What is White Privilege?

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Quotes from Peggy McIntosh (Quote Post)

Reading Peggy McIntosh’s article, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack truly opened my eyes to the undeserved privilege that white Americans are treated with on a daily basis. Being white myself, I had never thought about what it meant to be “privileged” because of the color of my complexion, and have taken this freedom for granted in my own life, not realizing the extent of my own unearned privileges. While reading, I came across a few passages in particular that struck me as important because even though they are simple and present in our everyday lives, they carry so much importance in the issue of racism in our society.

“Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that racism doesn’t affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see “whiteness” as a racial identity.”(5)

Growing up in a mostly white community, I grew up with the perspective that being white was considered “normal,” and any other color of skin immediately stood out as different.  When we talked about race in school, we only learned the terms “Black,” or “African American”; “Indian” or “Native American”; “Asian,” etc…But  never “white.” To us students, we didn’t identify as really having a race. As McIntosh explains, this becomes problematic because white people begin to set themselves higher up on the social ladder, causing whites people in America to think that the term “racism” cannot apply to them because they do not identify as having a race. This false sense of invincibility leads to white dominance.

“When I am told about how our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it was it is.” (2)

McIntosh includes this statement in a list of unearned advantages given to the white American population.  One of the reasons that whiteness is valued in our dominant ideology is because the founding fathers of our nation were all white. While all Americans can recognize this, what we fail to realize is the lack of representation of successes of other races leads to the assumption that whites are the most powerful and most capable of leading, and therefore, “better.” We actually learn that whites are more important in schools.

I found an interesting article about teaching racism indirectly here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicholas-ferroni/teaching-education-discrimination_b_1826113.html

“Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.” (6)

I had to reread this statement a few times before I understood what McIntosh meant by this.  How I interpreted her view her here is that while white people are attempting to recognize the problems with racial inequality, they try to get rid of the problem using logic that is actually a hypocritical paradox – they talk about “equal opportunity” for people of all colors, trying to reject or play down the power of white privilege by elevating the status of all other races. But, they use this strategy to protect their privileges while making them seem like less of an oppressor to society. If this is the case, it’s not actually getting rid of the problem, is it?

I hope we can discuss this last quote in class in more detail – I’m interested in learning what you think about it. How white people can handle their privileges in a democratic way and strive towards finding equality between races?