Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

Examine your privilege.

The link above brings you to 3 things: the first is Peggy McIntosh's famous article on White Privilege; the second is a guide for White people on how to personally respond to racism written by damali ayo; and the last is an essay taken from Robert Jensen's book The Heart of Whiteness.

Jensen's book is INCREDIBLE. It was one of the things that really pushed me into anti-racist work and made me realize what my role in racism and oppression is. It's a short book, and I remember sitting down one night and working my way through it. I was crying by the end, overwhelmed by a sense of guilt after realizing that I had a lot of racist thoughts and internalized superiority floating around inside me that I'd never before been aware of. In fact, this was the first time I had ever heard of such a thing as "internalized superiority". Five years of social work education and degrees, and the idea had not so much as been hinted at!

So this 'white guilt' that was suddenly hanging over my head - what was that rooted in? Was this a personal epiphany? Had my family or society told me along the way that I should have guilt for not only our history, but our present situation? I've tried to figure this out, and it's really difficult to discern where the roots lie. I wouldn't say that white guilt is an institutionally supported feeling - certainly, most of the institutions in this country are built up to make White folks feel more comfortable with themselves.  And my family doesn't really talk about issues of race and oppression around the dinner table. I've concluded that the standards I and my education have placed on myself, along with those expectations of my peers to be good, kind, and fair, create dissonance with those pieces of my inner racist self. I know that I've had conversations with people of color who also struggle to understand where this sense of "white guilt" comes from.

In the end, I don't think it's a hugely productive emotion. It can serve as a motivator to push past it, but what you move past the guilt into depends on how uncomfortable you want to be. It's easy to push past the guilt - or rather, deny the guilt - and go back to blissful ignorance. It's harder to push past the guilt into a deeper understanding of oneself and one's role in a generally oppressive system. This is what I'm constantly striving for.