invisible knapsacks

[trochee]

I am reminded by a friend (in a locked entry) of how great is the Peggy McIntosh essay White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Read the whole essay here [or PDF]. Some of the most thought-provoking parts:

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 which will allow "them" to be more like "us".

...
The pressure to avoid [this subject] 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.

...
[Oppression takes] both active forms which we can see and embedded forms which as a member of the dominant group 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 systems won't be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitudes. 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 tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these taboo subjects. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to be now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.

Sad but true that this is just as relevant as it was in 1988. No progress yet, as far as I can see; even more headway into this particular delusion. And of course the same things can be said for being male, masculine-presenting, straight, anglophone, and born into an educated upper/middle-class family. [and right-handed too, as _dkg_ might point out.]

And it seems particularly relevant in discussions like this one or this one when we consider what it means to be car-less, power-less, and hungry and thirsty in New Orleans this week.

[Update: This Alternet article was recently posted on the same subject (found via debunkingwhite). The comments from "liberals" reading an unashamedly left website and still resisting the thought that white people have responsibility for racism make me nauseous.]

Comments

[soliss.livejournal.com]

Wow, thank you.

I keep trying to talk to my friend about this, more about sexism.

It's totally unfair that I get things through no merit of my own. I wish I didn't get them. I wish I could give that privilige away, or at least institute a sharing system.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

I wish I didn't get them. I wish I could give that privilige away, or at least institute a sharing system.

read the whole essay. She has some very interesting things to say to those of us with privilege about the different kinds of privilege: some privileges really should be sabotaged, and some should be shared with everyone, e.g. the privilege to ignore people of different race than yourself is granted to white people (and should be sabotaged) but the privilege to be considered a member of humanity by everyone around you is also granted preferentially to white people in our society, and it's one we should not sabotage but share.

[chachachana.livejournal.com]

thank you so much for posting this, j!

[cat-whisperer.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing this!

[lapartera.livejournal.com]

Great piece. Thanks for posting. My thoughts exactly about who was left in NOLA this week. Not those with SUVs.

[beckyb.livejournal.com]

Yes. Exactly. And while I'm sure the looting is a problem, in 90 degree weather and with toilets overflowing, I don't see a problem with taking beer and disposable diapers. (That is one of the strongest images for me, thanks to NPR.)

[trochee.livejournal.com]

yup. hard to see how it benefits the community for those things to be left stale on the shelf. The outrage over "looting" seems to privilege property values over human life.

well, I guess that's not surprising any more.

[soliss.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

"I have met very few men who are 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"

It's true. I am concerned, but I will admit I can see the gender-related ones a lot more easily than race or sexual orientation. How could one expect a white male to see any, in America, I guess I would be inclined to ask.

This is part of the reason I need to get out of this culture, at least for a few months or a year. Foreign exchange to the rescue.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

it's really a challenge to see that "invisible knapsack" of advantages that I've been trained my whole life to pretend isn't there.

One thing that helps me is to start trying to describe whiteness the way that white culture insists that other cultures "explain themselves."

What are useful descriptions (not definitions, but descriptions) of the white culture that has been made into the "default"? For example (to name one that LJ hits pretty hard): the valuing of the written word over the spoken.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

and yes, I imagine that these privileges are much easier to see when one doesn't have them.

One thing that really has irritated me is the rush to make excuses for racism -- like here, (thanks sillyape) and in the links I originally posted: there's always somebody jumping in to say "hey now, don't play that 'race card', that's too big". Why? I think these folks are uncomfortable because if that's racism, then it forces them to think about other situations where they've had the invisible passport for being white (or male, etcetera).

[cynaravurzyn.livejournal.com]

Of course, one of the underpinnings of the white privilege construct is that it disguises class. As long as race is taboo, and you keep class under the cover of race, class either doesn't come up or can be dismissed as outside agitation.

And, I've seen people for whom the terms 'white privilege' attatch very well, use it to rail against what, to mix pejorative language, could be termed 'uppity white-trash'. (Feel free to come deconstruct that mal mot over on my lj.)

[trochee.livejournal.com]

hi.

yes, it obscures class. And I think so does sexism, and age discrimination. I think the McIntosh essay does a nice job at addressing the need to recognize the interlocking nature of these things.

The white liberal hipster scorn of "white trash" is perhaps free from race, but not very much so -- even the expression "white trash", like "white slavery", assumes all sorts of complicated baggage about who is "ordinarily" trash or slaves. If we then tack on a taboo about discussing race, discussing class becomes quite difficult. Americans -- in my experience -- also have a taboo on discussing class, and people tend to derail discussion of one into discussion of the other, even (or perhaps especially) among left/liberal circles.

I think that's what you're saying, but I'm not sure. Am I getting it right?