Peggy McIntosh Quotes

White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege.

one question for me and others like me is whether ... we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance and, if so, what we will do to lessen them.

Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.

Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate.

I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group

If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.

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.