"Whit Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" By: Peggy McIntosh

(Quotes),

1) "I realized that since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there is most likely a phenomenon of white privilege that was similarly denied and protected.  As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage."  

McIntosh is talking about because she is white when she was growing up she was taught about how racism but everyone else but herself at a disadvantage but because she is white she has a unspoken advantage that puts her in a better place than say someone who is African American  or Hispanic. Then reason why she has this advantage is simply it because she is white. This is relevant to the article because the article talks about and recognizes the advantages and disadvantages of being white.

2) " I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, code books, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks."

The author talking about because were white there are certain privileges that we are entitled to because where white and we use them everyday but at the same time were not supposes to know that we cash in on them because it would show us as being above everyone else. As McIntosh describes it an "Invisible weightless knapsack." It always there though we cant see it and we can dip into it anytime we need something. This is not something we know consciously but it there neither the less that the advantage of being white no matter how wrong it is.

3) "I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will.  My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out:  whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow "them: to be more like "us".

So she is saying that we as white are seen not as spcial but as the norm what everyone else should espiar  to be like.  So  because we are taught we are white and the ways of the white are the best when you work with or help others of another race you should help them to be more like what is considered the norm. This yet again brings us back to the main focus of the paper which is white privilege white people dont see themselves as being special but normal just like everyone else.

I think this goes back to early artical and our talk on the SCWAMP I know I don't try to be better than anyone else and because I'm white I don't feel like I'm better than anyone else.  But maybe that the point no matter or attention or how we feel it the white privilege is going to be there . That why we have to work harder to lessen it existence. as McIntosh says "so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, "Having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?" I think that the question that needs to be addressed and  I hope in the feature a solution can be found.

On another note in the article Other People's Children by Lisa Delpit. She talks about how White and African American people  talk to people different because of there cutler and where they come from. Well I was at the Ester States Expo this weekend and the bathroom attendants where a couple African American women and ever time they told you which stall to go into they would call you sweetheart or baby or Hun. But when I go to the Washington county fair the bathroom attendants are a group of white women and they just tell you the stall number and that it. Now I would never have thought about it before  but after reading this article I realized that there is  a difference between how we grow up and how we treat people. When some one class you Hun or tell you God bless you or something it makes you feel good inside. But when they don't you just go about your business and leave.  I just find how en lighting these articles are. They make you think in ways you would never have thought before.