White Privilege Knapsack

Peggy McIntosh, in 1989 developed a list that she called the "White Privilege Knapsack." She explains:

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... I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was 'meant' to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, code books, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear and blank checks.

This list is 50 items long. And it is a brief list of the many more options that could be available for understanding the for changing. I am sure that there would easily be more. I do not list them all out of respect for copyright, (I hope that the educational nature of this blog will keep me out of trouble).

One that specifically caught my eye for the leadership was this:

37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.

In my denomination finding someone who is willing to help you through the system of ordination is incredibly valuable. I realize that I was easily able to find someone of my own race to help me through this process. I furthermore realize that finding someone of my own race did not appear that they were trying to help me to get more of their race in ordained ministry.

Some others pieces of white privilege that have intersections with religious leadership include:

38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.
39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.
40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.

Peggy McIntosh explains that the most insidious part of white privilege is the pervasive ignorance white people have of the benefits that their skin tone gives them. As Juana Bordas in Salsa, Soul, and Spirit explains “If you are unaware of something, or do not recognize that it exists, you cannot address it.”

I have been aware of this list for quite a while. I have used it to teach students gathered for social justice groups. I have even made sure to reread it at least once a year, just to remind myself of what being a white American earns me without realizing it. It’s to live in the awareness of my privilege.

Yet, I didn’t personally apply it to my ordination path. To me, this has made me less immune to the very privileged idea that “Yeah, I know all of this already” and reminded me of some of the unearned benefits that I carry with me. It's good to make sure that I remain aware of the work that I need to do in order to recognize the privilege that I have.

Double Bind

I am currently vacuuming my apartment; I will be leading a meeting in this apartment in an hour. I have spent an hour and fifteen minutes cleaning my apartment and fifteen minutes writing the agenda. As I vacuum, I am rehearsing in my head over and over again the problems of women in leadership and chiding myself for this seemingly odd division of labor.

According to Alice H. Eagly and Linda L. Carli women in leadership are in a Double Bind:

Female leaders face a dilemma. the prescriptions for the female gender role stipulate that women be especially communal, and the prescriptions for most leadership roles stipulate that leaders be especially agentic. The communal woman is expected to be helpful and warm. She avoids being overly assertive or dominant, doesn't promote or very prominently display her accomplishments, and makes no overt to influence others. In contrast, the agentic leader is expected to be direct and assertive, exhibit confidence and competence, and exert influence over others.

These expectations create a double bind for women. Highly communal female leaders may be criticized for not being agentic enough. But female leaders who are highly agentic may be criticized for lacking communion.

I recognize that there is a very real sense of double bind in the expectations of women. Perhaps I am still young and idealistic, but I do think that there is a way around it. It's just that we women have to be both the ideal woman and the totally on top of it leader. My Double Bind is that I think that I have to be both the woman who takes time for building and cultivating relationships and the person who makes sure that critical tasks are accomplished in a way that includes speed and consistency.

The problem is there aren't actually enough hours in a day to be both agentic and communal. So in the end, women really do have to choose.

And vacuuming, despite all of my feminist conscious raising, despite all of my understanding and confidence in myself as a leader, despite all of my appreciation for the hard work of women before me in trying to break me from the entrapments of feminine gender presentation, is my choice. I'm still making sure that my apartment looks immaculate. I am prioritizing my status as a woman (who must have a clean apartment) over developing my leadership skills. While the agenda is important, I realize that I am absolutely convinced that I will not be taken as seriously if my apartment is the least little bit messy.

The way that I realize that the Double Bind works for me, is that I have to spend more time being a more perfect woman, so that I can be seen as a regular leader.

Advice

The best advice is the kind that listens to all the permutations of the long-winded problem and then thinks outside of the carefully made box that the problem was placed inside.

Contribution

In the game of contribution you wake up each day and bask in the notion that you are a gift to others.- Benjamin Zander

* ** *

I got a letter on my twenty-fifth birthday from an aunt and it was one of the best gifts that I have ever received. She always remembered my birthday. As a summer baby I never had a classroom celebrate my birthday and had only two people show up for bowling. Diminished expectations grew, I even avoided my birthday all together. Despite this blasé attitude toward this day, with secret glee I would rush to the mailbox and see what it was that she sent to me. It usually was a shoebox full of my favorite candy, fabulous pens, magnetic poetry, and completely awesome little doohickies that I never knew that I always wanted.

* ** *

When I was ten, I set the record for most late-work slips that my teacher ever gave out to one student in one year. Mrs. Swanson had taught for more than twenty years, and with my twenty-five slips (admittedly some of these slips were accumulative), she was at her wits end with how to motivate me.

I remember one assignment that we had battled over in particular. It was a picture of a Haida Raven, with intricate layers and small areas to color. I insisted on finishing the project with each section colored precisely as I had laid out. The project stretched out from a quick thirty minute third grade coloring exercise to an Artistic Project that took several hours. The teacher and I battled, because she wanted to teach me that sometimes, you just need to get things done; I protested, because sometimes getting things done right was more important than deadlines. My internal sense of accomplishment was more important than artificial deadlines imposed by an outside source.

* ** *

In The Art of Possibility Ben Zander tells a story about how he moved from measuring his life through accomplishments, but instead recognizing how he used his gifts to make a contribution to the world. Instead of measuring accomplishment through outside sources, he started to have a sense of how his unique and remarkable gifts created a difference. I think that I have been living inside Zander's sense of accomplishment my whole life. Grades have never been an outside motivating force. They are letters that I have earned by hard work and learning how to creatively apply that new knowledge.

Transitioning from the classroom into the world, the rules for accomplishment have changed. My hard work can be ignored (or taken credit for) by someone else because I am young, a new professional, or a woman. Yet I am well aware of how I have changed things. In that letter on my 25th birthday, my aunt told me that she loved my awareness of "the youness of you." It's a phrase that has become a mantra for me. I have the skill of a strong sense of self to know exactly how I have contributed to the world.

Yet this idea of contribution does have a downside. My strong sense of knowing when a project is complete is often at odds with deadlines in the real world. I've come to recognize that sometimes Mrs. Swanson was right in that getting things done is often as important as getting things done properly (or dare I say done perfectly?). It is often a sign of respect to co-workers or professors that I stick to deadlines. Therefore, I realize I need to contribute my gifts, but not all of them all and not all at once.