ABSTRACT
Peggy McIntosh’s essay comparing privilege to an invisible, weightless knapsack is often the first introduction that students of intersectional feminism receive to the idea that privilege is a product of complex systems of domination. Too often, however, they carry away the assumption that checking their privilege means no more than making social systems tangible, an intellectualizing process that leaves the affective costs of whiteness in place. Drawing on the work of Audre Lorde, Claudia Rankine, and Mab Segrest, among other sources, Bailey invites white students to join a conversation that calls attention to the ways that the violence done to communities of color relies on white people being psychologically, morally, materially, spiritually, and epistemically disfigured enough to allow that violence to continue. She challenges white readers to recognize the multiple ways numbness takes over and to face the painful nature of antiracist work.
