White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (1989) 1

In 1989, McIntosh published “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” an excerpt of her 1988 paper “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies.” The “Knapsack” explores the layers of denial that protect white privilege, twenty-six ordinary and daily examples of white privilege, and the complex, interlocking nature of privilege. McIntosh distinguishes between conditions that systematically over-empower certain groups to dominate over other groups and conditions that should be the norm in a just society.