Summary and Response on “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”

In director of Wellesley College Center for Research on Women Peggy McIntosh’s essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” she talks about how white privilege affects people daily without anyone even realizing it. McIntosh gives a long and detailed list of daily encounters in which the conditions are directed mainly by skin color although she lists a number of other factors that are also intertwined. Most of McIntosh’s examples are things like reading the newspaper and seeing her race being widely represented, or not having her skin color work against the appearance of her financial stability when using checks, credit cards, or cash. McIntosh also makes a point to say that as far as she can tell, her African American friends and acquaintances run into most of these encounters.

While first reading Peggy McIntosh’s essay, my first thought was that there is no way that I could go through life with a sense of white privilege following my steps. I started to reevaluate how I treat other races on a daily basis and realized that I did not treat anyone unfairly in relation to skin color. As a result of this, I read through the entire article and completely disagreed with every word. In my mind, such a thing did not exist. After finishing, I decided to read over it again and that is when it hit me. Just the fact that I had shut down after reading the words “white privilege” proved that McIntosh had a point.

As I read through the essay a second time, I realized that this term “white privilege” was still a real thing. I understood what McIntosh meant when she said that she was taught to see racism as individual acts and not as whole systems. I reread each “condition” very carefully and imagined myself performing these tasks or being in those places and realized how true each one was. If it is by accident or on purpose, I do not know. But I do know now that our society is extremely split between races and I did not even notice it. How could I have let myself overlook this scary truth? I believe I was conditioned, in a way, to not notice. I was taught to treat everyone equally but not to change the dynamics between my race and other races to eliminate racism.