White Privilege Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack Summary

Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” discusses racism and how it still exists. Light-skinned people still dominate dark-skinned people and as a white American, it is quite an easy belief that anyone can pursue their dream career, and that if they don’t, it’s considered their own fault because they didn’t try hard enough. As a white individual, it is important to realize the advantages and privileges I have just because of my fair skin. Everyone must adjust his or her thinking in order to understand the secreted racism in society. I found it interesting how McIntosh created a harmless language that allowed whites to observe their role in society and how dominant their race is without them feeling uncomfortable or guilty.

Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer’s “What is Racial Domination?,” debates a new definition of race.

Defining race as a “symbolic category” is intriguing, since this category purely exists mentally in the mind of the general population. Desmond and Emirbayer’s “Individualistic Fallacy” is presented in different parts including the concept that racism is solely racism when it has a negative effect. People tend to believe that racist people have negative thoughts or beliefs about different races, but according to Desmond and Emirbayer, this is not true. They believe that the only way to get rid of racism is to not recognize it as just a concept, but to recognize that all humans as only humans, and not be labeled to a specific race or color. The two authors argue that the first step to end racism is admitting there is a problem, and this is usually a hard step to follow since most people do not tend to think they’re a racist. The general population does not realize that being racist does not necessarily mean being

prejudiced.
In Karen Brodkin’s reading, she brings up a point that people have multiple identities. This denotes that one is not simply a man, or a Jew, or a bisexual; but that one is all of these. The ethnoracial concept of Jewish people are gendered, and classified. I think Brodkin's ideas would have benefited greatly if she had presented more ideas surrounding sexuality and sexual orientation in her integrative opinion of the race, class, and gender of a fluctuating Jewish identity in America. The concept of Jews becoming “whites” really helps readers understand the idea of multiple identities and how racism plays a role in it.
In “The Historical Origins and Development of Racism,” by George Fredrickson, racism is present when one ethnic group dominates on the notion of differences that it believes are “hereditary and unalterable.” The use of “cultural racism” supposedly was justified against newcomers from various European countries including the Nazis discriminating the Jewish population from World War II.
Barbara J. Fields stated that Americans from Europe established race during the American Revolution as a solution between a “natural right to freedom” and the “fact of slavery.” Multiracism according to Fields is a trap, and that you cannot stop it spreading it around. Like Fredrickson, both theorists talk deeply about racism around the world and its effects throughout time.