White Privilage: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

In this writing, Peggy Mcintosh (a professor of Women's Studies) describes the privilages within our society today that come along with being white.  She refers to them as an invisible knapsack that people fill up throughout their life as a white person, but only a subconcious level, never actually realizing that they've built up the knapsack.  McIntosh describes a list of several instances within our world today in which white people are given an advantage based on skin.  Although several of these examples are bad ones, like the one where she says that she can walk into a music store and be sure that her race is represented there, she does bring up some very interesting points on the topic.  Overall the piece brings about the fact that white people don't really fully interpret their dominance over other races within certain situations, until you look back and focus deeply on the issue.  By doing so, McIntosh was able to come up with this large list of examples, which in turn will help many others just as herself to also realize these invisible privileges.  In turn, McIntosh hopes that this will help to rebuild our race basis/power systems that are in affect today.