Hello everyone, hope you all enjoyed your weekend.

This past week, we started off with Peggy MacIntosh introducing us to white privilege. When we think of a privilege, it is something that is unearned and is an advantage given by birth or being apart of a specific group. In her article, she gives us many daily examples of how her whiteness gives her an advantage in life. Other than giving the many examples, the most important statement she made to credit to white privilege is that she "was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on [her] group." This statement is why white privilege still exist today. White people do not believe they are apart of the racist problem because they do not act out extreme racist behavior. Although acting racist adds to racism, white privilege and the nonrecognition of its existence adds to it to. Because whites do not know they are actively participating in the dominance of whiteness, by microaggressive behavior, racism on the non-systematic level continues to flourish.

Microaggressions are brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color. These acts occur on a daily basis because whites do not identify these acts as being racist because white americans think of themselves as good, moral human beings that believe in equality. Thus, it's hard for them to believe they have biased racial attitudes and may participate in discriminatory behaviors ("Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life"). These aggressions contribute to the white dominance because these insults make minorities feel less than and it separates whites from the other races.

Although this university is making many strides to better diversity and to accept their past and role in race relations, I have been a victim to many microaggressions done by people here. For example, I work for Crimson Tide Productions, which is in the football stadium. One day I was walking to work and a white male came up to me and asked if I was a kitchen worker and could he have access into the kitchen. I felt very disrespected, but I nicely replied to him," I work in the media center, not in the kitchen." Even though I work hard and attend this university, I am still assumed to need money and work in the kitchen. His act of microaggression put me at an inferior status as a worker to his superior white status as a food sales rep.

Now that we know that white privilege and microaggressions exist, how can we change that and make people aware of what they are doing. Although it is very hard to change something that is "invisible," the first step is to make whiteness and white privilege visible. One person who works to help whites understand racism, how they contribute to racism individually, and help whites understand what minorities feel like is Jane Elliott. Elliott is known for doing her brown eyes vs. blue eyes experiment to give people the opportunity to find out how it feels to be something other than white in this society. In the attached video is one of her many experiments. I want to know what you feel about the experiment and do you think it is effective? Can you spot out how privilege may hinder the blue eyed people from understanding what Elliott is trying to prove?