Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack Analysis

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At a young age everyone is taught that everyone is free. Everyone has this perspective of the “American Dream” as a form of freedom forced into every brain. Many people migrated because of the idea of freedom. As you age and learn more about the birth of our nation, we find out how terrible and gruesome that some people were to others just because they didn’t believe in the same God as you or that you had a different skin color. Our so called American Dream is more of an American Nightmare to that one person who has one, or many, different characteristics that alienates them for being able to look for a better life.
If you think about it, we forced the people before us off of their land just to claim it as our own land. These are the same people …show more content…
In this article she listed off items in the knapsack of white privilege such as, “I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help my race will not work against me” (McIntosh). There is a list of about twenty-five different things that whites will take for granted on a daily basis. After the list of items, she feels disgusted with how she could list of many different things that all of her co-workers, including non-whites, would agree on. She would also forget, “...each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. … If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one's life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own” (McIntosh). She is upset that many people can just cruise through life without enduring hardships and struggles that many other people have had to face in this society. I do agree with her statement that because of this, America is not a free country. The color of your skin determines how far you can get in life. It upsets me, and many other Americans, that hard work, determination, and skill are not the reasons for achieving in
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