Dr. Peggy McIntosh, associate director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, was to deliver the keynote address for Seattle Human Rights Day celebration in December at the Arctic Building in downtown. However, laryngitis silenced the famous author of the seminal essay "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." The audience heard the speech of McIntosh, who is white, delivered by policy analyst Darlene Flynn who is black. Ordinarily, this change may not have been worth noting, but the subject matter evoked different responses with Flynn speaking for McIntosh.
Blacks, and doubtlessly some whites, have known and spoken of privilege discrepancies since the beginning of slavery. Through Reconstruction, segregation, and discrimination, privilege differences have been apparent and acknowledged always by blacks and on occasion, by some whites. But McIntosh's realization, and its articulation, of this made many whites take notice in a manner which they could not, and would not, have viewed the same had the words come from a black person.
The head of the Gender, Race, and Inclusive Education Project, McIntosh got the attention of many with her description of white privilege as "an invisible package of unearned assets which whites can count on cashing in each day: an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks." Minus the figurative language, she says white privilege is a set of advantages whites have because they are white, advantages which allow them to live their lives very differently from people who are not white.
Anyone who had read McIntosh and came to hear her speak could probably guess what she had to say. She usually says the same thing. This is curious: people who know McIntosh's work and want her to say the same thing, say it repeatedly, say it daily and nightly.
It seems when whites in this group listen again they want others to hear, for hearing McIntosh's message is a revelation, an epiphany which they will not forget. It appears blacks want to hear her message again because, possibly for the first time, they listen to a white person say what they themselves have known, thought, and sometimes said for a long time.
The "White Privilege" article appeared in 1988 as a working paper that listed 46 ways in which her own "unearned over-advantage" differed from that of her African-American female colleagues. McIntosh realized she "did not ask for the unearned advantages." Equally startling, she admitted her "placement within systems of privilege and disadvantage do not have to do with merit."
Maintaining her study is autobiographical, McIntosh has never said her findings are true of all whites, or that whites should feel guilty.
"Caucasian people did not invent the concept and were actually taught not to see white privilege," said McIntosh.
Her stated goal is to help those with the most power to recognize that privileging systems exist and that the existence of unearned disadvantage usually involves a corresponding existence of over-advantage. Without this understanding, McIntosh states it is impossible "to either make sense of or to do effective work to improve race relations and most other power relations that exist in U. S. society."
At the December lecture, reprints of the article were available, and the original 46 instances of white privilege were expanded to 62, first done in the 1998 book "Images of Color, Images of Crime." With Flynn speaking for her, McIntosh was careful to remind the audience that her list is based on her personal experiences, but she asserted anyone can make such a list.
Below are a few of her examples and statements that are true for most white Americans. They are statements most African-Americans cannot make:
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 be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.
I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.
My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.
The whole list may be found at www.mcdbowen.org/p2/rm/mcintosh.
Of course, individuals will experience a variety of responses to the above statements, and the degrees to which the responses vary are great topics of discussion. But generally, I have found blacks and whites do not have the same responses.
Fortunately, MacIntosh didn't stop with her list of white privileges. She ended her talk by citing ways in which to "use power to share power and use unearned privilege." Tapping into her experience once again, she noted several ways to do positive work with unearned privilege, imparting a feeling of hope and change on the audience:
Chooses to work with women and men of color.
Tries to diversify all-white groups if she works with them.
Organizes for integration of her neighborhood challenges and changes curricula, scholarship, and teaching methods.
Co-presents on white-skin privilege with persons of color to share podium time and honoraria.
Asks the local supermarket buyers why they will stock specialty Chinese but not African-American foods.
Writes to Hallmark and Crayola executives about racism and sexism in their product lines.
Tries to listen and then respond to as an ally to participants of color in mostly white organizations.
Gets and uses money to spread understanding of privilege systems (and denial of them) through school-based faculty. development seminars, consultancies, talks, articles, letters, and conversation.
Understands how much she has to learn from people she was taught to overlook, fear, or avoid.
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