Understanding White Privilege
...now they have this ‘privilege’, some use it to their advantage and some don’t. Then we have the other half that is as the author states- unaware. I do agree that non-white races do see whites as privileged in one way or the other. For example, if a young black male were to tell a police officer during a traffic stop, “You wouldn’t have pulled me over if I was white”; he would be addressing their ‘unknown privilege’. The author wrote about the statistics from the 1995 Glass Ceiling Commission. The statistics basically show how a larger percentage of white men hold senior management positions in American industry. We’d like to believe that they acquired their positions because of qualifications and hard work. I can’t honestly say whether they did or didn’t, I’d like to hope that they were simply the most qualified. How would I try to remedy this problem? I don’t honestly think there will ever be a full resolution to this problem. We will never be able to convince everyone to be fair and honest. Dr. Kendall states in this paper that history is filled with examples of white privilege in action. A couple events that made his theory stand true were: 1) The writing of the US Constitution in which, in ten articles, very intentionally confirmed the holding of Black people as slaves, as property. 2) The removing of American Indian children from their homes, taking them as far as possible from anything they knew, and punishing them if they tried to speak their own languages. To elaborate: Numbers one and two can be summed up in one word “power”! Whites were out to seek and retain power. I believe that they tried anything they could to keep minorities oppressed. Fear could also be a contributing factor. Whites may have been afraid of what minorities could do or had to offer to society- feared their potential. This particular outlook does help uphold the author’s theory of “white privilege”. “White privilege is the ability to make decisions that affect everyone without taking others into account.” The author points out that this occurs at entry-level. Do whites actually make decisions based on their ideas and their wants and needs only? I’d say it can and has been done. When the decision was made to take American Indian children away from their families and traditions, Were the parents asked what they thought might be best for their own children? Were blacks consulted with first on whether or not they even wanted to be slaves? This may sound far-fetched, but the answer is “no”. None of their feelings were brought into consideration and they were the ones who had to suffer. Unless you are just an unfit parent, no one should be able to tell you that even your own native language is no good for your child. I also believe that some whites may demonstrate this behavior without even realizing they are doing so. Other races could be guilty of the same thing unbeknownst to them as well. So, I don’t really feel that this example of the author’s theory constitutes this as an example of white privilege. Minorities may do the...