White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack I was taught to see By Peggy McIntosh to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see racism only in Through work to bring materials white privilege as an invisible individual acts of from Women’s Studies into the rest package of unearned assets that I meanness, not in of the curriculum, I have often can count on cashing in each day, noticed men’s unwillingness to but about which I was “meant” to invisible systems grant that they are over-privileged, remain oblivious. White privilege conferring dominance even though they may grant that is like an invisible weightless on my group. women are disadvantaged. They knapsack of special provisions, may say they will work to improve maps, passports, codebooks, My schooling gave me no training women’s status, in the society, the visas, clothes, tools and blank in seeing myself as an oppressor, university, or the curriculum, but checks. as an unfairly advantaged person, they can’t or won’t support the idea or as a participant in a damaged of lessening men’s. Denials which Describing white privilege makes culture. I was taught to see myself amount to taboos surround the one newly accountable. As we in as an individual whose moral state subject of advantages which men Women’s Studies work to reveal depended on her individual moral gain from women’s disadvantages. male privilege and ask men to give will. My schooling followed the These denials protect male up some of their power, so one who pattern my colleague Elizabeth privilege from being fully writes about white privilege must Minnich has pointed out: whites acknowledged, lessened or ended. ask, “Having described it, what will are taught to think of their lives as I do to lessen or end it?” morally neutral, normative, and Thinking through unacknowledged average, and also ideal, so that male privilege as a phenomenon, I After I realized the extent to which when we work to benefit others, realized that, since hierarchies in men work from a base of this is seen as work which will our society are interlocking, there unacknowledged privilege, I allow “them” to be more like “us.” was most likely a phenomenon of understood that much of their white privilege that was similarly oppressiveness was unconscious. I decided to try to work on myself denied and protected. As a white Then I remembered the frequent at least by identifying some of the person, I realized I had been taught charges from women of color that daily effects of white privilege in about racism as something that puts white women whom they my life. I have chosen those others at a disadvantage, but had encounter are oppressive. conditions which I think in my been taught not to see one of its case attach somewhat more to corollary aspects, white privilege, I began to understand why we are skin-color privilege than to class, which puts me at an advantage. justly seen as oppressive, even religion, ethnic status, or when we don’t see ourselves that geographic location, though of I think whites are carefully taught way. I began to count the ways in course all these other factors are not to recognize white privilege, which I enjoy unearned skin intricately intertwined. As far as I as males are taught not to privilege and have been can see, my African American co- recognize male privilege. So I conditioned into oblivion about its workers, friends, and have begun in an untutored way existence. acquaintances with whom I come “Some Notes for Facilitators” © 2010 Peggy McIntosh p. 2 “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” © 1989 Peggy McIntosh into daily or frequent contact in can cut my hair. singled out because of my race. this particular time, place and line 10. Whether I use checks, credit 20. I can easily buy posters, of work cannot count on most of cards or cash, I can count on postcards, picture books, these conditions. my skin color not to work greeting cards, dolls, toys, and against the appearance of children’s magazines featuring 1. I can if I wish arrange to be in financial reliability. people of my race. the company of people of my race most of the time. 11. I can arrange to protect my 21. I can go home from most children most of the time from meetings of organizations I 2. If I should need to move, I can people who might not like belong to feeling somewhat be pretty sure of renting or them. tied in, rather than isolated, purchasing housing in an area out-of-place, outnumbered, which I can afford and in 12. I can swear, or dress in second- unheard, held at a distance, or which I would want to live. hand clothes, or not answer feared. letters, without having people 3. I can be pretty sure that my attribute these choices to the 22. I can take a job with an neighbors in such a location bad morals, the poverty, or the affirmative action employer will be neutral or pleasant to illiteracy of my race. without having co-workers on me. the job suspect that I got it 13. I can speak in public to a 4. I can go shopping alone most because of race. of the time, pretty well assured powerful male group without 23. I can choose public that I will not be followed or putting my race on trial. accommodations without harassed. 14. I can do well in a challenging fearing that people of my race situation without being called a 5. I can turn on the television or cannot get in or will be credit to my race. open to the front page of the mistreated in the places I have paper and see people of my 15. I am never asked to speak for chosen. race widely represented. all the people of my racial 24. I can be sure that if I need legal group. 6. When I am told about our or medical help, my race will national heritage or about 16. I can remain oblivious of the not work against me. “civilization,” I am shown that language and customs of 25. If my day, week, or year is people of my color made it persons of color who constitute going badly, I need not ask of what it is. the world’s majority without each negative episode or feeling in my culture any 7. I can be sure that my children situation whether it has racial penalty for such oblivion. will be given curricular overtones. materials that testify to the 17. I can criticize our government 26. I can choose blemish cover or existence of their race. and talk about how much I fear bandages in “flesh” color and its policies and behavior 8. If I want to, I can be pretty have them more less match my without being seen as a cultural sure of finding a publisher for skin. outsider. this piece on white privilege. I repeatedly forgot each of the 18. I can be pretty sure that if I ask 9. I can go into a music shop and realizations on this list until I wrote to talk to “the person in count on finding the music of it down. For me, white privilege charge,” I will be facing a my race represented, into a has turned out to be an elusive and person of my race. supermarket and find the staple fugitive subject. The pressure to foods that fit with my cultural 19. If a traffic cop pulls me over or avoid it is great, for in facing it I traditions, into a hairdresser’s if the IRS audits my tax return, must give up the myth of shop and find someone who I can be sure I haven’t been meritocracy. If these things are “Some Notes for Facilitators” © 2010 Peggy McIntosh p. 3 “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” © 1989 Peggy McIntosh true, this is not such a free country; upon people of color. see that some of the power that I one’s life is not what one makes it; originally saw as attendant on many doors open for certain people For this reason, the word being a human being in the United through no virtues of their own. “privilege” now seems to me States consisted in unearned misleading. We usually think of advantage and conferred In unpacking this invisible privilege as being a favored dominance. knapsack of white privilege, I have state, whether earned or listed conditions of daily conferred by birth or luck. Yet experience that I once took for some of the conditions I have The question is: granted. Nor did I think of any of described here work “Having described these perquisites as bad for the systematically to overempower white privilege, what holder. I now think that we need a certain groups. Such privilege will I do to end it? more finely differentiated simply confers dominance taxonomy of privilege, for some of because of one’s race or sex. I have met very few men who are these varieties are only what one truly distressed about systemic, would want for everyone in a just I want, then, to distinguish between unearned male advantage and society, and others give license to earned strength and unearned conferred dominance. And so one be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant and power conferred systemically. question for me and others like me destructive. Power from unearned privilege can is whether we will be like them, or look like strength when it is in fact whether we will get truly I see a pattern running through the permission to escape or to distressed, even outraged, about matrix of white privilege, a pattern dominate.