Sam Fulwood III: The conundrum of white-male privilege

  A pair of emails crossed my desk yesterday that plunged me down a rabbit hole and into an exploration of white-male privilege—it was an amazing trip.

  My understanding of the phrase "white-male privilege" tracks along the lines laid down by feminist writer and academic activist Peggy McIntosh, a senior research scientist and associate director of the Wellesley Centers for Women, whose 1988 essay coined the phrase "invisible knapsack" as a metaphor for the benefits "of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks" that white Americans disproportionately carry compared with black and other Americans of color. As McIntosh writes, the weightless and invisible backpack carried by white males is the largest and most expansive of all, granting them access to the most spaces with the least doubts about their sense of place or authority.