White Privilege: Reflection

            In the article White Privilege, Peggy McIntosh argues that white Americans do not realize that they themselves have a privilege. White American's don't have to worry about the simplest things. For example, if someone has a cut on their face, that the band aid will come close to their skin color or perhaps having to go through the hassle of finding a salon that will be able to treat and cut their hair correctly.

            I believe that this is the truth. McIntosh states, "White are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative and average" (1). As a first generation Mexican-American I have personally seen this. When I was a little girl, my father had a good job at Stanley Bostitch. We grew up, at the time, in a town who's majority was Caucasians. My brother and I were the only Mexican children in our elementary school for a few years and every time my family went to the grocery store there would always be certain people who wouldn't stop staring. (We've gotten over the uncomfortable feeling it gave us.) I won't forget one time I went to the supermarket with my father. It was just us two and we were browsing through the store trying to remember what mom had told us to buy. All of a sudden this women in front of us was having trouble reaching the top of the shelf and my father being the sweet man he is, asked her if she wanted help. You would have thought she'd be fine and except my father's offer, but in reality she acted like he was trying to rob her. My dad told me not to worry that one day this may happen to my brother and I, that people judge you by the color of your skin before they get to know you.

           The connections I  made while reading McIntosh's article was to both the "Intro" and "The Trouble We're In" chapters in Johnson's Privilege, Power, and Difference book we read at the beginning of the school year. I automatically thought that all of us, including that woman in the grocery store, need to "change how we think so we can change how we act." Another connection I made was to the video we watched about the professor who dived the class into blue eyes vs brown eyes. (White and mixed races) She did this experiment to see how the blue eyes would feel if they got the same treatment that some brown eyed civilians experience everyday. And boy was it interesting.

            One thing that I want to bring up in class is why is it that white's act this way? They act like some people are aliens and cannot help but be plain rude. We are all from different countries, regardless if it was our great-great-great grandma that first came or our parents. We are all the same.  

Interesting link to blog about racism: http://racismstillexists.tumblr.com/