Thank You for Being Angry

This is an excerpt from "White Privilege: Unpacking the invisible Knapsack" by Peggy McIntosh...Did you the the author was male? I did until I read the name of the author. Oops, I have a lot to learn still.
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1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I want to live.
3.I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I won’t be followed or harassed.
5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
6. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilizations" I am snow that people of my color made it what it is.
7.I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
8. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
9. I can go into a music shop and and count on finding music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit into my cultural traditions, into a hairdressers’ shop and find someone who can cut my hair.
10. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of my financial reliability.
11. I can arrange to protect my children most the time from people who might not like them.
12. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.
13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
14. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
15. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
16. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
17. I can criticize our government and talk about how I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
18. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge" that I will be facing someone of my own race.
19. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I wasn’t singled out because of race.
20. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazines featuring people of my race.
21. I can go home for most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
22. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on the job suspect I got the job because of race.
23. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
24. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
25. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation if it has racial overtones.
26. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin."

Other passages of this that I relate too are
"The word ’privilege’ now seems to me misleading. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth of luck. yet some of the conditions I have described here work to systematically overempower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of ones race or sex."

"My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, nomative, 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"."

I don’t always recognize it, but it is the history of discrimination in America has benefited my family. Not because my Irish ancestors weren’t discriminated against, lynched, or not allowed to vote, but because when the discrimination moved onto another group, the group that was no longer being held back by it. Not allowing Hispanics, Chinese, and people who didn’t speak English have much pie left more pie for my ancestors, and they took it. My ancestors worked hard too. They were loggers in Michigan, Farmers in Kentucky and Utah, and before that had to escape from a starvation in Denmark, Ireland, and Germany. They did earn their living in rural areas. But if Hispanics, Chinese, and Native Americans, and African Americans were given the same preference by 1800s immigration laws, and 1950s housing laws, my family history could look and be very different. I like to read through my class notes from "Race, Class, and Gender", and "Social Diversity" once in awhile to remember that I too have a history, especially when it is easy for a white female, like myself, to be invisible. It also reminds me to listen to others and respect who people are because of their unique histories.

Paul Kivel said, and I’m going to repeat it, "Thank you for being angry".
This is an excerpt from "Uprooting Racism"
"A person of color who is angry about discrimination or harassment is doing us a service. That person is pointing out something wrong, something that contraditct the ideals of equality set forth in our Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. That person is bringing our attention to a problem that needs solving, a wroing that needs righting. We could convey our appreciation by saing "thank you, your anger has helped me see what’s not right here". What keeps us from responding this way?
Anger is a scary emotion. In mainstream white culture, we are taught to be polite, never raise our voices, to be reasonable and to keep calm. People who are demonstrative of their feelings are discounted and ridiculed. We are told by parents just to obey "because I said so." We are told by bosses, religious leaders, and professional authorities not to challenge what they say, "or else" (or else you’ll be fired, go to hell, be treated as "crazy"). When we do get angry we learn to stuff it, mutter under our breath and go away. We are taught to turn our anger inward in self-destructive behaviors. If we are men, we are taught to take out our frustration on someone weaker and smaller then we are.
When we see someone expressing anger, it has oven been a person with power who was abusing us or someone else physically, verbally, or emotionally. We were hurt, scared or possibly confused. Most of us can remember a time from our youth when a [person we respected was angry and unhealthy about it.]It made us afraid of our own anger.
A similar response is triggered when a person of color gets angry about racism. We become scared, guilty, embarrassed, confused and we fear everything is falling apart and we might get hurt. if the angry person would just calm down, or go away, we could get back to the big happy family feeling.
[...]
But then a person of color gets angry. We may back off in fear that the relationship is falling apart. We may be found out to be racist. For a person of color this may be a time of hope that the relationship can become more intimate and honest. The anger may attempt to test the depths and possibilities of the friendship. They may be open about their feelings, to see how save we are, hopping that we will not desert them. Or the anger may be more assertive attempt to break through the complacently to address some core assumptions, beliefs or actions.
We could say, "thank you for pointing out the racism because I want to know whenever it is occurring." Or, "I appreciate your honesty. Let’s see what we can do about this situation." More likely we get scared and disappear, or become defensive and counterattack. In any case, we don’t focus on the root of the problem, and the racism goes unattended.
When people of color are angry about racism it is legitimate anger. it is not their oversensitivity, but our lack of sensitivity, that causes this communication gap. They are vulnerable to the abuse of racism everyday. They are experts on it. White society, and most of us individually, rarely notice racism.
[...].
Such anger and action is almost always a last resort, a desperate attempt to get attention when all else fails."