White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

McIntosh suggests that far too often in oppressive systems, the oppressing person perceives the oppressed person to be responsible for their situation. McIntosh’s essay describes her journey from being relatively oblivious to the plight of the oppressed to her growing understanding that racial inequality in America cannot be addressed simply by disapproving of prejudice. The essay takes her from a place she understands well—the ignorance of men about their privilege in a patriarchal culture—to an understanding of her ignorance about her white privilege. Until she undertakes the experiment of unpacking the knapsack, she is only dimly aware that her race in America benefits her. Once she does the work, however, she no longer thinks of racism as simply a sad thing where Black people are victims of overt prejudice and discrimination. McIntosh is discomfited upon realizing her complicity in systems that make her life easier, and Black people’s lives harder, without racist intent.

McIntosh suggests that these systems of oppression are insidious because they are invisible to those they benefit. For example, if a hospital has an overtly racist hiring policy for doctors, white people can easily recognize it, and the political system can address it through legislation that forbids such discrimination. But what about a publishing industry that (unconsciously) produces no children’s books depicting Black doctors? The effect can be equally discriminatory, but white people are unlikely to see the problem. Furthermore, there is no obvious legal remedy. The source of racial inequality in this case is not racism but rather a combination of capitalism and obliviousness.

“White Privilege” argues that this obliviousness is not a matter of chance. A person who deliberately looks for their unearned advantages must first give up the myth of meritocracy—the belief that they earned their place in the social system. White people are unlikely to examine their white privilege less because they are racist and more because they are vain and have fragile egos. McIntosh argues that the reason racial inequality persists in the face of most people’s professed belief in equality is that white people resist admitting they have not earned their place in the social order.