a major problem in America. People of color are the largest group affected by racism and arguably the only ones because racism is a “system of advantage based on race” and people of color as a whole group have never been advantaged (Tatum 1997). Now of course there are certain cases where people of color have been in a position of power, such as President Barack Obama, but their power is overshadowed by the only thing people will focus on: their race. The definition of racism as a system of advantages gives a narrower view of racism and makes it exclusive as opposed to the textbook definition of “the belief in the inferiority of certain racial or ethnic groups, often accompanied by discrimination”