Unpacking the invisible knapsack: The invention of white privilege pedagogy

Abstract

This article uses Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of suspicion, an interpretive strategy directed to the hidden or repressed meanings behind texts, to examine the origins of white privilege pedagogy, in particular their foundational technique, “unpacking the invisible knapsack.” This article’s chief finding is that this pedagogy, though designed to fight racism, has the unintended effect of supporting white privilege. Teaching whites to “unpack their invisible knapsack” does not make them more willing to take action against racial inequality. On the contrary, it makes them more complacent, more at home in an unjust world, and more comfortable with their whiteness. White privilege pedagogy does this by focusing on personal identity (whites’ personal identity) over institutional structures, by paying more attention to whites’ experiences than to blacks’, by falsely claiming that the confession of white privileges leads to social action beneficial to blacks, and by restoring and expanding whites’ sense of moral rightness.