Peggy McIntosh's "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack"

After writing my previous post, I was reminded of American Peggy McIntosh’s 1989 essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack”. This essay was a study in how race and colour play a role in society; that is, how it affords both advantages and disadvantages. McIntosh states that white privilege is like "an invisible package of unearned assets which she could count on cashing in each day, but about which [she] was 'meant' to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless backpack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks".  (Tim Krier has written an essay dissecting McIntosh's here.)

Her essay is an interesting read. How it relates to my previous post is that being able to eschew my previous philosophical obsessions and focus solely on having fun is part of my own invisible back pack. But perhaps if we look at it on a global scale the contents of my invisible back pack are not focused solely on race or colour but on the luxuries afforded to me because I was born and live in a wealthy functional Western country.

I have a job that enables me to feed and clothe myself and put a nice roof over my head – even if I am renting. If I want to change my job it is relatively easy to do. If, for some reason, I find myself out of work – which has happened to me in the past – I can rely on government services to provide me with an income and rent assistance until I can find a job. And if I want to go to university to study, I can also get an allowance from the government to help me do this. I can turn on the tap in the kitchen and get clean, fresh drinking water. I can walk into a supermarket and buy food. When I am ill there is a clinic around the corner from my house where I can visit a doctor and it won’t cost me a cent because through paying my taxes there is Medicare. I also have the option to take out private health insurance, something I have never been without since I was born. When I want to take a holiday I can because I get 4 weeks’ paid annual leave a year. I also get 10 days paid sick or carer’s leave a year and in the event I am really ill, after 3 months arrangements through employer will ensure I receive 75% of my wage. If I had children, and they were ill, my employer would let me leave work to care for them.

If I think even more about this I realise that I can walk around in public with no fear of being shot, of a bomb being dropped on me or stepping on a cluster bomb. I have no need to seek asylum, hop on a leaky boat to escape my warring country or pay a coyote to get over the US border in seek of work. I am not trapped in an occupied territory, living in a land that has known nothing but war, or in a country that is ravaged by AIDS. I don’t have to walk miles to get water or to get to a UN run refugee camp. I don’t have to seek out food packages from international charities or watch children die from malnutrition.

I can have fun all the time. And I can - because I am able to - have fun because by some strange twist of fate I ended up being born here in this relatively safe country where, compared to the rest of the world I can live a beautiful life.