Peggy Mcintosh's White Privileges

Throughout history, it is seen that the white race has always been inferior, which entitles them to different advantages. These advantages have become customary to everyday life. Peggy McIntosh’s essay White Privileges: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack explores the ideas of the white privilege and the need to abate it. In her study, based on her profession and experience, McIntosh argues that white people are over privileged, and have grown accustomed to these advantages in society. Whites have “unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence” (31). McIntosh states that we need to mitigate the dominance and advantages of white privilege, as well as educate people about it. Through the comparison of male and white dominance, McIntosh begins by arguing the difference of being over privileged and at a disadvantage. Using the comparison she states the inattentive views that men and white people have on their advantages. In addition, she argues that we are taught to see ourselves “as an oppressor” (31).
By doing so, she composes a list of 26 situations an African American would not encounter every day. This demonstrates the hierarchy of race, and the advantages the caucasian people have (33). McIntosh explains the advantages and ideas of lessening the white privilege. She demonstrates the positive and negative effects of white privilege, and what it means to have unearned power and strength. As well as what it looks like when we “unpack the knapsack”