Monday, January 29, 2007
If it were my first time reading this article on white privileges being an “unearned asset” I think I would have been surprised. However, this is a concept I have heard of before. If one were to look at our society from an institutional perspective, one can realize that almost everybody is born with some kind of “unearned asset”, a privilege that will put one in advantage over others. As a person of color myself, I still possess “unearned assets” simply because of the fact that I am a male. Living in a male dominant society, I have an advantage when applying to big name corporations and people also have assumptions of my superiority over females, simply because, I am a male. “I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious.” If I were to take this sentence, quoted by Mcintosh, and replace the word “white privilege” with “male privileges”, the sentence would still be accurate, and it would make sense according to the institutional system that we live in. In high school, I gained a lot of experience with community activism, especially within the Asian American community. One of the essential things I learned was that racism can be encompassed by the idea of power and privilege within a society. However, this idea can relate to almost any “ism”, be it classicism, sexism, agism, etc. When I first learned that everyone is born with a certain privilege and puts others at a disadvantage, I refused to believe that I was born an oppressor, but the fact is, as long as we are living in this institutional system almost everybody is born with a privilege. According to Rinku Sen, “Racial justice is about changing the rules of society according to a set of standards: resisting discrimination and violence, not abiding huge disparities, and expanding the role of government to protect economic, social and political rights”. We are born with privileges that automatically make us the oppressor, unless, there is a change in the “system” where people aren’t put into a disadvantage, and people aren’t discriminated against based on certain qualities.
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Minh makes a good point. Everyone will be born into this country with some type of advantage. However, I think the two reasons McIntosh chose to focus on white unearned assets were 1. she is white and 2. there is a very large disparity between this group and the rest of society. For example, she says that she, being a white person, can "choose public accommodations without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen." This is a pretty big advantage, and its one that we need to try to entitle every person in our society to. And this is only one example of a much larger issue with this particular group of people. I think she was correct in addressing this particular group in her article before addressing others, because it is so enormous and because it pervades our society as a whole.
Minh is correct in stating that despite ethnicity, gender and social class, every grounp comes with it's own advantages and disadvantages. However, some groups such as whites and males enjoy much more privilages than everyone else. Whille it may not be possible to set a perfectly blanced scale at birth for everyone, it is important to even the disparity to a point where one's economical and social future is not bossted or hindered by the group to which one belongs to.
I like the idea that Minh established about 'unearned' advantage, similar to being born into privilege. His interchangeability of male and white show the immensse social status that the white male posseses over other social groups in society. I agree with the relationship of power and privelege that dooms over the 'isms' since any form of discrimination may not necessarily be an 'ism' if there is an absence of the power/ authority that supports and fuels this system of discrimination. A question that came to mind about his quote from Rinku Sen is the question of whose standards are we conforming in this system of racial justice? Seeing as we are all culturally biased in one sense of another, the question of acheiveing a 'universal' principle of some sort is brought to the surface agian.
I don't think anyone would really be surprised reading this article, but only because in my own experience, privelege (white or wealthy) is a concept evident in almost everything, it affects every factor, and is present everywhere. These "unearned assets" are naturally occuring, and if it was not based on race (or rather, the stereotypes that assign race to socioeconomic standings) then they would be based on other factors.
I believe that McIntosh stressed the white male privelege is that the major 'unearned assets' are in fact found in white males. This isn't even just present in American society, but across the globe. I discovered evidence of this when searching for an English tutoring job in Taiwan. I would get interviews and jobs over my Asian-American friends, but passed over for older caucasian men, with no regard to my superior education or better grasp of the English language, or that I had more experience teaching children.
I agree that we are all born with priveleges that make us the oppressor, but it is the situations and societies in which we find ourselves in that determine which aspects of our heritages are assets.
Minh brings up a good point in saying that he couldn't believe that he had been born an oppresor. These unearned priviledges are often received unbeknownst to the beneficiary, and when they do find out about these priviledges they often refuse to believe it. And that does not just extend to the priviledges of being a male. There are times when being White, Asian, Black or Hispanic all give benefits. But the problem isn't with people being born with priviledges, its with people not working to remove these prejudices. Knowledge is the first step towards change. Once people are aware of these prejudices, they will be able to identify the prejudices in action and strive to remove them.
"We are born with privileges that automatically make us the oppressor, unless, there is a change in the “system” where people aren’t put into a disadvantage, and people aren’t discriminated against based on certain qualities."
What Minh said about an inherent system by which these unearned privileges are organized certainly makes sense, but what I'm more interested in is how the system operates - the specific ways in which WE perpetuate the myriad of "isms" in our society, because I don't believe that the system would exist by itself. Consciously, subconsciously, or unconsciously, we make choices every day that conform to or reinforce this system. So I guess my next question is, how do we build a "change in this 'system'"?
I feel like there is frustration in Minh's claim that we are all oppressors that I can relate to: "almost everybody is born with a privilege...privileges that automatically make us the oppressor". The discrepancies and discrimination have long been imbedded as a result of the institutional constructs of America. As long as our country continues to systematically exist in this way, it is extremely difficult to expect any change. I find this to be enormously frustrating and discouraging, especially knowing that bureaucracy alone poses a huge obstacle.
Minh Nguyen raises several several important arguments in this response. Nguyen states, "If one were to look at our society from an institutional perspective, one can realize that almost everybody is born with some kind of “unearned asset”. Although this is undoubtly true, it diverges from McIntosh's main argument: Whites are born with more privileges than any other group in our society. While Minh is right in his asseration "I still possess 'unearned assets' simply because of the fact that I am a male", he doesn't address the fact that White Males are, by far, the dominant racial group in today's society.
I agree with Mihn that "we are born with privileges that automatically make us the oppressor, unless, there is a change in the “system” where people aren’t put into a disadvantage." I feel that in our society today, some sort of discrimination always exists. People subconsciously favor one subgroup over another when faced with choices or decisions to make. Thus these choices result in one subgroup's advantage, or what we call "privileges", over the other groups. Just as Mihn stated, as long as there are those put at a disadvantage, the others will be at an advantage or be seen as the 'oppressors'. Having come to that conclusion, I believe that unearned assets will always exist because of the human population's ability to be categorized into different races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, genders, religions, etc. These differences open the road for people to judge and to develop responses that are specific to certain subgroups.
Minh makes a good point that everyone is born with some type of advantage and that power and privilege can lead to racism, sexism, etc…
“We are born with privileges that automatically make us the oppressor, unless, there is a change in the “system” where people aren’t put into a disadvantage, and people aren’t discriminated against based on certain qualities”.
I agree with this statement because as long as the “system” is unfair, it means that some people have an advantage and some people have a disadvantage. If people who are advantaged choose to do nothing about the inequalities, then that in itself makes them oppressors. It’s hard for men to see that their “male privileges” “automatically makes [them] oppressor[s] because the “privileges” they hold cause burdens and “unjust impositions or restraints” (according to dictionary.com) on those (esp females) who don’t have those same privileges.
I think that this issue of privilege can be a very delicate topic. Sometimes, people cannot distinguish the line between what is a privilege and what isn't. For example, going into a store and having the "privilege" to buy a cd from the same ethnic/cultural background as you, can be be argumentative of whether or not it is a privilege. As we live in a dominantly white society, it would be harder for an Asian as myself to go into a store and buy a music cd by an Asian American artist. Can this be considered to be an issue revolving around the institution in which we live in?
I agree with Minh's statement that "unearned assets" would exist as long as some groups of people are discriminated against. In order to change this system, people must not be satisfied with their own benefits and "unearned assests" but rather look beyond their own identity and delve into the identity (whether by race, ethnicity, or gender) of others. However, a change in the system that would rid of these unearned priveledges seems like a quixotic dream. I question whether or not the different cultures that define ethnicity and race could persist or whether or not people will have to conform to the preferred/ dominant culture.
Great work on the comments everyone!
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