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Summary readings week 1 (Kimmel, McIntosh, Smith)
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Summary of all the readings of week 1 from the second year sociology course 'Intersectionalities: Class, Race, Gender and Sexualities. Subject: privilege.
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Summary readings intersectionalities week 1Kimmel, M. (2017). Toward a sociology of the superordinate.
Being white, or male, or heterosexual in this culture is like running with the wind at your back. This
book tries to make the wind visible.
When presented with evidence of systematic discrimination, people are often indifferent, defensive
or resistant. Almost all agree that racism is a problem of individual attitudes, of prejudiced people,
and not a social problem. We tend to individualize and personalize processes that are social and
structural. When confronted with structural or social problems, we think the solutions are either
aggregated individual solutions – everyone needs to change their attitudes – or that the solutions
don’t exist. A single, lone individual has no chance, we think, to change the system.
Privilege needs to be made visible: those of us who are white, heterosexual, middle class, and/or
male need to see how we are stakeholders in understanding structural inequality, how the dynamics
that create inequality for some also benefit others.
To be white, or straight, or male, or middle class is to be simultaneously ubiquitous
(veelvoorkomend) and invisible. Invisibility is a privilege in a double sense:
- Power relations are kept in place by the very dynamics of invisibility
- The sense of privilege as a luxury not to think about race every minute of their lives. They
become defensive and angry when confronted with racism or sexism
One way to understand how privilege works/is invisible is to look at the way we think about
inequality. We always think about inequality from the perspective of the one who is hurt by the
inequality, not the one who is helped. When women earn less than men, women are discriminated.
But if you see it the other way around: when men earn more than women, men are privileged.
Peggy McIntosh’s ‘invisible knapsack’ contains all the little benefits that come to us simply because
we are white, or straight, or middle class, or male.
Just as all forms of inequality are not the same, all forms of privilege are not the same. The privileges
based on:
- Gender or race more invisible, because those did nothing to earn their privilege
- Physical ability difficult to navigate, because the world made for physically able people.
- Sexuality, religion and class not immediately visible to the public
Inequality is structural/systematic, as well as individual/attitudinal. Eliminating inequalities involves
more than changing everyone’s attitudes. The struggles against inequality are collective struggles,
enormous social movements that unite people across geography, race, religion, class, sexuality, and
gender.
Those parts of our lives by which we feel marginal, are the most visible to us. We are more aware of
where we don’t fit in to the dominant groups than where we do. Subordinate and superordinate –
these are the statuses that enable us to define who we are. We need to understand both if we are to
understand ourselves, as well as others. We need to understand those who are privileged and those
who are not, in order to understand our society more fully, and engage us in the long process of
change.
, McIntosh, P. (2017). White privilege and male privilege.
McIntosh realized that there was most likely a phenomenon of white privilege which was similarly
denied and protected, but alive and real in its effects. As a white person, McIntosh realized she had
been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught
not to see white privilege, which puts her at an advantage. I have come to see white privilege as an
invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was
‘meant’ to remain oblivious (onbewust).
White privilege is like an invisible knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides,
codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank checks.
She began to count the ways in which she enjoys unearned skin privilege and has been conditioned
into oblivion (vergetelheid) about its existence, unable to see that it put her ‘ahead’ in any way, or
that it could or should be changed. Whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral,
normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work
which will allow ‘them’ to be more like ‘us’.
For me, white privilege has turned out to be an elusive (ontwijkend) and fugitive (voortvluchtig)
subject. The appearance of being a good citizen rather than a troublemaker comes in large part from
having all sorts of doors open automatically because of my color.
In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience
which I once took for granted, as neutral, normal, and universally available to everybody, just as I
once thought of a male-focused curriculum as the neutral or accurate account which can speak for
all. Examples of this:
- I can arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time
- I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race
widely represented
- Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against
the appearance of financial reliability
- I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group
My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. We received daily signals
and indications that my people counted, and that others either didn’t exist or must be trying to be
like people of my race.
White = confident, comfortable, oblivious. White protects from hostility, distress, and violence.
Non-white = inconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated.
The word ‘privilege’ now seems to McIntosh misleading: too positive to fit the conditions and
behaviors which ‘privilege systems’ produce. Moreover, though ‘privilege’ may confer power, it does
not confer moral strength.
Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to
dominate. It is an unearned entitlement that one belongs within the human circle. This should not be
seen as privilege for a few. Since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them.
The fact that I live under the same roof with a man triggers all kinds of societal assumptions about
my worth, politics, life, and values, and triggers a host of unearned advantages and powers.
All of the oppressions are interlocking, as the Combahee River Collective statement of 1977
continues to remind us. One fact seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions.
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