The most creative piece of

The most creative piece of mail I received in response to the essay also was the most confused. In a padded envelope from Clement, Minn., came a brand-new can of Kiwi Shoe Polish, black. Because there was no note or letter, I have to guess at my correspondent's message, but I assume the person was suggesting that if I felt so bad about being white, I might want to make myself black. But, of course, I don't feel bad about being white. The only motivation I might have to want to be black -- to be something I am not -- would be pathological guilt over my privilege. In these matters, guilt is a coward's way out, an attempt to avoid the moral and political questions. As I made clear in the original essay, there is no way to give up the privilege; the society we live in confers it upon us, no matter what we want. So, I don't feel guilty about being white in a white supremacist society, but I feel an especially strong moral obligation to engage in collective political activity to try to change the society because I benefit from the injustice.
Adding Robert Jensen's two essays, White Privilege Shapes the U.S. and Why the System of White Privilege Is Wrong, to Peggy McIntosh's Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack brings the count of accessible literature about white privilege to ... 3. If you're white and haven't yet commited yourself to ending racial injustice, read these essays and then ask yourself why not? thanks to BoyCaught for the link to an About.com article on white privilege.
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