Argument paper.

           Some social scientists have argued that the more accurate perceptions of power within any given society are those of the marginalized (for instance, the poor, stigmatized ethnic minorities, women). I do agree with this line of reasoning, and the explanation for this agreement is provided below.

Accurate perceptions of power within any given society are those of the marginalized because they can identify the privileges provided to the favored communities, and also assess the extent of the unjust treatment they receive from the power structure. Members of the favored group are likely to be desensitized to the injustices of the government since they have taken their privileges for granted; and as such accurate perceptions of power can be done only if the perceiver places himself or herself in the shoes of the marginalized people, just as Peggy McIntosh did in her assessment of white privilege in the society.

In 1989, Peggy McIntosh published an article entitled White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsackin which she argued that privileges were unequally distributed in the US society. This article is an excellent polemic against government sanctioned discrimination against people of color.In the article, she places herself in the position of a marginalized person who is critiquing the society and its leaders. She was thus able to perceive and identify that both race and gender were factored in the distribution of resources by the government and other elements in power. In her article, she showed that white people cannot accurately and objectively perceive the power structure in place in the nation because they were beneficiaries of its policies; and as such only the marginalized can understand and objectively perceive the shortcomings of the government and society in general. She states that white people cannot empathize with the culture of other people nor understand their grievances because the nation’s power structure has imbued them with the idea that their culture is superior to everyone else, and as such they should judge the culture of other people based on their superior culture. Therefore, minorities and their cultures were stigmatized as barbarians and undesirable because of their adherence to their unique cultures. She also shows the hypocrisy that white people exercise in society when she states that a white person can wear second hand clothes and refuse to answer letters, and still expect exceptional service delivery. However, if a person of color did the same thing; his and her actions will be met with repulsive societal disapproval; and the power structure would attribute these actions to his or her inferior culture and as such defend their positions of underserving such people by stating that they are outsiders who do not deserve to be treated the same as the overall population (McIntosh 1989).This article shows that marginalized people are able to accurately perceive the shortcomings of the power structure in the country, while the privileged groups are more likely to sympathize with the power structure.

Moreover, empathy with the marginalized groups would enable a person to identify and comprehend the disparity in government service delivery. This would enable that person to accurately assess the extent of disparity and also make culturally-sensitive recommendations just as Clarence C. Gravlee did in his assessment of disparity in health care provision in the US.

In 2009, Clarence C. Gravlee published an article entitled How Race Becomes Biology: Embodiment ofSocial Inequalityin which he argues that scientific racism had resulted in disparity in the provision of health resources within the society.He states that the public understanding of human biological variation and race was shaped by the culturally-biased scientific works of government-sanctioned scientists who shared the same ideals as the people in power. He argues that such disparities have to some extent been resolved because ofhuman variation studies done by individuals from marginalized communities who were more likely than their white counterparts to identify cultural bias of earlier studies and also address the shortcomings of the government in terms of health provision (Gravlee, 2009). This shows that marginalized individuals have a better perception of power than individuals from the favored group.

Kim Berry has shown that women do perceive the inadequacies of the government much better than their male counterparts (Berry, 2003). This can be attributed to the fact that women in male-dominated societies are more acutely affected by government injustices than their male counterparts. This shows that the perceptions of power of the underserved populations are more accurate than the perceptions of other groups since they(underserved populations) are more exposed to the inefficiencies of the government.

References.

Berry, K. (2003). Developing women: The traffic in ideas about women and their needs in Kangra, India.Regional modernities: The cultural politics of development in India, 75-98.

Gravlee, C. C. (2009). How race becomes biology: embodiment of social inequality. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 139(1), 47-57.

McIntosh, P. (1988). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Race, class, and gender in the United States: An integrated study, 4, 165-169.