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White Privilege Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack Summary

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The primary source being analyzed in this article is an article/excerpt posted in a 1988 book. It is called "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack". It was written by Peggy McIntosh. The author is a white female who has lived a fairly gifted and accomplished life. She wrote this article because of her realization that her skin color and gender have both played major roles in the way she's been brought up and treated by others. The purpose is to truly explore and reveal how much things like race, skin color, gender have an impact on a person's life from the day they're born. The article is meant for every human being out there regardless of where they come from, who they are and what they recognize themselves as or what society …show more content…

Ms. McIntosh states that certain assumptions equality and fairness should be common norms in society. These types of privileges are not "inevitably damaging"(McIntosh, 1988). A person that feels like they belong within a certain group is doing nothing wrong. This is a privilege that absolutely not be limited to just a few people. It should be an "unearned entitlement". But for the author, because we live in a society where white privilege and male privilege are embedded, it is an "unearned advantage"(McIntosh, 1988). White people tend to think they aren't affected by racism because they aren't colored. They don't see being white as a race. They haven't gone through the things colored people have gone through. This is where the author believes race and gender aren't the only systems that provide an advantage. Ethnicity, age, physical ability, religion, political ideology, sexual identity are all factors that influence privilege. We also can't forget however, that all these conditions are different from each other. The advantages associated with them should not be expected to be the same. Males have different advantages than females. Young people have different advantages than rich people. These groups have only one thing in common. They aren't taught to recognize what they are in society which is a dominant group. The author realizes that she didn't see herself as a racist because she had been taught that individual acts towards other races were racist. She was never taught the systematically racism "invisible systems that confer racial/gender dominance from birth"(McIntosh,

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White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack While reading this piece by Peggy McIntosh, I found myself as a white woman thinking, 'yes I can do these things,' and realized right there what white privilege looks like. Looking at the fifty points McIntosh discusses, it is clear that the predominance of white privilege affects her daily life. These daily effects McIntosh discusses range from who she wants to surround herself with, knowing and feeling financially secure and feeling welcomed in public life. While only choosing fifty instances where McIntosh feels her white privilege comes into contact, it is apparent that the instances are common when discussing primarily skin color compared to race, class, and religion. Without argument,

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McIntosh gives a complete list of activities she can do and enjoy on a daily basis as a white woman that for others are a constant reminder of the unspoken white privilege that surrounds them and few refuse to acknowledge. Paula Rothenburg is a professor at William Patterson University and is the author of White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism. Rothenburg considers white privilege to be the other side of racism, meaning that having certain advantages and not wanting to accept them, while still profiting from them is indirectly using racism for one's own benefit. It is important to understand that white privilege does not exclusively exist in the Caucasian race, but in every race. Being a “light skinned” Mexican woman, not only

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This week we were assigned to read to different articles. The first article was written by Peggy McIntosh titled, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”. Throughout the article, Peggy showed the readers what it means to have white privilege. She showed the readers 50 different types of “advantages” that whites get over other races, such as African Americans. This is the biggest theme throughout her entire piece.

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The severity of racial profiling is very concerning. As proven by numerous texts studied for this Expository Writing class, it is evident that the Black respondents of Otis Johnson’s poll, analyzing citizens’ relationships with the police, are not the only Black people that: “expressed far less confidence than whites in local police to treat both races equally” (Johnson). In White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, Peggy McIntosh describes various privileges which sound ordinary, though surprisingly only White people have. Among them, is one that affects all people on a daily basis: “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” (McIntosh). Governmental

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From the readings and the NPR podcast it gave me a lot to think about how I view race and specifically white privilege and how it affects the social constructs of our society. I believe that in order to understand white privilege you must know the role that race plays. Race is a social construct that was developed by people in order to distinguish between different groups based on physical characteristics but, also to maintain exclusiveness and social superiority (Conley, 2015, p. 344). In the second reading “Defining Racism” it acknowledges that even if someone is aware of their white privilege why would they want it give up because it plays in their favor. In Peggy McIntosh’s “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” she argues that white people

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The “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” McIntosh begins her essay portraying the unwillingness of men to admit that they are over privileged. Even those who are willing to admit that women are at a disadvantage have a problem admitting their privilege. McIntosh realizes that this denial of privilege does not only apply to gender but to race as well. She realizes that white people including herself are thought to view racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage but have never had to considered an aspect of racism that befits them; white privilege. Although being a woman puts McIntosh at a disadvantage she realizes that by not acknowledging her privilege she is unintentionally oppressing others as well.

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My initial thought about privilege when I read the paper written by Peggy McIntosh was to instantaneously think about entitlement and the minimization of a cultural and a class of people. It’s not that whites are exclusive in the usage of systematic racial intolerance, it’s that they appear to be oblivious to the benefits of this entitlement. The author attempts to debase and use some forms of lightheartedness to point out the luxury she possessed as a result of simply being white but it’s much more than simply being white.

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