My White Privilege

Socialist breadline in Romania

Photo: Wikipedia Commons

I pulled the thick blanket out the dryer – it was still a tad damp so I placed it on the banister. I don’t have a clothesline – they are not allowed by the socialist Homeowners Association (HOA). If you want to live relatively close to a job, you must build in an HOA, you don’t have the luxury of declining it.

I fail to understand how the presence of a clothesline in the back of my house would devalue the property. But HOA finds it acceptable that seven families rent one house and take up the parking on the entire street where it becomes a gauntlet trying to dodge all cars. But I digress.

I am grateful that I have a dryer and a vacuum cleaner. In my previous “lily-white” communist world, it would have been an economic privilege - not a privilege as in the ridiculous liberal construct “white privilege,” but a privilege of life’s conveniences only reserved for the commies in power.  

I am white, I was told recently, by a huffy Millennial who happened to be white as well, therefore I benefitted my entire life of “white privilege.” Perhaps I should dig deeper to find and examine these “white privileges” I did not realize I had.

I had the privilege to work hard in school and get my education before the age of 29. When I had babies, I raised them, I did not let daddy government do the parental job for me. I worked at least two jobs my entire adult life in order to raise two children by myself and take care of my mom.

I did not go to bars, I did not get tattoos, I did not go to salons to do my hair or my nails in the most ridiculous colors and shapes, I did not drink, I did not own fancy cars or many cars in my life. I drive today a 14-year old car.

But I see and hear all these people accusing me of “white privilege” while they drive brand new Mercedes, BMWs, Lexus, Tesla, and other luxurious vehicles. But I am not complaining that they have economic privilege. If they want to spend the money to own the latest, that is capitalism and I rejoice in its existence.

If anybody has ever set foot in a socialist country run by the Communist Party perhaps realized that nobody had any kind of special privilege except the ruling class and the oligarchy. Nobody owned a home, a car, or any luxuries.

Our daily existence involved standing in food lines much longer than Americans are now inconvenienced in grocery stores while practicing “social distancing” in order to get their food, toilet paper, and other necessities. The total disruption of an economy by an unseen Chinese flu virus is hard on its entitled population that seldom experienced pain and adversity. They soon start fighting with each other over toilet paper, bread, and milk in order to survive.

Deliveries came once a day, but it was never enough of anything or it only came in one variety because the economy was centrally run by the Politburo and all they cared about was that their bellies were full, they had luxurious homes, and a chauffeur driving them around in a car they never bought or earned. If I did not have a conscience, I could have lived that life too.

In the meantime, the “white-privileged” proletariat class made do with grocery store scraps, if they could find them at the end of the long line, and tiny living in concrete apartments which seldom had running water, hot water, or heat in winter.

Our “white privilege,” and we were all white, did not involve vacations in private dachas at the Black Sea, ski trips in the Carpathian Mountains, and overseas vacations paid by the benevolent dictator who rewarded his henchmen quite well.

I was lucky to escape this socialist paradise and I came to the U.S. There was no “white privilege” waiting for me. I had to get a minimum wage job for $3.10 an hour and watched in sadness as people way less qualified and educated than I was get jobs I had applied for. They got them because they did not have my “white privilege.”  

In college, worse students than I were given special benefits, scholarships and free college tuition based on their skin color and ethnicity. I worked hard to make good grades but when I tried to get a college job to supplement my meager “white privilege” income, non-whites were always hired because their ancestors were slaves. My ancestors were slaves too, to the Ottoman Empire, but I don’t think Turkey would be amenable today to pay us reparations for all the enslavement they put my people through for 500 plus years.

When I was hungry, my “white privilege” did not feed me, there were no welfare cards and grocery store willing to fill my cart with everything at the taxpayers’ expense.

Privileged as you say we were in our squalid poverty, we did not own electronics, a fridge, a vacuum cleaner, a tv, appliances to make cooking easier, computers, smart phones, or even old style landline phones for that matter.

If we did not work, the socialists did not give us anything except slogans and parades for the Dear Leader. They did not feed our children in school three meals a day. If you did not work, you did not eat. That was our “white privilege,” the privilege to work hard in order to survive.

You complain that we have “white privilege?” How about the privileges you have that we work hard to pay for every day? Unlike shrill complainers, we don’t have free Medicaid, welfare, or the luxury to stay home and have more babies because daddy government pays for their birth and their care.

Next time you accuse us of having “white privilege,” be careful how you word this nonsensical liberal construct because we are not buying the rhetorical racism coming from the left anymore. You’ve cried wolf too many times.