Seven years ago, I read an article that completely changed the way I thought about what racism is, and the privileges I experience as an upper-middle class white person. In honor of Martin Luther King Day, I’d like to share that article here.
I didn’t know it at the time, but Peggy McIntosh’s Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack is kind of a classic of anti-racist thought. The basic idea goes something like this: Racism does not begin and end with Jim Crow and the Klan. It’s not just about obvious exclusion and oppression. Fighting racism isn’t just about overturning blatantly discriminatory laws or cracking down on hate crimes. Racism, unfortunately, can be a lot more subtle than that.
Racism is also about whole social systems that confer privileges on some people, and deny those privileges to others. What’s more, if you’re one of the privileged people, the privileges you receive—simply for looking the way you do—are often completely invisible to you. So invisible, in fact, that you don’t even think of those things as privileges, and you don’t notice how they’ve made your life easier and better. So, when people who don’t have access to those privileges don’t live as easily and well as you, it’s easy to blame that on some inherent moral or intellectual failing, rather than on the system that denied them privileges you’ve received since birth.
In the United States, there are many privileges that I get, simply for being white, that are denied to people with different skin tones. That’s racism. And this system leads otherwise kind and decent people to act and think in racist ways, without even realizing that’s what they’re doing. Acknowledging this privilege—realizing that subtle racism exists and that you benefit from it—is the first step privileged people need to take if they want to be effective allies of the un-privileged. Here’s what McIntosh says:
I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which 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. … As far as I can see, my African American co-workers, friends and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and line of work cannot count on most of these conditions:• I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
• I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
• When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
• Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of my financial reliability.
• I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
• 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.
There is more where that came from, just read the whole piece. And yes, this idea does apply to other problems besides just racism. And yes, people who are privileged in some respects can be un-privileged in others, and vice versa. But acknowledging where you are privileged is important. Whether you’re fighting racism, classicism, sexism, or any -ism.