Looking in the 'Invisible Knapsack of Unearned Privilege'

During the academic school year, I have the privilege of teaching a class to young adults on values, ethics and morality. The focus of the class is to help these young people with decision-making.

These young adults don’t represent a cross section of society but all come from Milwaukee's north communities, are of upper-middle-class to-upper-class backgrounds and normally all white. Everyone of this group attends top-performing schools and is highly involved in sports, community service and other social activities. In short, they are all high performers.

The lesson for the week was very topical considering the debate going on between the left and the right over the Democratic Party's claim that the Republican Party is waging a “War on Women." I normally don’t directly involve the class in political discussions that require them to talk on political positions. What I attempt to do in these situations is to get to the deeper issues underlying political positions and discuss their value origins and orientation.

For this particular discussion, I decided to use an article written by Peggy McIntosh, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, based on racial inequality." In the 1988 article, Ms. McIntosh addresses the concept of unearned privilege within American society. She is a well-known scholar of women’s studies and she concisely outlines the idea that unearned and unacknowledged privileges exist for certain members and groups within our society.

When I brought up the discussion, the class didn’t immediately grasp the concept. After a short discussion they were fully in-tune with the overall elements. The Invisible Knapsack represents privileges and opportunities that help one in their path to success, and without a given privilege; it means there is an obstacle/s to achieving those goals. It was easy for them to understand the idea of white privilege, but when we moved into the area of male privilege, this is where the discussion became quite lively.

As a note; the class is evenly divided between males and females. The young women immediately latched onto the issue of male privilege with many of the males denying that such a privilege actually exists. The males in the class wanted to place male privilege into past conditions and not currently present. However, with more discussion some of the males began to come around to the awareness of the actual issue. In short, society has placed limitations on women beginning with their physiology.

Every one of the young women acknowledged that they did want to have children one day, but all indicated that they wouldn’t take on a family until they were well established in their careers, fully expecting that a family would be detrimental for a career. As is my nature, I posed the question if they shouldn’t be prepared to look for a partner and father who would take on the role of primary caregiver (stay at home dad). The young women indicated they were really torn with the prospect of not being able to create a desired bond with the child if they did that. The males in the group were generally opposed to such a proposition and couldn’t envision such a prospect. However, the young women didn’t think that their career paths should suffer because they made the choice of having children.

I posed the question as to what could be done to accommodate both a career and a family. At first, the class was unable to find a way off the horns of the dilemma, but soon they began actively attempting to come up with a solution. However, before they could come up with any meaningful solutions, the class ended. After class I began thinking what could be done.

Other nations have solved the problem by creating a special unemployment category for parents who take time off to have a child and spend the first critical year or two bonding. In my own mind, I think we could come up with a similar system by extending the benefits of the Family Medical Leave Act. The important question is how to fund it. The funding could come from an additional payroll tax specific for such a purpose. This would be a tax accessed only on the employee and not on the employer. I don’t have the data to figure what level the tax levy would be, but I think it would not amount to much more than one percent or two.

Although this would remove one of the obstacles that families currently face, I can’t see the conservatives ever considering such a solution. In their idealized society, it is up to the individual to find a solution and it is not society’s problem. Without taking on these types of problems seeking universal solutions, it is one more element on the War on Women or more correctly stated; a War on Families.