McIntosh "White Privilege" Talking Points

Meghan Haggerty

• "Through work to bring materials from Women’s Studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are over privileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged."

I think men do this because they do not want to give up the powers of influence that they know they have so therefore they are willing to be able to sympathize with the women and try and make her feel better but they will not actually take any less power away from themselves to give to the women.

• As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege which puts me at an advantage

When you are a white person you never actually realize what you do is taken for granted and a lot of people would love to take you place. I also think you can not truly understand racism unless you have experienced it, witnessing it and reading about it is totally not the same.

• My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will.

She never knew that she maybe oppressed others and could be taken as a racist because she never thought she was doing anything wrong. She never saw herself as an advantaged person because she never realized or was around an environment that showed her that she truly was blessed and had a better chance at life than others. She always just thought that she was an individual with goals and morals to succeed.


McIntosh seemed like most white people when it came to realizing white privilege, they don't see that it is all around us because they had never been put in a situation before that showed them that some people are at a more disadvantaged then they are. She had learned about racism in school but she never thought that she had been an oppressor because she was just trying to live up to her goals and never thought she was getting more opportunities because she was white. And in the beginning of the article we see that the men have a greater advanced than women do, especially white men they are on top. This is most like the Johnson article we read with SCWAAMP and with Delpits Culture of Power, they talk about white privilege and the order of life and how some people see how people should live and who should be on top.