BY MICHAEL WAGER | CONTRIBUTING WRITER
In my freshman year seminar class at Siena College, we were assigned to write a response paper of our opinion on the piece, White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies by Peggy McIntosh. This is a very outdated and bias piece written in 1988, regarding the suspected privileges that males, and more descriptively, white males, have in our society over women and men of color. After submitting my response paper to my professor, I was practically told that my opinion of McIntosh’s piece was incorrect and that “the notion that we whites (or males) are ‘privileged’ is a hard pill to swallow.”
While there is no doubt that racial and gender oppression has occurred in the history of our nation, in our current state, every man and woman regardless of skin color, has the same rights and opportunities. Peggy McIntosh’s piece has the potential to make a fair argument for some of the social issues that are still being fought in this country but, instead decides to discuss issues that have no real importance. There is no doubt that minorities face societal issues every day, but, it is equally important to recognize everyone has to deal with societal and economic issues, no matter what gender or race you are.
White Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies could be such an influential and powerful piece, but misses the head of the nail by a mile. McIntosh starts writing the piece from the standpoint of a white woman and acknowledges the fact that she herself has privilege. She then rambles on about the privileges that males and whites have over women and people of color however, never states any references to support her claims.
As McIntosh continues, she shows a list of 46 things that white women and men have the privilege of, that people of color do not, on a daily basis. Many of these things are outrageous and ridiculous:
#17: “I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color."
#37: “I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally."
#39: "I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.”
To say white people can do these things with no repercussions and people of color cannot is a stretch and only adds fuel to the racial divide in our country.
One of the things on her list that I personally found to be a great learning tool, is #12: “I can go into a book shop and count on finding the writing of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods that fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can deal with my hair.” The issues presented here are cultural and social issues that everyone faces. Generally speaking, African American barbers have more confidence working on African American hair and same goes to white barbers. Women hair stylists have more confidence in working on women's hair. When these examples are used to justify privilege, it only hurts the real issues that people of all races and genders face.
I believe in order to fix these social privileges, we need to do the opposite of what we are currently doing. As a society, we continue to stress and overuse the talk of social privileges. While it is evident that certain people have privileges over others, it is a fact that all people, no matter your race or gender, have equal opportunities. When we teach our kids to look for differences between one another instead of similarities, all we are doing is furthering the gap between racial and gender inclusiveness. We need to focus on the issues that have significant meaning in our society; not focusing on who can chew with their mouths open and who cannot, because let's face it, that’s just gross.
I was extremely disappointed with the material that was presented in this piece by Peggy McIntosh. I initially thought that it would bring out important social issues that minorities face on a daily basis, and would allow me to learn about these social issues, but instead, she complains about band-aid colors not being the same flesh tone as others. Also, in higher education, educators need to focus on teaching and not preaching. This would more freely allow thoughts and conversations to arise within the classroom community, hopefully leading to possible solutions. If we as a society are going to truly take on these problems, we need to cut the petty issues and focus on the real ones.
The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of Liberty Den University or its members.
Sources: