Women’s
Studies Journal
October
15, 2001
I am one of the white privileged. Like Ms. McIntosh, the author of “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” there are many points in my life where I do not realize how privileged I am. If I do not get a job or a house that I want, I will never have to worry that it is because of my white face; I will even be able to buy Band-Aids “in flesh color and have them more or less match my skin,” something that I can honestly say that I have never even thought about (359). Hair care products, concealer for my zits, neighbors who will speak to me on the street—I never have to worry that these will not be available for me. It scares me that I have not thought about this, because “whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege”; it scares me that I will never know whose face will be denied just because mine is not (358). I know that even though I am not aware of all of the advantages that I have simply because I am white, the race that is so neutral that it is not even a race.
Another
issue that surprised me was one of Tatum’s points in “Defining Racism: Can We
Talk?” that “we are exposed to misinformation about people different from
ourselves” (301). It is true that until
college, where most people live within the same area, my black friends did not
live within walking distance of my house.
I was a little taken aback by the example she discussed; the children
did not know what a Native American was, and could not even picture an Indian
without feathers. They said that “their
number one source of information” was Peter Pan, and therefore even
things that I assumed were harmless entertainment contain stereotypical images
and have a lasting impression (304).
How many times have I seen a movie with a Black, Native American, or
Asian heroine? Whose fault is this? I
remember walking up and down the rows of toys in Wal-Mart, noticing that the
standard of beauty, Barbie, was well represented, and then there were Barbie’s
friends, a token Asian doll, and a Black doll, who were named exotically,
taking up three or four spaces out of fifty Blonde, blue-eyed Barbie
dolls. What does that do to a child
when she cannot find a toy that looks like her? (not that I look like Barbie by
any means!)
She
also points out the different types of racism vs. prejudice, and I agree that
that the omissions and stereotypes are just as strong a form of prejudice as
blatant opposition, because it is as if you do not even exist at all unless you
are a majority. In “Codes of Conduct,”
Su discusses this issue because “To suggest that [she] looked different from
[her] friends….was simply not done,” even though she was Asian and most of her
friends were white (308). To deny her
the ability to recognize and appreciate her differences is to deny her of an
important part of herself. As she states, “reality is what everyone says it
is,” and everyone said that she was the same as they were, without giving her
an opportunity to explore and discuss the things about herself that were not
the same (308). It erases who she is
and gives her no foundation upon which to face the world.
“I
am not your Princess,” is an attack, and
Chrystos faces the people who stereotype her because of her race, and
she wants them to see her “human weakness,” much like Castro’s “Take a Closer
Look (310).” Chrystos wants people to
see that she is a person and not some mythological figure in a storybook. She just wants to be left alone, and it is
not as if she wants to deny her culture, but she does not feel as if it is her
responsibility to educate people about it.
It should be the majority’s job to educate themselves about other
cultures, and be respectful of those cultures. In the United States, being
white is so mainstream, it is almost like there IS no white culture.