Peggy McIntosh in “White Privilege and Male Privilege” talks about how men may very well recognize that women are underprivileged but the problem is that they don’t recognize that they are overprivelaged. McIntosh, as a white woman, equates men not knowing of their superiority as males to white people not knowing their superiority as whites. She states how even if the advantages that white people gain through their race are subconscious and unintentional, they are still reaping the benefits of their race. She then goes on to list 50 advantages that white people encounter every day, most of which go unnoticed in every day situations. Some of these include; being listened to in a group of people even though you are the minority, knowing that if you move into a neighborhood you will most likely be safe and accepted, etc. She concludes that while your life may be what you make it to a certain extent, many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own. This relates just as well to sex as it does to race, which is the point of the article. The same way that white people do not realize all of the advantages that they have on a daily basis, men do not realize just how much of an every day advantage they have over women.
McIntosh talks toward the end of her passage about earned strength and unearned power. This is very interesting because it seems in our society that this line seems to be blurred quite often. Even though men HAVE power it does not necessarily mean that they’ve earned that power. McIntosh then talks about how interlocking oppressions can take both active and embedded forms. What she means by embedded form is that the oppression is not seen because members of the dominant groups are taught not to see them. This relates back to the 50 advantages that she stated earlier as unnoticed advantages that white people have in everyday life. The same holds true for sex. Finally she says that male advantage and white advantage are kept a myth so that meritocracy can keep its legitimacy. This is something that everyone thinks about on a regular basis but to see it in writing is actually refreshing.
Audre Lorde, in “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” talks about, amongst other things, how the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but it is redemptive. This struck me as quite interesting because I would think that it is clear that women are fighting for equality because of redemption and not a pathological obligation to help each other. Every time a group is fighting for rights it is because they have been oppressed and treated poorly for an extended period of time. This is no different for the feminist movement. Lorde also talks about how even though women are all fighting for the same cause there are clear differences in women that must be accepted before they can band together and fight the fight of feminism. If white women are racist against black women and straight women are homophobic against lesbian women then how can they work together to fight for women’s rights?
Finally, “A Black Feminist Statement” was very controversial. It talks a lot about how black women not only have to deal with the problem of sex but race as well. The passage goes so far to say that black women have, “gone beyond white women’s revelations because [they] are not only dealing with sex but class and race as well”. This ties in directly to the passage by Audre Lorde. However, in this case the passage is saying these things in a way where we should pity black women. This does not sit well with me because in my opinion and in Audre Lorde’s opinion the feminist movement has to be a united movement. Black women cannot isolate themselves from women in general or else nothing will ever get done. What is interesting about this article, however, is that it was written in 1977 which was years after the civil rights movement. I am not naïve in thinking that blacks were automatically treated equally once the movement was over, but it is interesting to see a black woman talk so passionately about racial discrimination so far after the civil rights movement. Toward the end of the passage it says that if black women are free then that means that every other group must be free because both race and sex barriers must be broken for that to happen. This was interesting to me because again, the author is removing herself from both race and sex individually and talking about the fact that she has both to deal with. This makes it very hard to envision her associating with either group and accomplishing what she wants to accomplish.
I actually had to read McIntosh's "White Privilege" article last semester for anthropology. It was really interesting to return to it with the new perspectives I have gained even in this short time. Growing up, I shared some of McIntosh's views that racism was something that some people participated in but that I did not have to. I liked how McIntosh argued that racism is a system. Like Johnson's conception of patriarchy, it is a system in our culture that all members of our culture participate in whether they want to or not. By realizing this, we can change how we participate in it - through support or opposition. This coincides with what Jason was referencing; a powerful part of these systems is their anonymity. By not acknowledging the privilege of men or whites, people support the systems through passive submission. Knowledge empowers us to act against these systems.
ReplyDeleteLorde discusses how not acknowledging differences is another form of willing blindness. Differences can empower through collaboration. She scolds the feminist movement for feeding into patriarchy by denying the heterogeneity among women that does exist. A quote i particularly enjoyed said that, "Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creatively can spark" (p. 2). I love this image. I get excited when people say things that surprise me because they are so different from the way I see the world. This is what Lorde is talking about. The beautiful conversations uniqueness can have.
I enjoyed Jason's comments about "A Black Feminist Statement." He worked through some of the issues he had with the piece and considered different perspectives. I agree that a unity of all persons against oppressive systems is ideal. The feminist movement should not be a white, middle class, female battle. I would love to see even more men involved in the movement as well. But I am sympathetic to the cause of the writers of "A Black Feminist Statement." They were operating in at time when their issues were not considered. The feminist movement was still operating under the paradox of revoluting against male oppression while encouraging or being indifferent to white oppression. As discussed, a passive response is often the same as supporting oppression. For this reason, though unity is ideal - it may not have been a viable option for black feminists who did not want to compromise either cause.
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ReplyDeleteWhite Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
ReplyDeleteMcIntosh’s ideas of meritocracy captured my attention. Her statement that the “American Dream” is a façade struck me because I found it true. In our society, nothing is achieved solely based on merit. Other factors such as gender and race privileges come into play. Interestingly, she writes, “The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country, one’s life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtue of their own.” I find this comment very depressing, but eye opening.
“The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” and “A Black Feminist Statement”
I found these two excerpts to be extremely similar. They both stress that women need to stop oppressing other women and celebrate their differences in order to fight sex oppression. They need to become a united front. They both seem to be saying that racism needs to be eliminated in the feminist movement.
Here are some white privileges that I found interesting:
2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me
10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race
14. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color
22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion
“The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”
Oppressors keep the oppressed occupied: “Now we hear that it is the task of women of color to educate white women—in the face of tremendous resistance—as to our existence, our differences, our differences, our relative roles in our joint survival. This is a diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal thought.” In essence, white women are oppressing women of color like men oppress women.
This lone quote seems to be the epitome of what the Combahee River Collective was trying to get at:
“We exist as women who are black who are feminists, each stranded for the moment, working independently because there is not yet an environment in this society remotely congenial to our struggle- because, being on the bottom, we would have to do what no one else has done: we would have to fight the world” (Freedman, 328).