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.
#WHERE DOES THE PICTURE GO IN UNPACKING SKIN#
I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence. I began to understand why we are justly seen as oppressive, even when we don’t see ourselves that way. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. As we in Women’s Studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who writes about white privilege must ask, “Having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?”Īfter I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.ĭescribing white privilege makes one newly accountable.
I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage. Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of white privilege that was similarly denied and protected. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened or ended. Denials which amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages which men gain from women’s disadvantages. They may say they will work to improve women’s status, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can’t or won’t support the idea of lessening men’s. Through work to bring materials from Women’s Studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are over-privileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged.
I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group. These articles may not be electronically posted except by the National SEED Project.
McIntosh's lists must not be taken out of their autobiographical contexts. 10-12, a publication of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Philadelphia, PA.įor use in a bound volume there will be a copyright fee. "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" first appeared in Peace and Freedom Magazine, July/August, 1989, pp. All rights reserved.White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack Humble Bundle, the Humble Bundle logo, and the Humble Games logo are among the trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Humble Bundle, Inc.
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