Racism Quotes by Peggy McIntosh

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…

— Peggy McIntosh

It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as…

— Peggy McIntosh

White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.

— Peggy McIntosh

White privilege is the unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements benefits and choices bestowed on people solely because they are white. Generally white…

— Peggy McIntosh

Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of…

— Peggy McIntosh

As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught…

— Peggy McIntosh

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

— Peggy McIntosh

I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group

— Peggy McIntosh

Privilege exists when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than…

— Peggy McIntosh

For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing…

— Peggy McIntosh

one question for me and others like me is whether ... we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred…

— Peggy McIntosh

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege.

— Peggy McIntosh

Whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit…

— Peggy McIntosh

Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate.

— Peggy McIntosh