I found the article by Peggy McIntosh, White Privilege: Upacking the Invisible Knapsack, to be eye opening. She discusses that fact that the disadvantage of racism puts others at an advantage. To support this, she records 26 daily effects of privileges of a "white" life. Many of them were instances that I have considered before. However, the last one, "I can choose blemish cover or bandages in 'flesh' color and have them more or less match my skin." I feel like it would be so simple to make bandaids in a variety of skin colors, but they just are not made. Why not??? White people can wear less obvious bandaids, but what about people with darker skin? The bandaids will stand out to an extreme.

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Audrey Fowler

I had read this article before and when I realized it, after the first few lines, the first thing I remembered was the last point in the list made about being able to find bandaids that would match skin color as a type of disadvantage. It was something that I had never thought about and it really made me realize how little we actually notice the many disadvantages that people of different races experience in our society. The other point that stood out to me was #20 "I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children's magazines featuring people of my race." I could not imagine being a parent of a different race and trying to explain to my young child why they can never find a doll or a toy that looks like them. It is unfair for the parent to have to be faced with such a task and unfair that the child has to experience "white privilege" at such a young age.

I know that this is not the point of the post but I have seen bandages that are made to match a variety of skin colors. There almost translucent so that you can see the skin through them. I believe they sell them everywhere. Im do not have skin of another color so I dont know how well they actually work though.

I have to agree with Nikki, I know it isn't the point of the post but whoever makes band-aids must have read this article. I work at a child care center and we actually have band-aids for light, medium, and dark skin colors. I think America is trying to make step towards eliminating or at least "covering up" these boundaries, small steps but at least they are steps. Also I know that it is becoming more popular for different races to be represented in child toys. Sadly most Hispanic babies you find are "Dora" and "Diego" (same as books) but you can find them. Also I know that bigger stores such as Toys-R-Us sell non-character babies of all races in their stores, as does Kaplan (a toy company for Child Care Centers). Although toys are not found everywhere yet we are making an effort....50 yrs ago you would have seen a Hispanic cartoon on TV at all.

Also my friend who is a health ed major is doing her student teaching at Watauga HS. They took home those computerized babies a couple weeks ago and she was telling me that they have the babies in all races. The babies are randomly assigned to the students too so that one race does not necessarly end up with a baby of their same race.
I know that as white American's we have many privlages that other races do not but at least the society as a whole is working to change it.

I agree with Candace. As a white person, I look over every advantage that we have, that this article pointed out, as a normal everyday occurrence. Sometimes, we even think that we have earned these advantages or rights. When in fact, they are at the expense of someone else, or at least, we enjoy them while others don’t have the same privilege.
I also agree with Nikki, I think there is still a long way to go for other ethnicities to be equally represented in all aspects that we enjoy, but I am glad to see some progress.

I just wanted to thank both Nikkis for letting me know there is more hope out there than I thought. I will try to do an informal survey by checking the band-aid aisles and the toy aisles of the stores in which I shop. The stores that offer more diversity may be the ones in which more groups shop.

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Audrey Fowler