white privelege, it's real
>> Friday, April 18, 2008
i'm a white male of upper-middle class background. i've noticed this has some perks. so have the lolcats. based on peggy mcintosh's "invisible knapsack".
Onward
14 years ago
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I'd really like to know what McIntosh thinks today, 20 years after that paper was written, and what solutions she has come up with. After all, that paper deals only with identifying the problem, while leaving the reader to construct his or her own gameplan for change.
good question...
according to her site, almost all of her work is in education, helping to make education more equitable, racially and genderwise (class conspicuously missing, though surely she knows about it...).
i guess, kind of like her paper describes, that recognizing it exists is a big piece of healing it. i know for myself, when i understood the concept that what i had been taught was normal was really just male-normative, it helped to be more receptive to more "normalities". i think the same goes for white privelege. when i didn't recognize it, i wielded it blindly. now i try to be conscious of it, and choose when to invoke it (talking to police on behalf of black folks) and when to try to reduce it's effects (not dominating the conversation when i'm sitting in a community meeting with black folks)
not that these issues are black and white (pun intended), but it's important to recognize them to confront their effect.
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