This is the last Feminist Friday for the year; next Friday I will post up a summary of the articles we’ve read already and a bit of a framework for how I will carry this series on.
Today’s read - a really essential one, I believe - is by Dr. Peggy McIntosh, Senior Research Scientist and Former Associate Director of the Wellesley Centers for Women. Written in 1989 while at Harvard, Dr. McIntosh describes the system of unearned advantage that comes with being white as an invisible knapsack of useful tools and supplies one carries with them through their life. She draws parallels between white privilege and the unearned advantages afforded to men in a sexist society.
“Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of white privilege that was similarly denied and protected. 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.”
“White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”, Peggy McIntosh
You can read the article in several locations online, including at the National SEED Project affiliated with Wellesley College. Unlike some of the other articles I’ll share with you, this one is a very accessible read and is written in a more personal style rather than a straight academic text.
Identifying and discussing unearned privilege can feel very triggering and challenging to people. If you are a white reader, like I am, you may feel like you didn’t ask for this extra privilege, or that you have had a hard life or faced some kind of disadvantage that cancels out your privilege. It’s really useful to consider and observe these feelings. In no way does the existence of white privilege - or any other layer of privilege afforded by our current society, like male privilege, or heterosexual privilege - negate your experiences of challenge or hardship. However these experiences are personal rather than structural; in other words, whenever you were going through your challenge - for instance, if your family had very little money when you were growing up - that challenge would have been made more difficult by society for someone just like you, but with brown skin. If considering privilege feels abrasive or uncomfortable to you in any way (and it should, really, if we’re to change and grow) I invite you to sit with it.
Throughout January I’m looking forward to working through Layla Saad’s incredible-looking workbook Me and White Supremacy, which she has very generously distributed for free. If you are a white reader, I invite you to download it and complete it along with me - it would be fantastic to have a community to discuss it with.