White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

I chose to read the White Privilege article. In this article Peggy McIntosh talks about how she felt like whiteness protected her from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence.

"In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable and alienated." (McIntosh, page 4) In this quote she is saying that because she was white, people didn't make her feel uncomfortable. She was just accepted due to the color of her skin. 

She says "that for this reason the word "Privilege" now seems misleading. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck...Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one's race or sex." (McIntosh, page 4) When she talks about this it brings me back to both stories by Johnson and Delpit. We don't realize that we are privileged until we actually look at the big picture. White people don't always agree with this so they fight the issue or walk away from it. In Delpit, this was the problem with the teaching methods. The main issue becomes silenced.