RACE AND GENDER

Race and Gender

Race and Gender

Use ideas about race and/or gender from Peggy Mclntosh to frame your own inquiry. Define your purpose. Why do you want to do this project? What do you hope to discover? (Black, 2005).

Problem Statement

Are white men really unwilling to acknowledge that they are over privileged in the society. If yes then at how many different levels this problem lies? (Black, 2005).

Introduction

The most primitive work in the study regarding privilege started to emerge in the 1970s. Feminist researchers in women's studies faced forces opposing gender equality. Peggy McIntosh on the other hand raised her voice about both male privilege and white privilege. She in her article “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondence through Work in Women's Studies” presents an explanation of the underserved and unearned privileges of the males and the whites in the United States. The society accorded them these privileges in which they live. The same society educates them to be unmindful and unconscious of these privileges. This very oblivion or unawareness to the existence of unearned privileges, however, is the actual conduct that makes people of different race and color feel oppressed. She jotted down a list of privileges that she identified via self analysis of her experiences as a white woman and specified with strong consideration the subject matter of the invisible knapsack that includes 54 special provisions of unearned white and male. By doing so, she argument how the whiteness of a person assists as an invisible protection to each and every moment of her life. Researchers in recent times have begun to investigate how privileges related to gender, race, sexuality, class and different other types of social categorization overlap, intersect and work in related manners to construct often oppression or victimization for some and unrecognized special status for others (Connell, 1995).

Discussion

Male Privilege

Male privilege is a unique class bestowed on men in those cultures where domination of male is the vital social organizing attribute. Such male controlled civilizations grant extensive economic, political, and social assets on male because they are men. This partiality is established on beliefs regarding the supremacy of male biological gender and sex (Connell, 1995).

The apparent invisibility and naturalness of male privilege is not only demanding but also quite tough to tackle. Peggy Mclntosh explains it as an “invisible backpack” of privileges and rights that all men bear. They are often ignorant and generally unrecognized. Apart from her certain others have also analyzed the subject matter of the “backpack” and showed how societies and men seize the presupposed privileges and rights of males, take them for granted and disseminate them.

One of the most important challenges in eradicating and addressing male privilege is its invisible and pervasive nature. It is an accepted, long-standing but unrecognized result of male dominant social system which has been encouraged and protected since ages. It is difficult for the males who are reaping the dividends of their privilege to see, understand, or acknowledge due ...