Through work to create men's studies into college curriculum, I have often noticed women's unwillingness to grant that they are over privileged, even though they may grant that men are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to improve men's status, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the idea of lessening women's. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that women gain from men's disadvantages. These denials protect female privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened, or ended.

Thinking through unacknowledged female privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there are most likely a phenomenon of black privilege that was similarly denied and protected. 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 its corollary aspects, white reductivism, which puts me at a disadvantage.

I think blacks are carefully taught not to recognize black privilege, as females are taught not to recognize female privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have black privilege. I have come to see black privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that blacks can count on cashing in each day, but about which I and blacks were "meant" to remain oblivious. Black privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, welfare, affirmative action, and blank checks.

Describing black privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in the yet to be recognized field of Men's Studies work to reveal female privilege and ask women to give up some of their power, so one who writes about having black privilege must ask, "Having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?"

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

My schooling, as a white male, gave me no training in seeing myself as a victim, as an unfairly disadvantaged person, or as a participant in a methodically and purposefully damaged male Caucasian culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on my individual moral will, and that included accepting and paying for the demands of non-whites and females.  My schooling followed the pattern of  Elizabeth Minnich.  She 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".  Males and Whites are thus fooled into thinking they have as much power as is theirs by right, even while they help in the work to diminish male and white rights.

I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white rights reductions in my life. I have chosen conditions which women scholars have chosen that -- in my case -- attach somewhat more to skin color rights reduction 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 white coworkers, friends and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place, and line of work can count on most of these conditions.

I 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.

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time, but -- as a White -- it is much more difficult to be in the company of all Black people.
2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live, but I will not get any special rent incentives or affirmative action help.
3. I can not be sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.  If I move into a neighborhood of a different skin color I fear I will be marked as an outsider and be the victim of assault or other crimes.
4. In such a neighborhood I cannot go shopping alone most of the time, for fear  I will be harassed.
5. I cannot turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race being widely championed by our political leaders.  Any politician that did talk about white's rights would be labeled a racist.
6. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am told our success has been on achieved on the backs of  people of other colors. 
7. I can not be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the virtues of their race.
8. If I want to, I can be pretty sure I will not find a publisher for this piece on black privilege.
9. I cannot go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race exclusively represented, into a public school and find the education which fits  with my cultural traditions, nor into a work environment that reflects my cultural traditions.  Indeed, I may be denied a job because I am White.
10. No matter what I do in life, I cannot count on my skin color to provide me with legal advantages.
11. I cannot arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them, because the politicians, especially those in the democrat party, are always finding ways to develop hatred of whites.
12. I cannot write a single word about my concerns for black privileges, without having people attribute these choices to the racism of my race.
13. I cannot speak in public to a powerful black group without putting my race on trial.
14. I cannot do well in a challenging situation and expect any recognition from black groups or black media.
15. I am always assumed, when speaking about black privileges, to be speaking for racist whites.
16. I cannot remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color without being reproached for being an uncaring white.
17. I cannot criticize our government's approach to black (or female) privileges without being totally dismissed.  I cannot talk about how much I fear the government's policies and behavior without being seen as a bigot.
18. I can be pretty sure that if I have any contact with government job programs I will be facing a person that is not white.
19. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can not be sure I haven't been singled out because of my opinions on racial and sexist issues.
20. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race and culture who have failed to do the right thing with regards to race, sex and other cultural issues.
21. I cannot go to black or women's organizations to discuss views of black and female privileges without being isolated, out-of-place, out numbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
22. I cannot take a job with an affirmative action employer without having some coworkers wonder how I got the job when a black did not.
23. I cannot choose to use any public accommodation or public privilege without wondering if being white will somehow put me at a legal disadvantage.
24. I can be sure that if I need legal or adoption help, my race will work against me.
25. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need to review each negative episode or situation to see whether it has racial overtones.
26. I cannot listen to music or witness sporting events where the participants will include a reasonable percentage of competitors who more or less match my skin.

I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me black privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid even discussing it is great, for in discussing it I must give up the myth of equal opportunity. 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 knapsack of black privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience which I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these prerequisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant.  Of course, no differentiated taxonomy is possible as long as politicians create laws purposely designed to create more rights for blacks and women.

I see a pattern running through the matrix of black 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 I was not supposed to control the turf.. My skin color and sex was a sign that I was to be legally turned into a second class citizen and I should accept it as only being a natural accommodation to those of other races, whose parents and grand parents had been second class citizens. For any move I was educated to want to make I was taught to think of myself as being worthy of a job based upon meritocracy.  Now, I am aware I might be rejected from a job or housing opportunity because of legal policies favoring non whites. I could not freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the multiple minority  cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could not criticize it fairly or freely.

In proportion -- as my racial group was being made to feel over privileged -- other groups were being made confident, comfortable, and protected by laws creating minority privileges. Whiteness made me the victim of  hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to accept from people of color. For this reason, the word "privilege" now seems to me misleading. We 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 of your color will be decent to you, or that your race or sex (if you are the right color or sex) will count for you in court and that unequal treatment should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to take advantage of less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders, demand reparations and otherwise disparage the evil males and whites in society.

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 privilege for minorities. 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. was consistently being attacked and minimized because I was a male and a white.

I have met very few women who are truly distressed about systemic, unearned female advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others like me is whether men will be like them, or whether men will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race and sex advantages and conferred legal dominance and if so, what men and whites will do to lessen them. In any case, men and whites need to do more work in identifying how the increased legal standing of blacks and females actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the U.S. think that racism is purely a "white thing" and is evil.  These youngsters do not "blackness" or "feminism" as examples of those wanting to reduce white or male rights. 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 and the growing legal attempts to minimize whites and males.  They take both active forms which we can see and embedded forms which -- as a member of the minority and majority group -- one is taught not to see. If a white child is taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of their group, they will fail to recognize that racism is also a legal system conferring unearned racial dominance to non whites.

Disapproving of the legal systems won't be enough to change them. Whites were taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitudes. But, the laws that followed because of the good will of so many whites, have become a growing barrier for white skin in the United States.  A white skin closes many doors for whites whether or not they are the best candidates for the job, housing, grant or scholarship. Individual acts can palliate, but cannot end, these problems.

To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their government creation. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned but legally granted advantage and conferred dominance by making these taboo subjects. What college, for example, will be able to introduce a male studies program, or a white culture program without raising eyebrows?  Most talk by minorities about equal opportunity seems to be now 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 black advantage, like obliviousness about female advantage, is kept strongly acculturated 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 special interest groups that support politicians.

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 increasing penalties of being white or male. What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching women and blacks, it is not an open question whether they will choose to use unearned advantage to take jobs, scholarships and other rights from men and whites.

This paper borrows heavily on a paper written Peggy McIntosh who is an  associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. Her essay was excerpted from Working Paper 189. "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies" (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $4.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181 The working paper contains a longer list of privileges.

However, this paper is completely at odds with Ms. McIntosh's conclusions which were that the white race and males hav more unearned privileges than blacks and females.  To see her article, click here:   White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack