Peggy McIntosh

Unpacking the
Invisible Knapsack of
Privilege 1988

This is an excerpt, edited and adapted for educational purposes, from Peggy McIntosh’s 1988 essay
"White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through
Work in Women's Studies", Working Paper 189, Wellesley Centers for Women, Wellesley College,
Massachusetts.

Over the years, this text has been widely prescribed in undergraduate courses at American universities.
Susan McIntosh was recently (2014) interviewed by Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker, and spoke
about the controversy that this essay raised, and its influence on generations of students. This interview is
worth looking up (Google it).

The invisible knapsack of privilege

Through work to bring materials and perspectives from Women’s Studies into the rest of the

[university] curriculum, I have often noticed men's unwillingness to grant that they are

overprivileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. […] After I

realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood

that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges

from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to

understand why we [white women] are justly seen as oppressive, even when we don't see

ourselves that way.

Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since

hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there is most likely a phenomenon of white privilege

that was similarly denied and protected, but alive and real in its effects. As a white person, I

realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had

been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an

advantage. […]

I saw parallels here with men’s reluctance to acknowledge male privilege. Only rarely will a

man go beyond acknowledging that woman are disadvantaged, to acknowledging that man

have unearned advantage, or that unearned privilege has not been good for men’s development
as human beings, or for society’s development, or that privilege systems might ever be

challenged and changed.

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to

recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have

white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets

that 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.

At the very least, obliviousness of one’s privileged state can make a person or group irritating

to be with. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been

conditioned into oblivion about its existence, unable to see that it put me ‘ahead’ in any way, or

put my people ahead, overrewarding us and yet also paradoxically damaging us...

Daily effects of white privilege

I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white

privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat

more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though

of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can tell, my African

American co-workers, friends, and acquaintances cannot count on most of these conditions.

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned

to mistrust my kind or me.

3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area

which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or

harassed.
6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race

widely represented.

7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people

of my color made it what it is.

8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence

of their race.

9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of

my race.

11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which

s/he is the only member of his/her race.

12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a

supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's

shop and find someone who can cut my hair.

13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against

the appearance of financial reliability.

14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily

physical protection.

16. I can be pretty sure that my children's teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit

school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others' attitudes

toward their race.

17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.

18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people

attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.

19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the

world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.

23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior

without being seen as a cultural outsider.

24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of

my race.

25. 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.

26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children's

magazines featuring people of my race.

27. 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.

28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to

jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.

29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a

program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even

if my colleagues disagree with me.

30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will

lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.

31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or

disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less

protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.

32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of

other races.

33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a

reflection on my race.

34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.
35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the

job suspect that I got it because of my race.

36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation

whether it had racial overtones.

37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me

about my next steps, professionally.

38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking

whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.

39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.

40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or

will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.

41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.

42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection

owing to my race.

43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the problem.

44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of

my race.

45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of

my race.

46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match

my skin.

47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those

who deal with us.

48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.

49. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit

and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.

50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.

Elusive and fugitive

I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me white

privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it 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.

In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily

experience that I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these perquisites as bad for

the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for

some of these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and others

give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and destructive.

In this potpourri of examples, some privileges make me feel at home in the world. Others allow

me to escape penalties or dangers which others suffer. Through some, I escape fear, anxiety, or

a sense of not being welcome or not being real. Some keep me from having to hide, to be in

disguise, to feel sick or crazy, to negotiate each transaction from the position of being an

outsider… Most keep me from having to be angry.

I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions that were

passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own

turf, and I was among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any

move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways and

of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to

anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also

criticize it fairly freely. My life was reflected back to me frequently enough so that I felt, with

regard to my race, if not to my sex, like one of the real people.

In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other

groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected

me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to

visit, in turn, upon people of color.

For this reason, the word "privilege" now seems to me misleading. Its connotations are too

positive to fit the conditions and behaviors which “privilege systems” produce... The word

“privilege” carries the connotation of being something everyone must want. Yet some of the

conditions I have described here work systematically to over-empower certain groups. Such

privilege simply confers dominance, gives permission to control, because of one's race or sex.

The kind of privilege which gives license to some people to be, at best, thoughtless, and, at

worst, murderous, should not continue to be referred to as a desirable attribute. Such

“privilege” may be widely desired without being in any way beneficial to the whole society.

Moreover, though “privilege” may confer power, it does not confer moral strength. Those who

do not depend on conferred dominance have traits and qualities which may never develop in

those who do… In some groups, those dominated have actually become strong through not

having all of these unearned advantages, and this gives them a great deal to teach the others…

Earned strength, unearned power

I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power conferred

systematically. Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact

permission to escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably

damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race

will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the

privilege to ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the

ignored groups.

We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages, which we can work to

spread, and negative types of advantage, which unless rejected will always reinforce our

present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as

Native Americans say, should not be seen as privilege for a few. It is…an entitlement which

none of us should have to earn; ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a

few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them. The negative ‘privilege’ which gave me

cultural permission not to take darker-skinned Others seriously can be seen as arbitrarily

conferred dominance and should not be desirable for anyone….

In writing this paper I have also realized that white identity and status (as well as class identity

and status) give me considerable power to choose whether to broach this subject and its

trouble. I can pretty well decide whether to disappear and avoid and not listen and escape the
dislike I may engender in other people through this essay… Being white, I am given

considerable power to escape many kinds of danger or penalty as well as to choose which risks

I want to take. […]

I have met very few men who 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, or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race

advantage and conferred dominance, and, if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we

need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives… We need more

understanding of the ways in which white “privilege” damages white people, for these are not

the same ways in which it damages the victimized. Skewed white psyches are an inseparable

part of the picture… Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that

racism doesn't affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see "whiteness" as

a racial identity. Many men likewise think that Women’s Studies does not bear on their own

existences because they are not female; they do not see themselves as having gendered

identities.

In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly

to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical

ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation. Professor Marnie

Evans suggested to me that in many ways the list I made also applies directly to heterosexual

privilege. This is a still more taboo subject than race privilege: the daily ways in which

heterosexual privilege makes married [or heterosexual] persons comfortable or powerful,

providing supports, assets, approvals, and rewards to those who live or expect to live in

heterosexual pairs… But to start such an analysis I would put this observation from my own

experience: The fact that I live under the same roof with a man triggers all kinds of societal

assumptions about my worth, politics, life, and values, and triggers a host of unearned

advantages and powers. After recasting many elements from the original list [above], I would

add further observations like these:

1. My children do not have to answer questions about why I live with my partner.

2. I have no difficulty finding neighbourhoods where people approve of our household.

3. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unity,

and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.

4. I can travel alone or with my husband without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those

who deal with us.

5. Most people I meet will see my marital arrangement as an asset to my life or as a favorable

comment on my likability, my competence, or my mental health.

6. I can talk about the social events of a weekend without fearing most listeners’ reactions.

7. I will feel welcomed and “normal” in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.

Difficulties and angers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since racism,

sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the advantages associated with them should not be

seen as the same. In addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned advantage that rest

more on social class, economic class, race, religion, sex, and ethnic identity that on other

factors. Still, all of the oppressions are interlocking, as the members of the Combahee River

Collective pointed out in their "Black Feminist Statement" of 1977.

One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms,

which we can see, and embedded forms, which as a member of the dominant groups 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 system won't be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism

could end if white individuals changed their attitudes; many men think sexism can be ended by

individual changes in daily behavior toward women. But a man’s sex provides advantages for

him whether or not he approves of the way in which dominance has been conferred on his

group. 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 subjects taboo. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems

to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while

denying that systems of dominance exist.

It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male

advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of

meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people

unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up

those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it

already.

Although systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and, I

imagine, for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being

light-skinned. What will we do with such knowledge? As we [women] know from watching

men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage, and whether we

will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader

base.

Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women. This essay
is excerpted from Working Paper 189: "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of
Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies" (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; the full
paper available for $10.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA
02181.