Current Public Workshop Offering: What Happened to Us
November 7-9, 2023
Giving Up Privilege: How "White Privilege" Keeps White Supremacy in Place
Since Peggy McIntosh introduced the "invisible knapsack of white privilege” into the racial justice lexicon, it has become a way to describe White people's relationship to unearned power as well as a catchall phrase for experiences which are not privilege at all. The misunderstanding and misuse of "privilege" sows separation, breeds guilt and defensiveness, and maintains White dominance. In our 2023 Fall Healing Together Series, you will learn to differentiate between three distinct phenomena that have been lumped into “White Privilege”: 1) Human Rights, 2) Systemic Obliviousness, and, 3) Entitlement. We will understand how “benefit” and “advantage” narratives of “privilege” undermine solidarity, reinforce White supremacy, encourage assimilation, and perpetuate paternalism. We will also explore how “privilege” denies the costs to White people as non-targets of racism: loss of humanity, connection, culture, and belonging.
"As long as we continue to use the language of ‘privilege’ to connote ‘advantages,’ we reinforce the very system of White supremacy that created racism in the first place and deny the healing White people must do.”
– Nanci E. Luna Jiménez