Talking Point 1

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

Premise:
• Women’s Status
• White supremacy
• People of color as inferior
• Invisible power of whites
• Privilege of being male
• Skin-color privilege
• Elusive nature of whiteness
• Fugitive nature of whiteness
• Obliviousness of Whites
• Unearned power due to being white/male
• Earned strength due to sex/whiteness/male
• Sexual orientation of straight gives unearned power
• “Myth of meritocracy”
• Perquisites of being white in America
• Will any action be taken with white power to change the system?

Author’s Argument:
Peggy McIntosh argues that white males in America are oblivious to the fact that their skin color and gender gives them both privilege and dominance in American society.

Evidence:
1. “I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as male are taught not to recognize male privilege.”
2. “I have met very few men who truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance.”
3. “It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all.”

Questions/Comments/Point To Share:
I felt this article to be a statement made to white males instructing them to take action and realize that they have so much power in society due to the fact that they are white and male. McIntosh did a good job talking about unearned advantage and dominance in society due to these factors and I felt that she was quite explicit in conveying her ideas to the reader. I felt that the article could be read easily and smoothly and gets the point across to the reader in an explicit manner. It relates to other texts such as Johnson because he said that people need to talk explicitly about racism and sexism so that progress can be made to eliminating the persistent problem that is engrained in American society.

Data Show Racial Bias Persists in America

Premise:
• Racism is still present
• Whites still ignorant of effects of race and opportunity
• Prejudiced social policies engrained in American society
• Discrimination of jobs due to race
• Drugs and people of color
• More people of color in prison systems
• Analysis shows racial bias

Author’ Argument:
Salim Muwakkil argues that by using analysis it can lucidly be seen that racial bias is largely persistent in the United States hindering people of color’s chances of attaining certain job opportunities and causing stereotypical views of people of color as drug dealers and users in America.

Evidence:
1. Using a job application as a means of analysis and putting white names and people of color’s names on the application the study found that “applicants with white sounding names were 50 percent more likely to get called for an initial interview than applicants with black-sounding ones.” Most notably the people of color had better credentials than the whites.
2. White males who had prison records were more likely to be hired than black men without them.
3. “Blacks constitute about 13 percent of America’s drug users, but make up to 58 percent of those sent to prison for drug possession.”

Questions/Comments/Point to Share:
This article was quite eye-opening in revealing some of the statistics of white and people of color having opportunities when applying for jobs. Muwakkil did a good job noting that people feel that racism is disappearing when in actuality it still persists to this day. The article was an easy read, yet it was highly informative regarding white and people of color’s statistics for imprisonment. It also relates Johnson’s reading because I feel that Muwakkil is trying to overtly show that racism is a topic that needs to be discussed correlating to the argument presented by Johnson.