Unpacking the Knapsack of Privilege Reaction

I remember one day while I was eating at the dining hall, the television above was airing Fox News. A blonde, middle aged reporter and a man whose face I don't remember seemed to be in a debate on split screen over some issue concerning race. The man seemed to be building up to an effective closing statement when the reporter suddenly cut him off. "No, I don't want to hear it. There is no more racism in this country," she said. Initially, her comment made me feel angry at her arrogance and frustrated at her ignorance. But after reading McIntosh, I thought back to those feelings and realized how abrupt they may have been. After all, this reporter, most likely enjoying a more financially comfortable lifestyle would have much less exposure and interaction with the major issues plaguing those who had to work just a little bit harder and had less systematic advantages to making a living in this country. Living a life of ease does make one inexperienced with hardship. Or maybe she just was that ignorant. I'm not sure. But that may not matter. What does matter is that I didn't know her background-whether she was born into privilege or worked hard to climb up that ladder-so making assumptions about her remark was pretty premature. In turn, she may not have been well-informed about racism (either building up this idea of racism as all about slavery and lynchings but ignoring more subtle aspects such as unspoken prejudices and stereotypes) or maybe her awareness of modern race issues in the US was very limited. Either way, her response to the idea of racism and my response to her comment both relied on assumptions based on perception. And I think this may be the point of McIntosh's article. With the knapsack metaphor, she is merely circling back to the central issue of racism: it's a matter of perception. Because the idea of white normality has been subtly embedded into the social conscious, she had not been aware of these privileges to being white because white is not thought of in racial terms as other minorities are. The idea that whites are a normality is so because history was written that way after having followed that pattern.

Anyways this is what I thought after reading the article. Sorry if its a little confusing in some places but I do a lot of 'stream of thought' writing. Thanks for reading!