RACE
Denying White Privilege Won’t Make a Dent In The Truth. Here’s Why
A brief history on McIntosh’s term, and ongoing debate
Did you know Peggy McIntosh, a White feminist scholar, coined the term “white privilege?” In 1987 in her “lecture-turned article, White privilege: Unpacking the Invisible, Knapsack,” McIntosh listed a number of experiences she took for granted as a White woman. In checking her privilege, she cast aside any doubts about the depth and breadth of racism and white supremacy. And since then, scholars, activists, businessmen and women have used the term to peel back the layers, or as McIntosh said, “unpack the invisible knapsack.”
I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group — Peggy McIntosh
As Michael Morris described, White Normativity comes with the societal presumption of having the standard body, the standard mind, and being the standard citizen. This standard makes some White people oblivious to the plight of others. So her inquiry started with an analogy about male privilege. McIntosh wrote, “I think Whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege.” To understand her relative privilege to Black people, she considered…
