Week 1- Day 1:
Day 1: You and white privilege
“I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group”
-Peggy Mcintosh
White Privilege- I am 33 and never heard of white privilege. Learning the meaning made me so sad, it is true, it needs to change, no one should have any advantage over someone else based solely on the color of their skin.
Race is actually not a biological fact but it is a social concept- this statement in this chapter peaked my interest and I began to really focus on this. What does the author mean here when she is saying that race is not biological, I mean isn’t that where the color of skin comes from? hmmmmm lets research this a little more by reading further. I have medical background and training so I understand genes and genetic makeup this was very interesting to me.
The percent of genes that are expressed on the outside someones appearance is 0.01% (wow that is not even 1%). the Observational differences that we see with our eyes when we look at other people when we see “different races” are just genotypes and phenotypes.
Genotype is defined as the genetic constitution of an individual organism.
Phenotype is defined as the set of observable characteristics of an individual resulting from the interaction of its genotype with the environment.
There is truly just one race of people and that is the Human Race. WOW this is amazing and true and wow if there is just one race their should never be racism
continuing on
the journal prompts at the end of each chapter are heavy but truly taking the time and answering them honestly is only going to help you get through this is only going to help grow you and help you be part of the solution. (I am not sharing my answers to the journal prompts here these are personal)
This book may make us uncomfortable, we may begin to feel like getting defensive but for it to truly work we must use our un-comfortableness(this is not even a word but you know what I mean) and work through it.
White privilege example that really made sense to me and clicked I want to share it here(not in this book)
Imagine you are in a race running and your opponent is a black person. The whistle blows and you are off you take off running look beside you and your opponent is not there? They had been told before the race began that when the whistle blows only the white racer can begin running. You continue running around the track and as you approach the start line for the 1st lap to complete they allow the black racer to begin to run. You speed up a little bit and pass the other racer and at this time you know you are winning so you don’t even look behind you to see how far back the black racer is. At the end of the race the white racer obviously won but was it fair? The judges say yes because they gave the black racer the opportunity to run the race. This is how it has been for the black community in real life, so far behind white people that we don’t even look back to see how close or far they are from us, we know that we are winning. Isn’t that sad, we can change this.
Check your white privilege– it may be uncomfortable but necessary!