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drewkittyReaction to "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" by Peggy McIntosh
http://www.nymbp.org/reference/WhitePrivilege.pdf
The article begins with an analogy to male privilege, or the unwillingness of some men to acknowledge that they are "over privileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged." Men may say that they will work to improve the status of women in various arenas, but they "can't or won't support the idea of lessening men's."
I agree at a fundamental and visceral level with the second half of this statement. Anyone who wants to lessen or disadvantage anyone else is my foe. I am a naive believer in the equality of man and woman; in racial and ethnical equality; in the wisdom of pretending religious equality to avoid pointless conflict; and last but not least, the essential equality of the human spirit regardless of how we identify ourselves or who over the age of consent we sleep with.
I admit that it's a bit more personal when people espouse a specific goal of attacking ME based on certain characteristics I happen to possess.
"White privilege" is stated to consist of an "invisible weightless knapsack" of useful goodies. A list of these goodies includes "special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks."
Three problems here, which I hope to approach with an open mind.
1) Do I have such a knapsack of tools? Probably. By life experience, training and inclination, I have a plethora of such things, even when stripped naked in the pouring rain.
2) How did this knapsack come into my possession? Did I earn it? Was I handed it unearned? Was it stolen from another and given to me? Perhaps did I steal it? I am leaning towards "handed it unearned" for the most part . . . but not all.
3) Given that I have this knapsack of goodies, why would I want to voluntarily give it up? Because if I have something useful that is mine, and someone wants to take it from me, that thief is my enemy. So the question is serious. Why give up something that is acknowledged to be mine -- especially if it is said to be such a powerful advantage. I am willing to return something stolen that should never have been mine -- but I'd rather emulate one of the nicer Jesus parables and share my loaves and fishes rather than having them taken away entirely.
I am not fond of creating equality by stomping people down.
The author of the piece creates twenty-six 'conditions' which she believes attach primarily to what she calls 'skin-color privilege.' I will not restate them here; but I will react to each.
Think of this as my racial shopping trip. I will pack my own privilege bag.
1. No. My duties require me to be in the company of persons from all walks of life. Both my co-workers and my customers are often of a different race than me.
2. No. I have had difficulty obtaining housing I can afford in the area I want to live. (This is a punt, as this is the SF Bay Area.) This is also an income issue.
3. No. I have had active hostility from neighbors in certain places I have lived. Often but not always this has been from people of a different race.
4. I do get followed and harassed in stores as a potential thief. Often this is because I notice things that others do not. Security people give off a 'vibe' that is sometimes mistaken for a thief. However, I do have the ability to get out of it easily by stating and/or showing what I do for a living. This is a mixed privilege - getting into trouble, then getting out of trouble. Add item to sack.
5. No. I am a resident of California. My television and newspaper reflect this.
6. Yes, people of my color made the state and nation what it is. No, I don't take pride from that, because I am highly educated and don't buy the race card anyway. On the other hand, I don't feel alienated from participation in our present civilization either. Add item to sack.
7. No. No kids, no plans to have kids.
8. Not a formal publisher, because I'm kicking sacred cows. But yes, I am putting this on my blog. Got Internet: add item to sack.
9. My race's music is not available in stores, as filk is found on the Internet and in sci fi con dealer's rooms. Yes, supermarkets carry staples of my adult diet, but I don't have any 'cultural traditions' that surround food, except drinking milk. Yes, any hairdresser can cut my hair -- but all it requires is a trimmer and twenty minutes at Supercuts.
10. Yes. I don't get hassled for presenting financial instruments due to my race. Add item to sack.
11. No, I don't have children.
12. In my professional life, I am held to standards. In my personal life, I don't give a shit. Either way, race has nothing to do with bad language, clothing or not answering letters.
13. I speak in public to powerful male groups. It is true that this does not put my race on trial. However, I don't care about my race. I am free not to care about my race. Add item to sack.
14. As per #13, add item to sack.
15. Add item to sack.
16. Sort of. I have to have some passing ability to interact with major racial groups and their customs, but I am free to be oblivious of many details. Bag it.
17. No. As a gun-toting bisexual liberal Constitutionalist I am rejected by all three major factions.
18. No. The person in charge may be of any race. My manager and their manager are of a different race.
19. Add item to sack. The privilege of not being hassled by enforcement agents is a big one.
20. I don't buy these items.
21. I earn my place in the organizations I participate in. No.
22. Definitely add this item to the sack. It is an open secret in my industry that certain employees are "untouchable" due to their contribution to our required affirmative action figures. However, I perceive that I am more disposable and have to work much harder to get and keep my job as a direct result.
23. Add item to sack.
24. Double bag, in separate packages. Legal and medical need to be discussed separately.
25. I have to think about reactions of others to me with racial overtones, particularly at work or when certain matters are discussed. My race is seen before my ideas in discussion of 'privilege' for example. Skip bagging - but think about on my next trip.
26. A small thing to me, but I have the privilege of calling it a small thing. Double bag, please.
It's clear from the list above that while I may have a different "invisible knapsack," I definitely have one, and it's got some goodies in it. Goodies I won't give up.
"The myth of meritocracy."
My rage at reading this is visceral. Of course it's a myth. Life is unfair. We by our actions, make it less unfair. We create fairness and myths make it possible to do this.
Of course it's a myth. But saying it's a myth makes it less true, and less likely to be true someday.
I want to live in a society where men and women and others are judged by the content of their character, not who they sleep with, or the color of their skin, or their economic value.
I reject whiteness as a racial identity. That is not how it works for me. White people do not have white people's back. We don't have shared musical tastes (country music? rap? [yes, I said rap, popular with certain angsty white teens]) or shared cultural experiences (rednecks? duct tape? NASCAR?!? and certainly not fundamentalist Christianity.)
I reject 'maleness' as a gender identity. I am a man and I have a lot of my identity invested in my gender-linked beliefs about myself -- but I smash the stereotypes of maleness I see permeating this article.
"Unearned race advantage." This I have a problem with. I have enough of a problem with it that I am willing -- TEMPORARILY! -- to give unearned advantages to members of groups that have been disadvantaged in the recent past, even at some cost to me. However, I look forward to a world in which all unearned race advantages disappear. So did Martin Luther King, and I eat where the big trucks are parked.
"Conferred dominance." I feel that what little dominance I have, I've earned by my sweat and will defend with my blood. I don't want to jealously guard my knapsacked privileges -- I want everyone to enjoy them, not just an unchosen lucky few.
The arrogance of the author in casually talking of 'redesign [of] social systems' chills my soul. As flawed as some of our systems are, the myth of meritocracy opens a lot more doors than it closes. Taking what people have earned from them by force is a recipe for civil war -- and who is going to win that war? Those with bigger knapsacks, obviously. I mean, duh.
I don't want my country, my culture, my people to devolve into a bloody mass of competition in victimhood. I am bisexual -- does that mean I have to privilege who I do or do not sleep with over all my other beliefs and life experiences? I am middle aged -- does that mean that I must be a member of one minority when I am young and another when I am old?
I want to swamp unearned privileges for a few with unearned privileges for all.
I hold with what the black President of the United States said in Heinlein's short story "Over The Rainbow" and it's important enough to end with it:
"This nation has split itself into at least a hundred splinter groups, pressure groups, each trying for a bigger bite of the pie. That's got to *stop*!--before it kills us.
"No more Black Americans. No more Japanese Americans. Israel is not our country and neither is Ireland. A group calling itself La Raza had better mean the human race--the *whole* human race--or they'll get the same treatment from me as the Ku Klux Klan. [emphasis added]
"Amerindians looking for special favors will have just two choices: Either come out and *be* Americans and accept the responsibilities of citizenship... or go back to the reservation and shut up. Some of their ancestors got a rough deal. But so did yours and so did mine. There are no Anglos left alive who were at Wounded Knee or Little Big Horn, so it's time to shut up about it.
"But race and skin color and national ancestry isn't all that I mean. I intend to refuse to see *any* splinter group claiming to deserve special treatment not accorded other citizens and I will veto any legislation perverted to that end. Wheat farmers. Bankrupt corporations. Bankrupt cities. Labor leaders claiming to represent 'the workers'... when most of the people they claim to represent repudiate any such leadership. Business leaders just as phony.
"*Anyone* who wants the deck stacked in his favor because, somehow, he's 'special.'"
That's my cultural tradition. That's my race talking. You know, the only important one. The human one.
I am more than willing to keep talking about it -- in fact, we must, no matter how uncomfortable the conversation may make us, especially those with the big invisible knapsacks -- but the above is what I believe.
http://www.nymbp.org/reference/WhitePrivilege.pdf
The article begins with an analogy to male privilege, or the unwillingness of some men to acknowledge that they are "over privileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged." Men may say that they will work to improve the status of women in various arenas, but they "can't or won't support the idea of lessening men's."
I agree at a fundamental and visceral level with the second half of this statement. Anyone who wants to lessen or disadvantage anyone else is my foe. I am a naive believer in the equality of man and woman; in racial and ethnical equality; in the wisdom of pretending religious equality to avoid pointless conflict; and last but not least, the essential equality of the human spirit regardless of how we identify ourselves or who over the age of consent we sleep with.
I admit that it's a bit more personal when people espouse a specific goal of attacking ME based on certain characteristics I happen to possess.
"White privilege" is stated to consist of an "invisible weightless knapsack" of useful goodies. A list of these goodies includes "special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks."
Three problems here, which I hope to approach with an open mind.
1) Do I have such a knapsack of tools? Probably. By life experience, training and inclination, I have a plethora of such things, even when stripped naked in the pouring rain.
2) How did this knapsack come into my possession? Did I earn it? Was I handed it unearned? Was it stolen from another and given to me? Perhaps did I steal it? I am leaning towards "handed it unearned" for the most part . . . but not all.
3) Given that I have this knapsack of goodies, why would I want to voluntarily give it up? Because if I have something useful that is mine, and someone wants to take it from me, that thief is my enemy. So the question is serious. Why give up something that is acknowledged to be mine -- especially if it is said to be such a powerful advantage. I am willing to return something stolen that should never have been mine -- but I'd rather emulate one of the nicer Jesus parables and share my loaves and fishes rather than having them taken away entirely.
I am not fond of creating equality by stomping people down.
The author of the piece creates twenty-six 'conditions' which she believes attach primarily to what she calls 'skin-color privilege.' I will not restate them here; but I will react to each.
Think of this as my racial shopping trip. I will pack my own privilege bag.
1. No. My duties require me to be in the company of persons from all walks of life. Both my co-workers and my customers are often of a different race than me.
2. No. I have had difficulty obtaining housing I can afford in the area I want to live. (This is a punt, as this is the SF Bay Area.) This is also an income issue.
3. No. I have had active hostility from neighbors in certain places I have lived. Often but not always this has been from people of a different race.
4. I do get followed and harassed in stores as a potential thief. Often this is because I notice things that others do not. Security people give off a 'vibe' that is sometimes mistaken for a thief. However, I do have the ability to get out of it easily by stating and/or showing what I do for a living. This is a mixed privilege - getting into trouble, then getting out of trouble. Add item to sack.
5. No. I am a resident of California. My television and newspaper reflect this.
6. Yes, people of my color made the state and nation what it is. No, I don't take pride from that, because I am highly educated and don't buy the race card anyway. On the other hand, I don't feel alienated from participation in our present civilization either. Add item to sack.
7. No. No kids, no plans to have kids.
8. Not a formal publisher, because I'm kicking sacred cows. But yes, I am putting this on my blog. Got Internet: add item to sack.
9. My race's music is not available in stores, as filk is found on the Internet and in sci fi con dealer's rooms. Yes, supermarkets carry staples of my adult diet, but I don't have any 'cultural traditions' that surround food, except drinking milk. Yes, any hairdresser can cut my hair -- but all it requires is a trimmer and twenty minutes at Supercuts.
10. Yes. I don't get hassled for presenting financial instruments due to my race. Add item to sack.
11. No, I don't have children.
12. In my professional life, I am held to standards. In my personal life, I don't give a shit. Either way, race has nothing to do with bad language, clothing or not answering letters.
13. I speak in public to powerful male groups. It is true that this does not put my race on trial. However, I don't care about my race. I am free not to care about my race. Add item to sack.
14. As per #13, add item to sack.
15. Add item to sack.
16. Sort of. I have to have some passing ability to interact with major racial groups and their customs, but I am free to be oblivious of many details. Bag it.
17. No. As a gun-toting bisexual liberal Constitutionalist I am rejected by all three major factions.
18. No. The person in charge may be of any race. My manager and their manager are of a different race.
19. Add item to sack. The privilege of not being hassled by enforcement agents is a big one.
20. I don't buy these items.
21. I earn my place in the organizations I participate in. No.
22. Definitely add this item to the sack. It is an open secret in my industry that certain employees are "untouchable" due to their contribution to our required affirmative action figures. However, I perceive that I am more disposable and have to work much harder to get and keep my job as a direct result.
23. Add item to sack.
24. Double bag, in separate packages. Legal and medical need to be discussed separately.
25. I have to think about reactions of others to me with racial overtones, particularly at work or when certain matters are discussed. My race is seen before my ideas in discussion of 'privilege' for example. Skip bagging - but think about on my next trip.
26. A small thing to me, but I have the privilege of calling it a small thing. Double bag, please.
It's clear from the list above that while I may have a different "invisible knapsack," I definitely have one, and it's got some goodies in it. Goodies I won't give up.
"The myth of meritocracy."
My rage at reading this is visceral. Of course it's a myth. Life is unfair. We by our actions, make it less unfair. We create fairness and myths make it possible to do this.
Of course it's a myth. But saying it's a myth makes it less true, and less likely to be true someday.
I want to live in a society where men and women and others are judged by the content of their character, not who they sleep with, or the color of their skin, or their economic value.
I reject whiteness as a racial identity. That is not how it works for me. White people do not have white people's back. We don't have shared musical tastes (country music? rap? [yes, I said rap, popular with certain angsty white teens]) or shared cultural experiences (rednecks? duct tape? NASCAR?!? and certainly not fundamentalist Christianity.)
I reject 'maleness' as a gender identity. I am a man and I have a lot of my identity invested in my gender-linked beliefs about myself -- but I smash the stereotypes of maleness I see permeating this article.
"Unearned race advantage." This I have a problem with. I have enough of a problem with it that I am willing -- TEMPORARILY! -- to give unearned advantages to members of groups that have been disadvantaged in the recent past, even at some cost to me. However, I look forward to a world in which all unearned race advantages disappear. So did Martin Luther King, and I eat where the big trucks are parked.
"Conferred dominance." I feel that what little dominance I have, I've earned by my sweat and will defend with my blood. I don't want to jealously guard my knapsacked privileges -- I want everyone to enjoy them, not just an unchosen lucky few.
The arrogance of the author in casually talking of 'redesign [of] social systems' chills my soul. As flawed as some of our systems are, the myth of meritocracy opens a lot more doors than it closes. Taking what people have earned from them by force is a recipe for civil war -- and who is going to win that war? Those with bigger knapsacks, obviously. I mean, duh.
I don't want my country, my culture, my people to devolve into a bloody mass of competition in victimhood. I am bisexual -- does that mean I have to privilege who I do or do not sleep with over all my other beliefs and life experiences? I am middle aged -- does that mean that I must be a member of one minority when I am young and another when I am old?
I want to swamp unearned privileges for a few with unearned privileges for all.
I hold with what the black President of the United States said in Heinlein's short story "Over The Rainbow" and it's important enough to end with it:
"This nation has split itself into at least a hundred splinter groups, pressure groups, each trying for a bigger bite of the pie. That's got to *stop*!--before it kills us.
"No more Black Americans. No more Japanese Americans. Israel is not our country and neither is Ireland. A group calling itself La Raza had better mean the human race--the *whole* human race--or they'll get the same treatment from me as the Ku Klux Klan. [emphasis added]
"Amerindians looking for special favors will have just two choices: Either come out and *be* Americans and accept the responsibilities of citizenship... or go back to the reservation and shut up. Some of their ancestors got a rough deal. But so did yours and so did mine. There are no Anglos left alive who were at Wounded Knee or Little Big Horn, so it's time to shut up about it.
"But race and skin color and national ancestry isn't all that I mean. I intend to refuse to see *any* splinter group claiming to deserve special treatment not accorded other citizens and I will veto any legislation perverted to that end. Wheat farmers. Bankrupt corporations. Bankrupt cities. Labor leaders claiming to represent 'the workers'... when most of the people they claim to represent repudiate any such leadership. Business leaders just as phony.
"*Anyone* who wants the deck stacked in his favor because, somehow, he's 'special.'"
That's my cultural tradition. That's my race talking. You know, the only important one. The human one.
I am more than willing to keep talking about it -- in fact, we must, no matter how uncomfortable the conversation may make us, especially those with the big invisible knapsacks -- but the above is what I believe.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-10 06:29 am (UTC)This is a simplistic example.
Say there are 10 apartments available and 20 people are going for them. 10 of the people going for the apartments are white men. 10 are not. Say 7 of the people who get the apartments are white men. If in the future only 5 of the white men got the apartments, even though the division is now more like one would expect, it still means that those 2 white men who would have had a place before are displaced, and now disadvantaged compared to their previous situation, even though it may have been arrived at just by treating everyone fairly.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-10 11:30 pm (UTC)I don't believe in rationing a dwindling pie. I believe in growing the pie we've got.
That said, if we've got 10 apartments and 20 people going for them, I think the decision of which 10 get the apartment should have nothing to do with race.
Should it have to do with gender? Possibly, as single men can live in barracks and shared living situations more easily. Priority of housing depends on many other factors, however, and all else being equal, I'd rather put parents and families with children under a roof.
I acknowledge that a future world in which 'white privilege' as defined by the author of this piece does not exist will be a little tougher on those who rest on unearned laurels. That's OK with me, even if I end up being one of them.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-10 07:14 am (UTC)Being able to reject whiteness as a racial identity is a privilege. People who aren't perceived as the dominant race, in a society that has a notion of a dominant race, have a much more difficult time rejecting their racial identity.
The same goes for being able to reject maleness.
I haven't read the book you quoted from, but to me Heinlein's character isn't speaking for the human race, he is speaking for the subset of people who currently have power. By power, I mean the power to define other people. And he's saying "You don't get to define yourself. I do." And "You don't get to decide how the resources are distributed. I do, and you'll get resources only if you allow yourself to be defined by me."
no subject
Date: 2011-08-11 12:10 am (UTC)"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master." - George Washington
I don't believe that resources should be allocated or rationed by the government. That isn't to say that I think the government should not be involved either in public welfare or in achieving racial irrelevance -- in fact, the government's role is vital.
For example, I believe that the government has a vital role to play in a public health care system. I believe that the health care provided by law (and a well defined body of law at that) to prisoners in custody should be provided as a matter of course to all persons in the United States regardless of immigration status, ability to pay, or any other characteristic.
Note: no rationing.
Should we stack the deck in favor of people who have been disadvantaged in the past? Yes. When do we stop doing this? When they are no longer disadvantaged.
Should the government in the people's name stack the deck against those who have been advantaged in the past? No, the government should not stack the deck against anyone, ever, for any reason.
Last but not least, I feel compelled to point out that the government and many of its actions have been the great foe of the second largest 'non-dominant' race in America, especially since the suppression of the Black Panthers movement and platform.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-11 01:03 am (UTC)To my way of thinking, if an entity has no resources to allocate or no power to allocate resources, it's not a government.
When you say that health care should be "provided" to everyone in the US, I think you're requiring that an entity with the power to allocate resources needs to exist.
On "stacking the deck," the metaphor assumes a zero-sum game. If you are playing card games, someone wins and someone loses. So if you stack the deck for someone, you are by definition stacking the deck against someone else.
I think we agree on this: It would be good if people's thinking shifted away from "life is a zero-sum game where the object is for Us to get most of the resources away from Them" to "life is a cooperative game and we're all in this together."
But given the current situation where some people have way more power, influence, and resources than others, I don't think that is going to happen by fiat from a government official, as in your Heinlein quote. Nor is it going to happen because the people with less privilege say "what the hell, let's stop trying to get a fair share." Nor is it going to happen because the people with more privilege tell the people with less privilege to stop trying to get a fair share.
I don't know how it's going to happen.
When you mention the US government's suppression of the Black Panthers, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-11 04:23 am (UTC)I know that meritocracy is an important -- but in no way sufficient in itself -- part of that game.
You're right about 'stacking the deck' as a zero sum game. I'm not into zero sum games and I should not use that example. Real life games are much more complex with lots more variables, and I for one am much more willing to tolerate "helping" certain players and not others. However, penalizing other players helps neither them nor the game.
Taxation is an essential function of government, and taxing the rich to help the poor used to be understood as a way of protecting both rich and poor, if necessary from each other.
Both allocation and rationing carry a strong connotation of "we don't have enough, so we're going to decide who gets some and who doesn't."
My point re: the Black Panthers is that if you allow social justice to rest in the hands of the government, the day the government changes its mind is a bad day for social justice -- and we live in a representative democracy that is starting to resemble a bad cross between a plutocracy and a kleptocracy.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-11 05:19 am (UTC)Yep, sitting back and assuming some other entity/ies is/are going to take care of social justice is always a bad idea. I find it hard to imagine a society in which government doesn't have some role in it, though.