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White America! Erica loves my shit I go to TRL, look how many hugs I get Look at these eyes, baby blue, baby just like yourself, if they were brown Shady lose, Shady sits on the shelf but Shady's cute, Shady knew Shady's dimples would help, make ladies swoon baby, ooh baby! Look at my sales Lets do the math, If I was black I would " ve sold half, I ain't have to graduate from Lincoln High School to know that This is an excerpt from the song White America, off the highly controversial white rapper Eminem's newest album: The Eminem Show. The saddest thing about this song is not that it is racial or sexist, as many people describe his work, but that it is all too true. Whites do not always have the advantage but America is definitely white, and whites have the greatest advantage of any race in America. Under the definition of race given in Websters Dictionary, a division of the human population distinguished by physical characteristics transmitted by genes (346), I am part of the dominant race in America, Caucasians.
I have never been perceived as anything other than white, and I have always been aware that I am part of the dominant race in America. I have always been around people of other minorities and have developed friendships with people of many races. Throughout most of my life being the dominant race has proven to be a benefit to me. I feel there are many advantages that only Caucasians have the chance to experience.
As Peggy McIntosh, author of White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack says, only whites can turn on the television or open the front page of the paper and see people of their race widely and positively spread (122). There are many cases where blacks and other races are widely spread throughout the news but the headlines portray them as murderers, killers, robbers, or in some other negative fashion. Through the news, the media has the power to control the way the public thinks. The way that the media portrays events rubs off on viewers and trains them to think this way. I went to a concert for a black rapper and I can remember the African-American security guards thoroughly searching the African-American audience and just allowing the white audience to pass by without scrutiny. Whenever suspects are revealed on the news they are referred to as a Black male, or a Latino female, or an Asian male, but never a white male or a white female.
If the suspect is Caucasian their race is never portrayed. Richard Dyer, author of The Matter of Whiteness, is right when he says as long as race is something only applied to non-white peoples, as long as white people are not racially seen and named; they / we function as a human norm. Other people are raced, we are just people (570). As long as our nation sees people this way there is no stepping forward. I know that I personally have been trained to think a certain way by the media. Whenever I am in downtown Columbus, a predominantly black community, I tend to frequently look behind me and walk a little faster.
This is more so the case when there is an African American walking behind me. In the back of my mind I am wondering where he is going, why is he following me, is he going to do anything to me. This is not the case when I am being followed by a white homeless man. Its not that I am racist, but that I have been taught that I should be more scared of a black man who is walking behind me than a white man. This is also the same way that Brent Staples describes people acting toward him in his essay Black Men and Public Space. The public is trained by the medias portrayal of people that they should be a little timid around Brent just because he is black.
They are not necessarily racist; they are just acting in the way they have been taught. I can distinctly remember one incident when I went into a gas station convenience store with two of my friends who were both buying cigarettes. One of my friends is a white male and was sold the cigarettes with no problem and not even asked for his identification. My other friend who is an Asian American and who appears older than my first friend was given a very hard time. His I.
D. was demanded by the sales clerk and then the sales clerk proceeded to rifle off every question manageable about his I. D. just to spite my friend due to his race. Needless to say the clerk was white.
Incidents such as this one have even caused minorities to pretend to be white. In But You Dont Look Chinese! by Damian Hess his uncle even said that he was so lucky that he can pass off as a white person and how he wishes he could do the same (281). Hess even states after I started looking white, I never thought much about being Chinese. It was out of sight, so I pretty much pushed it out of mind.
This lasted until I started applying to colleges (278). Damian purposely forgot about his heritage until he could use it to his advantage and even then only recognized it for a very short period of time. I noticed this same thing happening in my high school when it was time to apply to college, and for the first time my race was used against me. Everyone who had any minority blood in them finally revealed this secret to the world in hopes of getting into college easier and getting more and / or better scholarships. I know that when I applied to the University of Michigan I got a letter back from them saying that they were only accepting minorities at this time and therefore, I was put on the waiting list. Some of my friends who were minorities and who applied at the same time (they also had a lower GPA and comparable test scores) were accepted.
In some cases, race is used to give people an advantage. There are many people who take full advantage of this only to go back to hiding their true identity later. America is said to be the greatest nation in the world. However, America is not always such a great place to live. Racism has caused our country to become this way. I believe that our country would be a much better place if race were completely abolished and unrecognized.
I look forward to a time when the only definition of race is a competition amongst individuals (Websters 346). Works Cited Dyer, Richard. The Matter of Whiteness. Perspectives on Argument.
Fourth Ed. Ed. By Nancy V. Wood. New Jersey: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2004: 569: 573 Eminem Planet.
Ed. Dan Slide. 28 May 2002 < web Hess, Demian. But You Dont Look Chinese! Conversations Readings for Writing. Ed. Jack Seller.
New York: Longman. 2003. 276 - 281. McIntosh, Peggy. White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Race: An Anthology in the First Person.
Ed. By Bart Schneider. New York: Crown, 1997: 119 - 126. Race. Def. 1.
Websters II New Riverside Desk Dictionary. Home and Office ed. 1988. Race. Def. 2. Websters II New Riverside Desk Dictionary.
Home and Office ed. 1988. Staples, Brent. Black Men and Public Space. The Norton Reader. Ninth Ed. Ed.
by Linda H. Peterson, Joan E. Hartman, and John C. Brereton. New Your: Norton, 1996: 420 - 422
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Research essay sample on African American White Privilege
