Yuanting Xiong
Professor Courtney Stanton
English Comp. 101
May 4, 2014
Invisible Privilege
Peggy McIntosh, the author of “White Privilege: The Invisible Knapsack”, looks at white privilege，
starting from her recognition of male privilege. McIntosh, as a white person, cannot easily imagine how
people enjoy special privilege of being a white man. However, as a woman, she is familiar with the
unfair situations between men and women. She mentions people always talking about how they will
raise women’s status, “but they can’t or won’t support the idea of lessening men’s status” (McIntosh
351), which is the unearned advantage of men. Led by this analogy, McIntosh draws the reasonable
conclusion of a metaphorical “invisible knapsack” of white privileges by listing fifty different unearned
advantages of white privilege. Judith Lorber also discusses male privilege in the article “From Believing
Is Seeing”. She thinks that society divides people into two classes—male and female. However, in fact
there is no biological difference between them. Both McIntosh and Lorber support that white people and
men all have privileges. The invisible knapsack could also apply to Lorber’s idea, and Lorber also brings
up some new ideas that McIntosh does not mention. McIntosh tries to make people realize that they are
practicing these privileges on a daily basis. In addition, Lorber claims that unprivileged group, women,
usually forced by privileged group, male, to give up rights and opportunities, which also could apply to
metaphor of McIntosh.
McIntosh coins the term “invisible knapsack” which could also apply to Lorber’s idea, because both
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McIntosh and Lorber discuss how privileged people try to keep their unearned advantages invisible, in
their articles. On one hand, McIntosh points out, “Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the
United States think that racism doesn’t affect them because they are not people of color” (McIntosh
356). This kind of education favors protection of white people by keeping them away “from many kinds
of hostility, distress, and violence” (McIntosh 355). What McIntosh tries to say is that white people are
not realizing their privilege because of the education they have received, which makes it difficult for
them to know those privileges they own and practice them every day. Under the protective domes of
white education, people who have the invisible knapsack do not have any clues to notice the unearned
advantages they are born with. On the other hand, in Lorber’s article, she illustrates another way to keep
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