I’d like to restart this discussion on a philosophical basis, by returning to the very origin and working from there.

There is a lot of reactionism from many of the white students here and it seems that they are misunderstanding what is going on: they feel attacked because of the acknowledgement of white privilege and are thus missing the point of the article.

Let us begin by deconstructing what we have to work with.

Tenet 1: Asha was insulted by the act of donning a wig and the use of step dancing by a sorority in the SAMS Lip Sync competition.

What most people seem to be implying here is that Asha is upset because a white student approached something that she identifies as “her” culture and seem to think that this is an exclusionary act, drawing out some sort of claim that could be simplified into “white people aren’t allowed to represent other cultures because it is not their native culture and they have no justifiable ability to do so.” This thought would be akin to saying: “people of ethnicities not strictly European and particularly British) are not allowed to perform Shakespeare because it would be a cultural disrespect to tradition, and would be massively insulting.” (I do not agree with this model of thought whatsoever.) This thought is then being dismissed as racism (which, denying a particular race a freedom and making a sweeping generalization about it is very much a racist move) and being used to discredit Asha’s status of being insulted. We cannot judge whether it is “reasonable” for someone to be insulted. That is absurd. The problem is, we seem to think one person’s insult automatically justifies a particular act as unacceptable. (I am not claiming that this act WAS acceptable, simply drawing out the conclusions to their fullest extent.) We must acknowledge that being insulted is a person predilection. What this does allow us to do, however, is determine whether the action itself was insulting and for what reason, not examine Asha’s reaction and determine whether it was appropriate.

What seems much more likely to me is that this is not an act of “racism” against whites excluding them from the use of other cultures, but instead an offense being taken because of a trivialization and misrepresentation of culture. Using a particular culture as a “bit” instead of an honorable representation is a very difficult issue. We can say that it is only acceptable for a person of that culture to “make fun” in that way, but then we arrive in the same mire of exclusivity and lines that are drawn resulting in a functional but unpleasant mode of separation, fundamentally leading us to an inflexible concept of identity and an inability to merge and enjoy other cultures without being insincere. This leaves us in a cultural stasis that is highly uncomfortable.

If we move forward from the idea of insult and we can assume that the problem is representation, we can find our second tenet.

2: Misrepresenting a group is Racist and Insulting

I’m not sure there’s much to say about this. If this is not evident, I’m not sure this discussion can even take place. The question becomes, however, what is misrepresentation? That would require a solidified group identity, essentially giving into stereotypes and filing into a mold. It is clear that generalizations are important (but also massively problematic) to the way humans understand the world. We group ourselves and others, because understanding the world as a collection of individual bits is entirely incomprehensible. But clearly, within each group, there is individuality and movement. Claiming that anything is inherently of a group is a sort of self-determined stereotype, and in a disturbing way, classifying yourself in a culture is a sort of self-inflicted racism. The problem becomes when we see a group, with which we identify, is represented in a way that we are uncomfortable with. When nerds are represented as socially inept, I find it massively insulting (classifying myself as such). This is a poor and weak example in comparison to the unchangeable physical differences that people of color face, but I am extending for all of my privileged friends here who seem to fail to understand. What we see here is intentional comedic misrepresentation (in Asha’s opinion). We should use this time to examine how we use other cultures; do we trivialize them and denigrate them? If so we are enforcing a white norm. But further we must consider what determines misrepresentation, since it is an individually determined process.

Logically, I’d like to construct a syllogism.

Donning the wig and performing step dance was not done in a respectable manner, and was thus a misrepresentation of a group: being a member of the misrepresented group, Asha took insult. The insult is then directly linked to the action.

It is unfair to question the validity or magnitude of the insult; instead we can only determine whether the supposed misrepresentation was in fact denigrating or demeaning. Here is where the ebate gets murky and the waters of discussion flow: does intent matter? Do we have the capability of emulating any other culture while still being true to their nature?

I think this is really where the discussion lies.

Personally, I feel that we (as humans) are capable of representing other cultures in a respectful manner and are capable of using traditional features of other cultures in a beneficial and world-expanding manner. This is a fundamental part of cultural exchange. I do not, however, find it acceptable to denigrate another culture by reducing it to a joke (I cannot confirm nor deny whether this was the case). This is fundamentally prejudiced and negative action.

(I apologize for making hypothetical conclusions; I made them for the sake of discussion only. And good job having the courage to write this article, Asha.)

Because my previous comments were not published, I will try this again. Please read the following article that I have copied and pasted by Peggy McIntosh. If we want an intelligent dialogue, let’s consider this highly revered article.

“White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”

By Peggy McIntosh

This article is now considered a ‘classic’ by anti-racist educators. It has been used in workshops and classes throughout the United States and Canada for many years. While people of color have described for years how whites benefit from unearned privileges, this is one of the first articles written by a white person on the topics.

It is suggested that participants read the article and discuss it. Participants can then write a list of additional ways in which whites are privileged in their own school and community setting. Or participants can be asked to keep a diary for the following week of white privilege that they notice (and in some cases challenge) in their daily lives. These can be shared and discussed the following week.

Through work to bring materials from Women’s Studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are over privileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to improve women’s status, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can’t or won’t support the idea of lessening men’s. Denials, which amount to taboos, surround the subject of advantages, which men gain from women’s disadvantages.

These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened or ended.

Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of white privilege, which was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege which puts me at an advantage.

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.

Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in Women’s Studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, “ Having described it what will I do to lessen or end it?”

After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are justly seen as oppressive, even when we don’t see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.

My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which will allow “them“ to be more like “us.”

I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege on my life. I have chosen those conditions which I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographical location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. 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.

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area, which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

3. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

6. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

7. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

8. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

9. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can cut my hair.

10. 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.

11. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

12. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.

13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

14. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

15. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

16. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.

17. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.

18. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race.

19. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.

20. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazines featuring people of my race.

21. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.

22. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on the job suspect that I got it because of race.

23. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the place I have chosen.

24. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help my race will not work against me.

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

26. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin.

I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one’s life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.

In unpacking this invisible backpack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience which I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant and destructive.

I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions which were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turf, and Iwas among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways, and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.

In proportion as my racial group was being confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit in turn upon people of color.

For this reason, the word ”privilege” now seems to be misleading. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work to systematically over empower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one’s race or sex.

I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power conferred systematically. Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the ignored groups.

We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantages which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen as a privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them. This paper results from a process of coming to see that some of the power which I originally saw as attendant on being a human being in the U.S. consisted in unearned advantage and conferred dominance.

I have met very few men who are truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance and if so, what will we do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most of our white students in the U.S. think that racism doesn’t affect them because they are not people of color, they do not see “whiteness” as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion or sexual orientation.

Difficulties and dangers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since racism, sexism and heterosexism are not the same, the advantaging associated with them should not be seen as the same.

In addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned advantage which rest more on social class, economic class, race, religion, sex and ethnic identity than on other factors. Still, all of the oppressions are interlocking, as the Combahee River Collective Statement of 1977 continues to remind us eloquently.

One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms which we can see and embedded forms which as a member of the dominant group one is not taught to see.

In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in the invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.

Disapproving of the systems won’t be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitudes. (But) a “white” skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us.

Individual acts can palliate, but cannot end, these problems.

To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making thesetaboo subjects. 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.

It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male
advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power, and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.

Though systemic change takes many decades there are pressing questions for me and I imagine for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned.

What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage to weaken hidden systems of advantage and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily-awarded power to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.

Peggy McIntosh is Associate Director of the Wellesley College Center for Research for Women.

Reprinted by permission of the author. This essay is excerpted from her working paper. “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies.”Copyright 1988 by Peggy McIntosh.

I hope those who said such hurtful things will go back and reread their comments and realize how insensitive they have been.
This article is not about proving someone wrong, it is about learning from mistakes.

This is a courageous article and it takes courageous listening on the part of a white person to read it and not become defensive or angry. Creating community at Allegheny (or anywhere) takes courage as we learn that our actions, however innocent they seem to us, can cause pain for others. Our eyes are opened. This article gives us an opportunity to grow more caring and careful.