Another college essay with nowhere to go
Peggy McIntosh’s “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of White Privilege” takes a novel approach to the concept of the hidden benefits of living-while-white that, for the year of its publishing, must have been quite groundbreaking. There is no doubt this essay was written by McIntosh because it needed to be; there is even less doubt that the term “white privilege” in her day conjured much more sighing from the white community than it does now, this is due to no one, regardless of skin color, responding well to the mirror being held up in front of them, especially not by someone else. Especially not by a woman. White privilege does not only point to an invisible quality to life that white people inhabit, but it also points to how we refuse to look at ourselves objectively because we do not like what we see, like an addict hostile to an overdue intervention. This essay was written because white privilege eats culture.
Peggy McIntosh’s essay was published in the late nineteen eighties, it is difficult to talk about the eighties without bringing up this nation’s history, because to watch the events unfold since the nation’s birth is to soberly see the nineteen eighties and Reagan’s America as the nation fulfilling its destiny as a faceless, economic powerhouse that relies on working class and minority groups to lay the foundations through state-sanctioned slavery (see section 1 of the 13th Amendment) in combination with destruction of social programs and mandatory minimums, not to mention Iran-Contra, but I digress.
Calvin Coolidge famously said, “The business of America is business,” and business does not account for individual persons, this would be a radical departure from the nature of business which sets profits above all else and this is America. It cannot be overstated that white privilege is a side effect, not the cause, of the business of America. Frankly, just as a patriarchal society harms men as much as it harms women so does white privilege harm the white community because it establishes the group in a false reality, far away from the real world, “I can turn on the television or to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented” (McIntosh 2). This, on the surface, seems like an even unconscious form of control (and it is), but looking at it deeper what is revealed is a group of people that literally cannot see past themselves.
Manifest destiny was a cultural belief “that the United States had a divinely appointed mission, so obvious to be beyond dispute, to occupy all of North America” giving “Americans […] a far better title to western lands than could be provided by any international treaty, right of discovery, or ling-term settlement” (Foner 350-351). This cultural belief has stayed within the hearts of the descendants of those settlers, namely, the white community who see themselves in the settlers gracing the silver screen and literature. This belief is so central to the ethos of white privilege it gets lost as a particular aspect of it while we choose to appreciate the smaller units of privilege, “I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race” or “I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me” (McIntosh 4). These examples are important, but they are like investigating the water molecules fish use to excavate oxygen rather than the large body that the fish swim in, ambivalent to their situation as said fish.
It would be a disservice to call out white privilege for what it is, systematic erasure of diversity and culture, without taking a step further and saying that it is also erasing those same white people who have the ability to participate in the privilege without knowing they are at all. White privilege is such that even recognizing it does nothing to negate the typical benefits lying in the invisible system itself, “disapproving of the system won’t be enough to change them” (McIntosh 6). We must go deeper and understand the dimensions and “pattern running through the matrix of white privilege” (McIntosh 5), and that womb is the business of America, which is business.
Now, the nature of business is to pursue efficiency as a means to profit for profit’s sake. This may sound coarse, but around the time Coolidge was quoted affirming the quintessence of America, that same matrix was developing eugenics as a means toward profitability. Eugenics, through the lens of business, is a method of efficiency: killing those the society deems less-than-others (and those who speak truth to power) through taking social Darwinism to its ultimate end by, ironically, taking it into society’s hands. As if not even evolution is efficient enough.
Eugenics in relation to white privilege is not a stretch, but precedent, as seen in the “Indian schools” that sought to “Kill the Indian, save the man” by their institution, which would be repugnant enough without the additional insult that the foundation of these schools were paved by men with good intentions, just like the road to hell it is difficult to see one is on it without seeing past themselves and objectively evaluating the situation. The Indian schools were a great tragedy in American business, which we must not forget is central to the relationship between communities within its network, but they were a tragedy that functioned as bad business and nothing else. The persons that were affected by these schools cannot be mended, because businesses do not mend unless there is a profitable end, the business of America cut its losses and the legs of the tribes that it decimated instead of repairing the damage. It is important to recognize that this is America, when we talk about white privilege any moral lens, we could use obfuscates identifying the problem: white people are advantageous within this system because it is efficient, not because the system cares about white people, specifically.
This is the core issue that encompasses white privilege and the business of America. The system is integral and separate from the white experience which serves to keep white people within a bubble of complacency, a similar bubble that Dr. King references in his letter from the Birmingham jail calling out “moderate whites” as the great stumbling block for racial progress. More so than not wanting to rock the boat or deal with the injustices meted out toward their brothers and sisters of a different skin white people could simply not be bothered to take up arms against a system that values them higher than any other group. This is covetousness which is idolatry.
Covetousness comes from the Greek word, πλεονεξία, pronounced “pleonexia.” meaning advantage and desire for more; lusting over the things that do not belong to oneself, more than a man’s daily bread. The system of white privilege instills this covetousness in the same manner that white moderates were the opposition to race relations’ momentum in the nineteen sixties based on those same white people not wanting to lose what they had, which was not theirs to begin with, because what they held on to was more of what belongs to everyone. This mentality, this covetousness, is what begets the white community’s, unconscious, social engineering creating a world to fit their image or, “I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion” (McIntosh 3). It’s outrageous looking at whatever constitutes white culture as having the assumed advantage to take what is not theirs as well as having the insane ability to ignore what it wills to ignore. This is insane because it is not reality. It is creating a different one. It is living in a different one that has been created for you.
This is ridiculous.
Manifest destiny was a spiritual successor to the business of eugenics in this country; it devoured everything in its path from coast to coast creating a wake of white foam. White privilege is this same cultural belief, but in reverse. The destiny has been fulfilled; it had been fulfilled in Reagan’s America by the time Peggy McIntosh published this essay. It was manifest in the religious right’s takeover of American politics, fulfilling the country’s genesis and it’s vision of the future. The first manifestation of this destiny being fulfilled was through the expansion West, that for lack of any better term can be defined as a campaign, however once the destruction of culture and peoples has passed what then? The spirit of the settler remains within the heart of white privilege, still seeking the “wild” and “exotic” lands to tame, therefore the diversity that crops up from the ashes left by oblivion is devoured as well.
For example, Native American headdresses, the sombrero, even St. Patrick’s Day have all become cheap imitations of what they represent, socially cannibalized by the white community who have the privilege of never needing to understand historical context or their own position within a larger framework, because whatever larger framework exists when it does not have a place for the white community it is rejected, devalued, and ignored. Until it, too, becomes another excuse for white people to dress-up in an unconscious mockery of other.
The reason white privilege works against the greater community of white people is due to this cultural dissolution and diffusing of other, because the destruction of diversity does not a personality trait make. If we look at an individual’s own attempts at making something that does not fit them, is something more than they are or need, than they destroy that thing as well as destroy a part of themselves. Unfortunately, white privilege only fits in the greater schema of American business as much as it is efficient, and if there is nothing stopping the pursuit of profits than there is nothing stopping the business of America continuing to cannibalize itself with white people taking full advantage of the consumption, but when there is nothing left to consume than it will finally be revealed that there is no motivation behind these practices. There is no God, because the white community commodified a white savior; there is no racial harmony, because the white community will not give up what it does not own; there are no more riches because they have been eaten. There is nothing. And when you try conforming the world to fit your image while your image is bereft of reality than even reality ceases to exist. White privilege is the eugenics minister sterling himself, Dr. Kellogg eating his own product. White privilege is a feedback loop where the echo gets shorter and the lights, dimmer. White privilege, divinely appointed, so obvious to be beyond dispute, is a living addiction.
Witness, NM 