The snapshot I am responding to is Hillary’s. This snapshot really represented the theme portrayed in the article about white privilege. I had a similar post to Hillary that spoke upon the idea that white privilege is an advantage to certain resources or even the smallest things because of their skin complexion.

Lately, the topics of these articles have caused me to think about shows or movies I’ve watched. Many shows and movies nowadays present the reality that we face every day. One of the shows that relate to this topic of white privilege is called “Degrassi.” I remember this one episode where one of the character’s names was Shay, who has this goal of getting scouted at her high school because she loves volleyball. Still, she consistently feels she has to work twice as hard as anyone because she feels disadvantaged because of her complexion even though her parents work good jobs and have good resources. There is this scene, I believe, in the show, where she’s working out after volleyball practice, and her friend Frankie comes to her saying that she is overworking the team and herself and needs to relax. Shay kind of burst out all of her true feelings towards Frankie about how she has a better opportunity of getting scholarships and scouts to check her out than she does, especially because her parents can afford her greater resources, and it’s just easier for her. Frankie is ignorant for a couple of episodes about the privileges she has compared to people with darker complexions than her, and that doesn’t mean Frankie doesn’t struggle in her own way. Still, her daily privileges she always took for granted. Frankie didn’t understand the idea of her being able to walk somewhere and not have people stare at her because she would harm them or steal from them in any way because of her complexion. She didn’t understand what white privilege meant until she didn’t get the benefit of the doubt over a racist prank she made towards a volleyball team of color that caused her to lose everything. Her prank was basically a poster she had created and hanged it in front of the school of the opposing volleyball team of what they looked like. They were called the “zoo,” and it wasn’t because of their skin complexion. It was because they were a low-income school. Frankie had assumed the team was called the “zoo” because they acted wild like monkeys, so that’s why she had created that poster of all the players looking like monkeys and gorillas.

I believe a big issue of white privilege is that people don’t fully understand the term. It isn’t easy to understand because of so many things that go into it because of our own assumptions and experiences. We can become very biased upon the word. Sometimes we don’t educate ourselves, and if we are privileged, we don’t use to speak for those who aren’t. According to McIntosh “After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious.” (McIntosh)