49 pages • 1 hour read
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
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Index of Terms
Combahee River Collective Statement of 1977
The Combahee River Collective was a politically active group of Black lesbians who believed that a carefully considered Black lesbian-informed feminism was the best tool for helping all people of color. Dissatisfied with the patriarchy they perceived in the civil rights movement and the dismissal of race issues by much of white feminism, the Combahee River Collective emphasized true egalitarianism, placing no one person, experience, or response to oppression on a pedestal, and calling for constant self-reflection and evaluation.
Intersectionality
Intersectionality is idea that marginalized groups often share members: that is, one person can belong to many groups experiencing oppression. Furthermore, systems that disadvantage one group (for example, Black people) may also disadvantage others (for example, same-sex couples). In the social sciences, intersectionality is the method of looking at one form of oppression in the light of others—for example, studying how an institution or policy may discriminate against both women and poor people, and doubly against poor women.
Meritocracy
Meritocracy means “rule by the meritorious.” In the context of McIntosh’s essay, it refers to the idea commonly held by white Americans that outcomes are earned and are therefore just. McIntosh argues that meritocracy is a delusion in that no contest exists in a vacuum. For example, a prestigious school may be open to everyone with certain qualifications, so admission to the school may seem meritocratic. But who has the resources to meet those qualifications? Admission is the last step in a long process whose stages were not earned by the participants. McIntosh laments her previous ignorance before she examined her invisible knapsack of advantages and the systemic racism that it implies. Accepting the reality of white privilege involves rejecting the belief that American society is meritocratic. Many successful people are unwilling to give up this illusion even if they profess to support racial equality.
Privilege
Privilege is the condition of being in a position of advantage. As McIntosh uses the term, it also implies remaining unaware of that advantage. Part of McIntosh’s analysis focuses on how these privileges remain invisible. After all, when people win the lottery, they know it. Why do people who win the racial lottery remain oblivious? McIntosh’s examples of white privilege are mostly examples of things that don’t happen: White people are not followed while shopping, or harassed by the police, or unable to find children’s books about white people, or asked to speak for their racial group. Because, in this analysis, white privilege comprises things that don’t happen to white people but do happen to people of color, white privilege remains invisible to white people while being the most common reality of their nonwhite neighbors.
Systemic Racism
Systemic racism to discriminatory institutions and policies that do not necessarily have racist intentions yet still produce a racially biased result. Systemic racism exists outside of individual choices and is embedded in structures over which no one person has control. McIntosh does not use the phrase “systemic racism,” but her essay was a pioneering work in this field of research. In the US, overt systemic racism was codified during enslavement, Reconstruction, and the Jim Crow era. It required large-scale social disruption and legislative action to change the law. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most sweeping and wide-reaching law written with the intent to eliminate overt systemic racism. Covert systemic racism, by contrast, is more difficult to pinpoint and address. If, for example, healthcare companies do not make a profit from producing bandages in a variety of skin tones, people with common skin tones will have a privilege that others will not. Managers at the company may have no racist intent or even awareness that they are conferring privilege to one racial group. Furthermore, the problem does not have a clear legal remedy. McIntosh suggests that the key step in addressing covert systemic racism is for white people to recognize that it exists.
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