The Invisible Knapsack

McInstosh writes about many interesting things in her piece "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" and forces the reader to really question his or her past experiences. I was interested in her intimate writing style in which she allowed for the reader to learn more about her own life as a white female and draw from her examples (not often does one find an author who writes so candidly about these issues). Although she brings attention to the male advantage in our society, she spends more time critiquing the idea of white advantages. I particularly like how she modeled the problems and possible solutions to white privilege to ideas concerning male privilege, which seems easier to discuss or talk about. Many times people feel uncomfortable acknowledging issues about race, and this is certainly not always true for issues concerning sex. Additionally, I liked how the author, through her words, urged the reader to remember his or her upbringing, family life, and social circles. By asking the reader to do such, the author can really affirm her point that people are quite often unaware, or even discomforted, of the privileges that they have in their lives. The author does a great job of making the reader question the present state and the ways in which they got there. Lastly, I enjoyed how at the end of the piece McIntosh focuses on this idea of silence. She questions our acceptance of it and our reasons for maintaining a past of privilege. In do so, the author allows for the reader to think of the principles, value systems, and ethics that we hold to an important standard in this country. Do we ever really lead the lives that we hope to?
We see this issue, or problem for that matter, of privilege in many areas of our daily lives. Unfortunately, there will probably always be some relative form of privilege in our society since it is driven by capitalism, or an open-market. We see the presence of privilege when applying for school, looking for jobs, finding homes, and in many other areas as well. Sometimes I get nervous that the invisible backpack will always be there for some since they are not used to living their lives any other way.
Although the piece is different from many that we have read, I can see how the issue of power struggles and dualism arise. In the case of this piece, the duality arises between those who are privileged and those who are not. It almost seems as though things in our society can so simply be divided into two categories. The author of "I can fix it!' certainly makes it seem this way as she breaks her piece into two parts- one for white people and the other for colored people. These categories, as we have seen with sex, gender, and sexuality, are not quite as fixed as people would like. Although McIntosh creates a little bit of a binary in her piece, she still puts forth the effort to question why the binary exists. I give her much credit for talking about an issue that many never really want to face.