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Racial discrimination in social classes
What is the role of ethnicity and race in the way audiences interpret media messages
Racial discrimination in social classes
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While watching this documentary it made me realize that I take a little advantage of the white privilege I have. I also realized that a lot of white people use there while privilege without even knowing it. I am also one of those people, this is because I don’t have to worry about going into a store and wondering if I am going to get stopped or followed because the color of my skin. I also agreed with the documentary for the most part. I agreed that a lot of things need to change in our society regarding the white privilege issue. I believe that if white people would give the other races a change they would agree that most of them our not the problem. I think that a lot of people like to judge all of the people of races for something that one
Gina Crosley-Corcoran, author of Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person, informs her readers about her misinterpretation of white privilege. After being called out for her unknowing use of white privilege, Gina begins to plead her case. Beginning with her childhood, Gina explains how she grew up “on the go”. Travelling from place to place, Gina lived in a rundown trailer and her family obtained little to no money, had no access to hot water, survived on cheap, malnourished foods, and dealt with a bad home life. After evaluating her history when placed at the end of life’s spectrum, Gina finds it hard to pick out white privilege in her life and therefore argues she has none. Later, Gina is introduced to a woman named Peggy McIntosh
Growing up as an African-American you are always taught to be twice as good. Twice as good as the white people to receive the same treatment as them. I grew up hearing this same phrase constantly but never really understood exactly what it meant until I got old enough to actually see the kind of world we are living in. The author of the article, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” Peggy Mclntosh, took as step into shoes of black America and found that white privilege not only exist, but many whites are blind to it. She gives a clear argument about how white privilege is harmful to our society and how we can work together to fix this.
Everyone has privilege in one way or another. People feel that privilege is give to one race more, instead of every race. The race that it’s getting more privilege is the White race and with that comes White privilege. White means the people who have a light skin color also known as Caucasian or European and privilege means an advantage over others. An example of privilege is getting away with something that someone may not get away with. So White privilege is defined as “an invisible package of unearned assets that [someone that is White] can count on cashing in each day, but about which [they were] ‘meant’ to remain oblivious” (McIntosh 1990: 1). McIntosh is saying in that quote is that Whites do not recognize that they have this privilege
“I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group,” Peggy McIntosh wrote in her article White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Too often this country lets ignorance be a substitute for racism. Many believe that if it is not blatant racism, then what they are doing is okay. Both the video and the article show that by reversing the terms, there is proof that racism is still very existent in this world. By looking into A Class Divided and White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack along with their ability to broaden the cultural competence, once can see how race is still very prominent in our culture.
Growing up we often fail to recognize the ways in which we are privileged and the opportunities we are given due to these advantages. In the essay “White Privilege: Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack,” Peggy McIntosh discusses the privileges of being white and the ways she has experienced advantages because of her race. Throughout the essay, McIntosh allows readers to explore how she has been given opportunities due to specific traits she has in her “invisible knapsack”, privileges she once had taken for granted. As she shares her personal experiences throughout the essay she invites the reader to participate in discovering which items their knapsacks carry. Similar to McIntosh, I also have invisible items which have been unknowingly beneficial to me throughout my life. Until recently I have failed to recognize the impact these items have towards other aspects of my life. I have been gifted these privileges merely through inheritance. Some of the most profound characteristics I am especially grateful for are my gender and geographic location. These privileges that I have been given by chance have had cumulative effects on my life experiences.
documentary; footage revels that sadly, even today’s powerful figures buy into the lie that black people
After watching the documentary, “A Class Divided,” I was very impressed by the lesson that the teacher was performing with her students. Discrimination is an issue that has been around for a long time dating back to slavery and probably before that. Over time, society has become more welcoming but discrimination still exists today and may never completely go away. By doing this exercise with her students, the teacher is changing the world. If a group of ten people went through this exercise, then they learn that everyone is the same and they stop discriminating based on race. Those ten people later go on and tell their children, friends, and family about this exercise and they may also have a change of heart. That number now changes from ten to twenty to thirty. In the documentary, the teacher mentioned that this exercise is hurtful to some people and should not be performed on everyone because of controversial issues and how it can be emotionally traumatizing for some people. A small group still does so much for a society to change and evolve. The brown eye, blue eye method has a large impact and I wish more people knew of it
I found this film to be a good tool for people going into the criminal justice field. I think it is important for people going into this field or already in it to understand the importance of racial biasing. The exercise in the video that was used where they changed what the juvenile was wearing was very eye opening. Trained professionals were drastically characterizing the same person differently based on their appearance. I found this to be the most powerful part of the video and gave me a better understand how important it is to not judge someone based on his or her appearance. It is defiantly not only relevant in the juvenile system. People in the adult system are also characterized on how they look. I think the exercise they used in the film for juveniles would also be helpful for people dealing with adult
Have you ever heard of the term white privilege? In case you haven’t, or if you’re not sure what it is exactly, white privilege is all of the societal privileges that benefit white people and that non-white people do not experience. If you are white, your first thought might be to say, “Well, that’s not real. I don’t experience any special benefits that non-white people do not.” But it is real and you do. When you get a paper cut and you go to grab one of your “flesh colored” bandages, it will actually match your skin color because apparently light beige is the “normal” skin color for everyone. When you are watching a film, you are able to relate more to the people you are watching because you will share the same characteristics as most of them, such as having the same skin color. (It’s true. A recent study showed that, out of 100 films made in 2012, white people accounted for about 76% of all speaking characters while people of color, put together, only accounted for about 23%.) When you fail at something in life, like getting a job or getting into college, you don’t stop and think, “Is it because of my race?” White privilege isn’t something that you enjoy having, or that you can necessarily control, but it is important to understand what white privilege is because it most definitely comes into play in our everyday life, including, and especially, news and other forms of media.
Doing research about the existence of white privilege, I found two articles with the opposite point of view on related information. Although both authors are Caucasians, they have completely opposing opinions about the existence of the white privilege. While Peggy McIntosh is trying to spread awareness to Caucasians in regards to their own privilege, Duke wants them to understand that they are in the same position as all other races. He explains that the awareness of “white privilege” is only a fallacy that causes feel of guilt without foundation.
For as long as I can remember, racial injustice has been the topic of discussion amongst the American nation. A nation commercializing itself as being free and having equality for all, however, one questions how this is true when every other day on the news we hear about the injustices and discriminations of one race over another. Eula Biss published an essay called “White Debt” which unveils her thoughts on discrimination and what she believes white Americans owe, the debt they owe, to a dark past that essentially provided what is out there today. Ta-Nehisi Coates published “Between the World and Me,” offering his perspective about “the Dream” that Americans want, the fear that he faced being black growing up and that black bodies are what
Whiteness is a term that has been discussed throughout history and through scholarly authors. Whiteness is defined in many ways, according to Kress “pervasive non- presence, its invisibility. Whiteness seems at times to be everywhere and nowhere, even present throughout U.S history, and yest having no definable history of its own. Whiteness as a historically rooted cultural practice is then enacted on the unconscious level. Knowledge the is created from the vantage point of Whiteness thus transforms into “common sense,” while practices or behaviors that are enacted based on the unspoken norms of Whiteness become the only acceptable way of being” (Kress, 2008, pg 43). This definition for example, whiteness has become into hegemony. I define it as racial ideologies that have been established throughout history. Which has formed racial segregation between white and non-whites, and has led to discrimination and injustice. White privilege has also been a factor in whiteness; it’s the privilege that white color people get better benefits
Tim Wise’s book White Like Me provides a picture of what it is like to be white in America. A main topic covered in White Like Me is white privilege. On pages 24 and 25 Wise illustrates what white privilege is and shares his opinion regarding how to address white privilege in society today. Wise’s plan for addressing white privilege is one not of guilt, but of responsibility, a difference Wise highlights. The concept of feeling guilty for white privilege lacks reason because white privilege is something built up through generations and its existence is not of any one person’s fault. Guilt would just be detrimental to the possibility of making progress in this field. Responsibility, on the other hand, is a perfectly logical action to take when
I am well aware of the oppression that has faced many people of color in our society. I did learn a great deal about how our government is to blame for the racial segregation in our society. America has a history of placing laws and policies on non-whites, thus making it extremely hard for them to live a well-balanced life. I thought it was interesting that immigrants were far more likely to work in mining and industrial jobs than whites. I feel as though this a trend that continues today in America, thus it is evident that we still exclude certain ethnic groups in our society. Although I did not have any biases going into this documentary, I learned a lot about how our government has been the main contributor to white privilege in our
1. (a) Privilege is defined as a favor or right granted to some people, but not to everyone.