White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.

Whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow 'them' to be more like 'us'.

It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.

Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate.

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege.

I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group

If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.