Peggy McIntosh Quotes

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

Peggy McIntosh

#2. 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.

Peggy McIntosh

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

Peggy McIntosh

#4. 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.

Peggy McIntosh

#5. White privilege is the unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements benefits and choices bestowed on people solely because they are white. Generally white people who experience such privilege do so without being conscious of it.

Peggy McIntosh

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

Peggy McIntosh

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

Peggy McIntosh

#8. 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.

Peggy McIntosh

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

Peggy McIntosh

#10. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that 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.

Peggy McIntosh

#11. 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 that will allow 'them' to be more like 'us'..

Peggy McIntosh