White privilege is the result of white people teaching one another to remain unaware of their privilege in order to deny its existence and avoid confronting the problem. Even when privilege is acknowledged, it is often used for one’s own benefit against the oppressed group more often than not. Historically privilege has been denied or accepted and used to harm others. This same concept goes for Male privilege. Unacknowledged privilege may be the result of not having the proper education on the subject or not being introduced to the concept of unearned privilege, but men are very much aware of their privilege historically and currently. Privilege’s existence is argued when individuals claim that it isn’t widespread but a handful of bad apples committing acts of racism or sexism. Despite racism and sexism being widespread issues that are perpetuated by people in power majority of the time, they refuse to admit to this simply because it would either force the oppressor to confront the accompanied guilt and or evenly distribute the social or economic power until they are no longer benefiting from said privileges. Instead, remaining ignorant (whether they honestly are or not) allows these structures to be reinforced and unchanged. Often if people are confronted with their privilege they will try to distance themselves from the group associated with the privilege, either by claiming it isn’t “all of them” or listing out financial and social struggles they have encountered throughout life. However individual struggles do not equate to being systematically oppressed in the same nature that a certain race or sex is oppressed. A common deflection is to try to downplay the issue of sexism and racism by saying that it was only individual experiences instead of a collective experience. Those with privilege, white or male or both need to do more than talk about it. Peggy McIntosh in their article White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack talks about this,

“Disapproving of the systems won’t be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals hanged their attitudes.”  More needs to be done than feigning anger over privilege on social media platforms if they truly want to deconstruct or destroy the systems that give them the advantages in life that they were unfairly awarded because of something they were born with others were not. 

As a black woman I would love to have as many allies as there seems to be but the oppression I experience has molded me into critically thinking about who is a real ally and who is only using my social issues as an accessory. Being oppressed racially and because I am a woman requires me to analyze people’s approach to both feminism and Black Lives Matter. Over the past two years I did witness a huge wave of support for the movement, but I also witnessed how our deaths were aestheticized on the internet, almost as if BLM was becoming less of a movement and more of a “Hey I’m one of the good ones” badge for people to put in their bios, on their jackets, or wear our movement on their wrists, and that being the peak of their activism. The same goes for men who are self proclaimed feminists. As someone who was raised to have heavy distrust in men because of harm done to the women who raised me and the potential harm I could run into, I have found myself often wondering what were their motives for becoming a feminist and if it was only due to it being ‘trendy’ and beneficial to them or because they truly cared about women. I’ve encountered men who only respect women they are attracted to but claim to respect women, and this being a collective experience among my groups resulted in me coming to the conclusion that a good majority of those with white/male privilege despite saying that they are trying to dismantle it don’t actually mean it. Majority of the progress made and work is done by the oppressed. Junie mentioned in their response post that “Society tends to label black people, as criminals, drug dealers,  being a different color means not having the same rights as a white person, and that most people live on edge based on the fact that they don’t know if they will leave another because of the colored And they always have to pretend to be something they are not to be able to survive.” I can most definitely relate, being profiled in any business I enter was and is a lifelong experience. I would have to almost always present myself as someone of a higher class to avoid even worse treatment, and this idea was practiced throughout the entirety of my family. Dress nice when going to the hospital and they will treat you better, don’t go to the back of the store for long to avoid suspicion and accusations, speak a certain way when interacting with non black people. Behaviorally we were conditioned to present ourselves in a way that would apparently lessen our probability of being accused and murdered. However none of my non black friends ever had to worry about this, or grow up seeing people who looked like them getting turned into t-shirts and having their deaths immortalized on the internet.