[Libs-Or] More on White Privilege

[Matthew Baiocchi]

Yesterday I wrote a bit about what white privilege is, but it didn't cover all of what white privilege is. White privilege is not just not experiencing the disadvantages that BIPOC so often face. Peggy McIntosh explains in her article from 1989(1), "As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something which 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."


She explains how whiteness is the dominant culture in so many of our institutions and systems and how easily that meant she could navigate those systems, "I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions which were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turf, and I was among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways, and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely."


Finally, Peggy McIntosh lists 26 ways in which she experiences white privilege, then states, "I repeatedly forgot each of the

realizations on this list until I wrote it down. 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."

You should read her list of 26 items from the article linked below and see how our libraries, and library organizations and associations promote white privilege and white supremacy...and how we benefit from that.


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1 -White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (PDF), https://psychology.umbc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2016/10/White-Privilege_McIntosh-1989.pdf


Matthew Baiocchi
REFERENCE LIBRARIAN
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