Teaching About Privilege

In Spring 2008, The Office of Intercultural Affairs organized a number of speakers addressing the topic of white privilege. The following resources were developed to assist faculty who were interested in making connections to these speakers in their classes.

We maintain this page as a resource for faculty who continue to engage these topics in the classroom. Please send any suggested additions to this page to the Center for Teaching and Learning.

General Resources

• "The Pedagogical Value of Teaching White Privilege Through a Case Study" (pdf)
  by Diane Gillespie, Univ. of Washington-Bothell
• "Teaching about Whiteness"
  by Gregory Jay, Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukie
• "The Preference of White Privilege"
  by Kimberle Crenshaw, UCLA
• "White Women Teaching White Women about White Privilege, Race Cognizance, and Social Action: toward a pedagogical pragmatics" (pdf)
  by Diane Gillespie, Leslie Ashbaugh, & JoAnn DeFiore, Univ. of Washington-Bothell
• "Reframing Multicultural Education: Teaching White Privilege in the Social Work Curriculum" (pdf)
  by Laura Abrams, UCLA & Priscilla Gibson, Univ. of Minnesota

Tim Wise

Wise's website (http://www.timwise.org/) is a good place to start researching his work. There you can find numerous links to his essays and blog posts. Some recent posts of his -- which reflect on the implications of Obama's election -- may provide interesting texts for class discussion:

• "In Search of Post-Racial America" (a satirical critique of commentators who saw Obama's election as marking the end of racism in the US)
• "Explaining White Privilege to the Deniers and the Haters" (written in response to comments he received on his post, "The is Your Nation on Privilege")
• Tim Wise: On White Privilege is a DVD (soon to be available at Stonehill's library) of a lecture Wise gave at Mt. Holyoke College in 2007. You can also see an excerpt of this video on YouTube.
• Here's another clip of Wise taking part in a formal debate on affirmative action in the US.
• The Office of Intercultural Affairs is also hosting a book discussion of Tim Wise's White Like Me on Tuesday, February 3rd.

Katrina Brown

Brown's documentary,"Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North," details Brown's discovery that her New England ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in US history. The film will be screened at Stonehill at the end of January and is available for loan from the Intercultural Resource Center.

• You can see a clip from Brown's documentary here.
• There are also many good teaching resources at the film's website.

Peggy McIntosh

You can find McIntosh's most famous essay (about the "invisible knapsack" she carries because of her white and heterosexual privilege) in a number of places online:

• "White Privilege and Male Privilege" (pdf available through the ERIC database)
• "White Privilege and Male Privilege" (pdf available via LA Mission College)
• Here is a short video of McIntosh talking about how she came to write her essay.
• And here's a short animation inspired by McIntosh's article.