This week’s readings “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh and “Oppression” by Marilyn Frye were very interesting. Oppression can always be narrowed back down to early history where white males were ‘superior’. They had power over women, as women were stay-at-home wives up until recent history, and they also had power over people of color, as unfortunately, they were slaves to these white males. Throughout the years, history may have changed, people were freed and new laws were made, but there’s one thing that never changed, white male supremacy. 

Oppression is very systematic. It all narrows down to history and the white man supremacy. This is why we now see how the white man unconsciously oppresses women at the workplace, etc. Peggy elaborated on this in their writing “White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack”, when stating that white privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special maps, passports, clothes tools, etc. In simple terms, White privilege isn’t visually seen, other than the person being white, but there’s no visual to it, it’s just always there to come in handy whenever it’s needed. The sense of supremacy has been taught throughout the generations leading up to this point. Throughout the years there have been laws that prevent such things to happen, however, they have been systematically placed to look like they are helping, however when you dig just a little bit deeper, you realize they were never there to help you. A great example of this is the Grandfather’s Clause Law back in the early 1890s. This law allowed people of color voting rights, only if their grandfather was allowed to vote. Knowing history we know that for this time, the grandfathers in question were slaves at the time and did not have the right to vote. This prevents nearly every person of color the right to vote, even though the system made it seem like they were trying to give them voting rights. The same thing happens today, unconsciously or not, there’s a system in place that makes it look like there’s equality all around, however, actions and other factors prove otherwise. 

With the topic of white supremacy in mind, a classmate, Kevin Kimble, has a great post that relates to it and the way both I explained this and Peggy did in their writing. In short, Kevin’s post says that being white doesn’t mean you don’t have struggles and difficulties in your life, it simply means that the color of your skin isn’t one of the factors making it harder. This ties back to what I was previously explaining about how even unconsciously the white privilege isn’t acknowledged. It’s simply being carried with you and comes in handy when needed, but because it’s there, you’ll never experience the other side of the coin.