Diversity Awareness Month activities continue tonight with Peggy McIntosh, a renowned gender, race and sexuality lecturer and researcher speaking in Baker Center Ballroom. McIntosh, associate director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, is known for her groundbreaking essay, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, which explores the unearned advantages of discrimination. She spoke with The Post's Ashley Luthern about her experiences with white privilege.
The Post: What will you focus on during your speech tonight?
Peggy McIntosh: I'll tell the story of how I came to see that I had white privilege and what I can do about it, and how it's not a matter of blame, shame or guilt. In order to see white skin privilege, it's necessary to see it in a systemic way. Not looking at just individuals, but the circumstances that surround our lives, that we're born into G?
Post: How did the metaphor of a knapsack come to you?
McIntosh: It simply seemed a good comparison. I knew I had something that I hadn't earned, and it was invisible to me, but people who didn't have the knapsack could see it on my back. It was a weightless, invisible knapsack that I was given at birth G?
Post: You've compiled lists of daily effects of white privilege; what are some of the most striking to you?
McIntosh: One of the most striking is that I can buy bandages that are so-called flesh color that can more or less match my skin G?
Post: How do you think white students can begin to view being white as a race?
McIntosh: The best way is not to preach, but to tell my own story of how I came to see that I'm white G? It works. People who didn't know they were white very often go away from my talks saying that this the first time that they realize that they have racial experience, too.
Post: What do you think about International, African-American and Women's Studies (programs) in universities, and how do these programs help students become aware of these ideas of white privilege?
McIntosh: It says something about where OU is going, because they take away the idea that there's one pool of knowledge that describes everybody G?
Post: Do you think it's interesting or paradoxical to note that you're bringing the perspective of a white woman to diversity month?
McIntosh: Not at all, because usually it's quite welcome for people of color to come hear about the racial experience of a white woman G? I've been to enough campuses and have had enough experience, and usually it's people of color who invite me to the campus because they want their white colleagues to hear this.
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Ashley Luthern
