I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.As far as I can see, my African American co-workers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and line of work cannot count on most of these conditions. I have chosen those conditions which I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined.
I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks. 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. White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack © 1989 Peggy McIntosh 10-12, a publication of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Philadelphia, PA. “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” first appeared in Peace and Freedom Magazine, July/August, 1989, pp.
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