Peggy McIntosh famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

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.
-- Peggy McIntosh

#Country #Giving Up #Doors
Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.
-- Peggy McIntosh

#Opportunity #White Privilege #Racism
one question for me and others like me is whether ... we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance and, if so, what we will do to lessen them.
-- Peggy McIntosh

#Race #White Privilege #Racism
It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.
-- Peggy McIntosh

#Hands #White Privilege #Numbers
If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.
-- Peggy McIntosh

#Years #Negative #Needs
I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege.
-- Peggy McIntosh

#Thinking #White Privilege #Taught
Whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow 'them' to be more like 'us'..
-- Peggy McIntosh

#Thinking #Average #Taught
Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate.
-- Peggy McIntosh

#Facts #Privilege #Looks
I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.
-- Peggy McIntosh

#Jobs #Race #Action
White privilege is the unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements benefits and choices bestowed on people solely because they are white. Generally white people who experience such privilege do so without being conscious of it.
-- Peggy McIntosh

#White Privilege #People #Choices
As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.
-- Peggy McIntosh

#White Privilege #Racism #Taught
Privilege exists when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything theyâ€™ve done or failed to do. Access to privilege doesnâ€™t determine oneâ€™s outcomes, but it is definitely an asset that makes it more likely that whatever talent, ability, and aspirations a person with privilege has will result in something positive for them.
-- Peggy McIntosh

#Done #Outcomes #Privilege
White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.
-- Peggy McIntosh

#White Privilege #Clothes #Special
I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group
-- Peggy McIntosh

#Racism #Dominance #Taught

You may also like:

Audre Lorde
Writer
Barack Obama
44th U.S. President
Bell Hooks
Author
Beverly Daniel Tatum
Professor
David Duke
Writer
Jared Taylor
Journalist
Jean Baker Miller
Psychiatrist
Kimberle Williams Crenshaw
Lisa Delpit
Education Reform Leader
Marilyn Frye
Philosopher
Michael Eric Dyson
Author
Michael Kimmel
Professor
Michelle Alexander
Professor
Noel Ignatiev
Historian
Patricia Hill Collins
Professor
Paul Kivel
Writer
Paula Gunn Allen
Poet
Paula Rothenberg
Author
Robert Jensen
Professor
Tim Wise
Activist