White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

“White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” is an essay by Peggy McIntosh originally published in 1989 in Peace and Freedom Magazine. It is a condensed version of a longer essay published the previous year titled “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies.” Both essays offer a narrative of McIntosh’s explorations into her previously unacknowledged racism. “Male privilege” describes advantages men have that they are not aware of. McIntosh argues by analogy that, as a white person, she benefits from advantages of which she has been unaware.

McIntosh defines and examines white privilege in terms of an “invisible knapsack” of benefits and advantages that only white people can access in American society. She relates that she has been told by nonwhite people that her behavior is oppressive, yet she has received no training or education to either explain those accusations or help her understand her role as an oppressor. She says, “Whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which will allow ‘them’ to be more like ‘us’” (Paragraph 6).