Know when you spend a good chunk of your time writing a great blog (or at least one you think is great) and when you hit the preview button your computer is not connected to the internet and you lose it all?
That really sucks.
So, to sum it up: I had an awesome time in TX at a retreat organized by Code Pink. The reason it was so good is that a space was allowed for people to speak their minds about a damn sticky subject, racism and oppression. There was a part in the movie "Winter Soldier" where a man did the same thing, his point was what allows such horrific war crimes is racism and maybe we should focus on that if we really don't like those kinds of things happening. This however was not what I took away from the retreat. It was the eye opening of how racism, sexism, homophobia, classism all play into war, our daily lives and the 'anti-war" movement. I myself am not content with ending "this" war. Nor am I content to ignore the connections of racism (and the others) to war. This one and every other one.
Damn it if i didn't have some really good points made about those connections but for tonight you will have to suffice with this article that I love. Since I love IVAW, the "anti-war" movement and so many of the people in it I am sharing this.
Then some good old fashion listening to people and hearing what they have to say will take you farther than one of them new fancy hybrid 45 mpg doodad cars.
I've got more where that came from but for today,
goodnight.
Peace,
Jen
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White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
Peggy McIntosh
"I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of
meanness, not in invisible systems conferring
dominance on my group"
Peggy McIntosh
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
overprivileged, even though they may grant that women
are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to
women's statues, in the society, the university, or
the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the
idea of lessening men's. Denials that amount to taboos
surround the subject of advantages that men gain from
women's disadvantages. These denials protect male
privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened, or
ended.
Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a
phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our
society are interlocking, there are most likely a
phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our
society are interlocking, there was most likely a
phenomenon of while privilege that was similarly
denied and protected. 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.
I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize
white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize
male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to
ask what it is like to have white privilege. 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. White privilege is like an invisible
weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps,
passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and
blank checks.
Describing white privilege makes one newly
accountable. 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 having white privilege
must ask, "having described it, what will I do to
lessen or end it?"
After I realized the extent to which men work from a
base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that
much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I
remembered the frequent charges from women of color
that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I
began to understand why we are just seen as
oppressive, even when we don't see ourselves that way.
I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned
skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion
about its existence.
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. I was taught to
see myself as an individual whose moral state depended
on her individual moral will. My schooling followed
the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed
out: whites are taught to think of their lives as
morally neutral, normative, and average, and also
ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is
seen as work that will allow "them" to be more like
"us."
Daily effects of white privilege
I decided to try to work on myself at least by
identifying some of the daily effects of white
privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions
that 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. As
far as I can tell, my African American coworkers,
friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily
or frequent contact in this particular time, place and
time of work cannot count on most of these conditions.
1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of
people of my race most of the time.
2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was
trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust
my kind or me.
3. 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.
4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a
location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty
well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
6. I can turn on the television or open to the front
page of the paper and see people of my race widely
represented.
7. When I am told about our national heritage or about
"civilization," I am shown that people of my color
made it what it is.
8. I can be sure that my children will be given
curricular materials that testify to the existence of
their race.
9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a
publisher for this piece on white privilege.
10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a
group in which I am the only member of my race.
11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to
another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the
only member of his/her race.
12. 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.
13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can
count on my skin color not to work against the
appearance of financial reliability.
14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the
time from people who might not like them.
15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware
of systemic racism for their own daily physical
protection.
16. I can be pretty sure that my children's teachers
and employers will tolerate them if they fit school
and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do
not concern others' attitudes toward their race.
17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people
put this down to my color.
18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or
not answer letters, without having people attribute
these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the
illiteracy of my race.
19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group
without putting my race on trial.
20. I can do well in a challenging situation without
being called a credit to my race.
21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my
racial group.
22. 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.
23. I can criticize our government and talk about how
much I fear its policies and behavior without being
seen as a cultural outsider.
24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the
"person in charge", I will be facing a person of my
race.
25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS
audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been
singled out because of my race.
26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture
books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children's
magazines featuring people of my race.
27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations
I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than
isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at
a distance or feared.
28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a
colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize
her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize
mine.
29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the
promotion of a person of another race, or a program
centering on race, this is not likely to cost me
heavily within my present setting, even if my
colleagues disagree with me.
30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or
there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend
me more credibility for either position than a person
of color will have.
31. 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.
32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the
perspectives and powers of people of other races.
33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing
or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.
34. I can worry about racism without being seen as
self-interested or self-seeking.
35. I can take a job with an affirmative action
employer without having my co-workers on the job
suspect that I got it because of my race.
36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not
ask of each negative episode or situation whether it
had racial overtones.
37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would
be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next
steps, professionally.
38. I can think over many options, social, political,
imaginative or professional, without asking whether a
person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do
what I want to do.
39. I can be late to a meeting without having the
lateness reflect on my race.
40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing
that people of my race cannot get in or will be
mistreated in the places I have chosen.
41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical
help, my race will not work against me.
42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never
have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my
race.
43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be
sure that my race is not the problem.
44. I can easily find academic courses and
institutions which give attention only to people of my
race.
45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in
all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race.
46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh"
color and have them more or less match my skin.
47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without
expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal
with us.
48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where
people approve of our household.
49. My children are given texts and classes which
implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not
turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.
50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual
walks of public life, institutional and social.
Elusive and fugitive
I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this
list until I wrote it down. For me white privilege has
turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The
pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must
give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are
true, this is not such a free country; one's life is
not what one makes it; many doors open for certain
people through no virtues of their own.
In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white
privilege, I have listed conditions of daily
experience that I once took for granted. Nor did I
think of any of these perquisites as bad for the
holder. I now think that we need a more finely
differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of
these varieties are only what one would want for
everyone in a just society, and others give license to
be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and destructive.
I see a pattern running through the matrix of white
privilege, a patter of assumptions that were passed on
to me as a white person. There was one main piece of
cultural turf; it was my own turn, and I was among
those who could control the turf. My skin color was an
asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I
could think of myself as belonging in major ways and
of making social systems work for me. I could freely
disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything
outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the
main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.
In proportion as my racial group was being made
confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups
were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and
alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of
hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being
subtly trained to visit, in turn, upon people of
color.
For this reason, the word "privilege" now seems to me
misleading. We usually think of privilege as being a
favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or
luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here
work systematically to over empower certain groups.
Such privilege simply confers dominance because of
one's race or sex.
Earned strength, unearned power
I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength
and unearned power conferred privilege can look like
strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to
dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are
inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that
neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race
will not count against you in court, should be the
norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to
ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of
the holders as well as the ignored groups.
We might at least start by distinguishing between
positive advantages, which we can work to spread, and
negative types of advantage, which unless rejected
will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For
example, the feeling that one belongs within the human
circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen as
privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned
entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it
is an unearned advantage for them. This paper results
from a process of coming to see that some of the power
that I originally say as attendant on being a human
being in the United States consisted in unearned
advantage and conferred dominance.
I have met very few men who truly distressed about
systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred
dominance. And so one question for me and others like
me is whether we will be like them, or whether we will
get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned
race advantage and conferred dominance, and, if so,
what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need
to do more work in identifying how they actually
affect our daily lives. 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. In addition, since race and sex are not the
only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to
examine the daily experience of having age advantage,
or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage
related to nationality, religion, or sexual
orientation.
Difficulties and angers surrounding the task of
finding parallels are many. Since racism, sexism, and
heterosexism are not the same, the advantages
associated with them should not be seen as the same.
In addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of
unearned advantage that rest more on social class,
economic class, race, religion, sex, and ethnic
identity that on other factors. Still, all of the
oppressions are interlocking, as the members of the
Combahee River Collective pointed out in their "Black
Feminist Statement" of 1977.
One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking
oppressions. They take both active forms, which we can
see, and embedded forms, which as a member of the
dominant groups one is taught not to see. In my class
and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I
was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts
of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible
systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my
group from birth.
Disapproving of the system won't be enough to change
them. I was taught to think that racism could end if
white individuals changed their attitude. But a
"white" skin in the United States opens many doors for
whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance
has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate
but cannot end, these problems.
To redesign social systems we need first to
acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The
silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key
political surrounding privilege are the key political
tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or
equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and
conferred dominance by making these subject taboo.
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.
It seems to me that obliviousness about white
advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is
kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as
to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that
democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping
most people unaware that freedom of confident action
is there for just a small number of people props up
those in power and serves to keep power in the hands
of the same groups that have most of it already.
Although systemic change takes many decades, there are
pressing questions for me and, I imagine, for some
others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on
the perquisites of being light-skinned. What will we
do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men,
it is an open question whether we will choose to use
unearned advantage, and whether we will use any of our
arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power
systems on a broader base.
----------------------
Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley
Collage Center for Research on Women. This essay is
excerpted from Working Paper 189. "White Privilege and
Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See
Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies"
(1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $4.00 from
the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women,
Wellesley MA 02181 The working paper contains a longer
list of privileges.
This excerpted essay is reprinted from the Winter 1990
issue of Independent School.
