Unpack the knapsack skin#
Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of my financial reliability.When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.… As far as I can see, my African American co-workers, friends and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and line of work cannot count on most of these conditions: White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which IĬan count on cashing in each day, but about which I was 'meant' to remain oblivious. Acknowledging this privilege-realizing that subtle racism exists and that you benefit from it-is the first step privileged people need to take if they want to be effective allies of the un-privileged. And this system leads otherwise kind and decent people to act and think in racist ways, without even realizing that's what they're doing. In the United States, there are many privileges that I get, simply for being white, that are denied to people with different skin tones. So, when people who don't have access to those privileges don't live as easily and well as you, it's easy to blame that on some inherent moral or intellectual failing, rather than on the system that denied them privileges you've received since birth. So invisible, in fact, that you don't even think of those things as privileges, and you don't notice how they've made your life easier and better. What's more, if you're one of the privileged people, the privileges you receive-simply for looking the way you do-are often completely invisible to you. Racism is also about whole social systems that confer privileges on some people, and deny those privileges to others.