Using privilege helpfully
As a progressive female professor at Wellesley College in the 1980s, Peggy McIntosh refused to believe she could be contributing to the oppression of others. She recalls trying to come up with any instance in which she was benefiting from unearned privilege in her everyday life. “In the middle of the night, up swam an example,” said McIntosh, now associate director of the Wellesley Centers for Women and a highly regarded anti-racism activist. “I flicked on the light and I wrote it down. In the next three months, 46 examples came to me,” everything from “I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group” to “I can choose blemish cover or bandages in ‘flesh’ color and have them more or less match my skin.” That list became a groundbreaking article, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” that turned out to be the most important work of McIntosh’s...