Back when I was still in the Long, Long Wait for my first Chinese daughter, I sort of refused to read all the parenting books that many of my wait-mates were plowing through. Instead, I absorbed as much Chinese history as I could. At the same time, being vaguely academically inclined, I started paying more attention to discussions that involved race, especially, like, Asians in America, since hey, I was about to be in an Asian-American family. Then, I discovered Jane Jeong Trenka's blog (now just a webpage), tied to her memoir about growing up as a Korean adoptee in lily-white rural Minnesota.

It was on her blog that I ran into this thing, which I'd seen before, but which suddenly seemed Very Important to Know. It's the Invisible Backpack. Or, rather, it's "Unpacking the Invisible Backpack" by Peggy McIntosh. It's an attempt, a pretty good one, I think, to look at what it means to be white, which most of us think of as "normal" in this society. The default setting.

One of the things that really *pinged* for me with this essay was that my parents grew up in a culture where race really mattered. They were South Africans. I spent some time in South Africa during the apartheid years, and I remember trying to get my head around the concept of "honorary whites." There were three categories under apartheid: Black, White, and Coloured. Blacks were the Africans, the vast majority, consisting of dozens if not hundreds of different tribes and ethnic groups. Whites, easy, the descendents of Europeans (who'd been there since the 1600s, as they were fond of repeating). Coloureds were either mixed-race people or else people from the Indian subcontinent.

But Asians -- East Asians, like my then-unimagined daughter -- were much trickier, because unlike other places, South Africa was very up-front about the privileges of whiteness. So, for the most part, Asians were Coloureds -- Chinese, Cambodian, whatever. But favored trading partners like the Japanese and Taiwanese, they were Honorary Whites.

I always thought there was something funny about that category. Then, you know, started down the path towards my daughter, and there I am, wondering, "OK, is she going to be an Honorary White? What would that mean if I live in a place where the privileges aren't written down in the law?"

And then I found McIntosh's essay. The heart of it is a list -- a list of things that define what it means to be white. Things we don't normally think about.

Here's what she says:

My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as a morally neutral, normative, and average, also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which will allow “them” to be more like “us.”

I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions which I think in my case attack some what more to skin-color privilege that to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographical location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can see, my African American co-worker, friends and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place, and line of work cannot count on most of these conditions.



1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

3. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

6. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

7. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

8. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

9. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can cut my hair.

10. Whether I checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

11. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

12. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.

13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

14. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

15. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

16. 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.

17. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.

18. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race.

19. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.

20. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazine featuring people of my race.

21. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.

22. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of race.

23. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.

24. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.

25. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.

26. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin.



I repeatedly forgot each of the realization on this list until I wrote it down. For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one’s life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.

In unpacking this invisible backpack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience which I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant and destructive.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with everything in McIntosh's essay -- or even everything in the bit I quoted above... but, you know, I think it's important to think about.