White Privilege

Read the short PDF excerpt from Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” Once you have read it, consider how many of the 26 statements listed there apply to you. You certainly do not have to share your number with us, but be sure to provide your overall reaction to your results, and reflect on what this means for various groups in society as a whole.

McIntosh also suggests that it is not enough to merely be knowledgeable about the advantages and disadvantages that various groups have in society–we must actually do something about them. Name at least one way that we can work to undermine this system, and how it would remedy or help to alleviate the issue of white privilege in our society. Feel free to draw on any of the concepts from our online textbook, the videos, or from other areas of our course, if you’d like.