How I Learned about White Privilege

I'm mixed race and I still experience a great deal of white privilege. Here's just 50 ways in which white privilege exists*.

Image credit: Salon

When I first learned about white privilege, I was a student at a university. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to learn about white privilege not through a classroom setting, but through hands-on experience as a volunteer at an on-campus support centre.

The brilliant women who were in charge of my training as a volunteer at the time (thank you, GE and NB!) taught us about white privilege (as well as all the other privileges) through an exercise based on *Peggy McIntosh's pivotal paper, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, which was published in 1989.

I have re-posted McIntosh's fifty daily effects in which she experiences white privilege here without permission, so please ensure you read her work in full here.

50 Daily Effects of White Privilege by Peggy McIntosh

from White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.
3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.
11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race.
12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.
13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.
16. I can be pretty sure that my children's teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others' attitudes toward their race.
17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.
18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.
19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of my race.
25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.
26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children's magazines featuring people of my race.
27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.
28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.
29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.
30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have
31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.
32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.
33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.
34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.
35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.
36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.
37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.
38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.
39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.
40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race.
43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the problem.
44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of my race.
45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race.
46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin.
47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with us.
48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.
49. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.
50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social

This list is a way that those of us with white privilege experience it without even thinking about it or being aware of it most days. 

Above: Jagmeet Singh, leader of Canada's New Democrat Party

Another way to approach this list is to ask yourself questions about the point at hand. For example, point 46. McIntosh mentions make up and bandages, but did you think of ballet shoes? Unless you are a dancer, you probably did not, but it just goes to show how pervasive and insidious white privilege is.

Consider also point 6. McIntosh talks about screen-based entertainment--turn on the TV, go to the theatres, and you can see lots of white people on screen. What if you walk into a museum or study art history? Can you think of even one very famous piece of art that portrays a person of colour in a flattering way? Or did you first think of the Mona Lisa, Girl with a Pearl Earring, one of Van Gogh's self-portraits, or even American Gothic?

What about point 38? Other than Obama, can you name three politicians who aren't white? What about if we opened that up to deceased politicians, or those from anywhere in the world or any point in time?

Eleventh by Lina Iris Viktor

McIntosh's powerful and troubling list aside, be sure to think about what other privileges you might have other than white privilege:

• Are you certain you can enter any public building? Or do you first have to consider where the ramp might be located? 
• Do people refer to you with your preferred pronouns (she/her, he/him, they/them, etc) right out of the gates, or are you constantly misgendered? 
• Are you behind on your student loans, or did your parents pay for your degree? 
• Do you have family heirlooms, estate, land, or house that you hope to inherit one day? Or did the government steal them from your family and people at some point? Maybe this theft has been happening for centuries, as with how the governments in North America treat First Nations and indigenous peoples. Maybe this theft happened "just once" as with persons of Japanese descent living in North America during WW2.
• If you go to the doctor because you are ill, do they first ask you to lose weight? Or do they simply prescribe you what you need?
• Can you walk down the street holding the hand of your significant other and feel safe? Or are you fearful of being called a slur of any sort?