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| West Indian Creole woman with her servant c. 1780 Photo: Wikipedia |
I felt
privileged that my parents worked hard and put a roof over our heads and food
on the table. It was not the best in the world, but we survived. Nobody gave us
welfare and, had we demanded something we did not earn and were not entitled
to, we would have been told swiftly, “no work, no food.”
“White
privilege” is a spurious construct invented by progressive academics who love
to divide and categorize people into groups just so they can keep animosity and
hatred between them in order to better control them.
My parents
always told me that, if I applied myself and worked very hard, I would be
successful. Nobody made promises to me that life would be easy and success will
just fall in my lap just because I was classified as “white” by university
scholars and government bureaucrats.
The
Constitution does not mention free college tuition, free health care, and other
entitlements that Democrats classify as rights. I have the right to exist and
the opportunity to pursue my happiness, health, and education, and nobody owes
me anything based on my skin color.
If I work, I
have money to eat, a roof over my head, I may have a car, and other amenities
that can be bought, if I can afford them. If I want luxuries, I must work extra,
get a better job, or forget about it. Happiness and satisfaction do not come
from buying material things.
Now angry
and violent lefties are trying to diminish my hard work by telling me that I
did not “build” that, it was given to me because I have the esoteric construct
called “white privilege.” As double talkers, progressives are really good at
inventing euphemisms. If there is such a thing as “white privilege,” why isn’t
there a “black privilege?” What about “Hispanic privilege,” “Native American
privilege,” “Asian privilege?”
What exactly
is “white privilege?” According to a website, “white privilege” is a “set of advantages
and/or immunities that white people benefit from on a daily basis beyond those
common to all others. White privilege can exist without white people’s
conscious knowledge of its presence and it helps to maintain the racial
hierarchy in this country.” By this definition, “white privilege” does not
exist in other countries where white people live. Apparently we have “white
privilege” as a “direct result of the disadvantages of other people.” According
to this half-baked theory, even white people who are not overtly racist benefit
from “white supremacy.” So “white privilege” is equal with “white supremacy?” https://www.mtholyoke.edu/org/wsar/intro.htm
Students
cite the fact that “white privilege is not having to worry about being followed
in a department store while shopping.” Perhaps if you shopped rather than
shop-lifted, you would not be followed.
Violent and
angry mobs riot, burn, rob people on trains, and hit people of a different skin
color over the head in a sick “knockout game.” It is sheer hatred generated by
their lack of a moral compass and success, taking their anger on innocents. Riots
are a convenient excuse to loot stores in their own neighborhoods.
At the
lowest point in our lives, white friends and I never looted or robbed stores
under the pretense of “social justice.” We did not demand other people’s money,
free college tuition, free health care, and other government forms of welfare.
We took a second job, worked every day and part of the night because we had
pride and honor, not bogus “white privilege.” I worked for minimum wage even
though I had a college degree, cheap labor was not beneath me.
“White
privilege” is “about thinking that your clothes, manner of speech, and behavior
in general, are racially neutral, when in fact, they are white.” Behaving like
a civilized person, speaking proper English, and behaving like a human instead
of a savage street thug is not “white privilege,” it is proper breeding and
having a mom at home in the first six years of your life, teaching you how to
behave.
Black
students bullying other black kids because they make good grades is wrong. They
are not “acting white,” they are concerned for their future and have a plan for
success. Wearing pants down your bottoms like jail inmates do is not proper
dressing. Nobody wants to see your underwear in public. Using incomprehensible
ghetto jargon is not a formula for success either. Communication in a common
language that everyone understands is important.
“White
privilege exists on an individual, cultural, and institutional level.” I cannot
remember how many times I lost jobs to lesser qualified and lesser educated
black applicants who were hired because of affirmative action quotas. How many
better prepared Caucasian students could not attend a university of their
choice because there are quotas set up for black people, Hispanic people, and people
born in a “poor” state?
One Seattle
liberal writer wrote in 2015 why “white privilege” exists. http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/11/lessons-white-privilege-poc/
1. “I Have the
Privilege of (Generally) Having a Positive Relationship with the Police”
Could that be because you were taught to
respect authority, especially the police, and how to behave in a polite manner
outside of home? Yes, you have the privilege to behave in an orderly and
respectful manner when questioned by police. How you choose to behave dictates
the outcome of any encounter with the police or any other people for that
matter, regardless of your race. If you are violent, recalcitrant, and armed,
you will be treated with blunt force.
2. “I Have
the Privilege of Being Favored by School Authorities”
School authorities treat everyone by the same
set of rules; if you choose not to follow those rule and become violent, then
the treatment of you will escalate to another level; violent students at home
or in the streets are violent and recalcitrant in school as well, defiant of
authority, and must be treated accordingly. Schools hire security to help
school personnel deal with such offenders.
3. ”I Have
the Privilege of Learning about My Race in School”
Ethnic studies are on the rise at all colleges
and universities even though they do not assure a student employment upon
graduation. Nobody is stopping you from learning about your specific ethnic
group or race’s history and culture.
The problem for liberals is, most of the
contributions to science and mathematics, even literature, have been made by the
much reviled “evil white men.” That is a fact. There are some contributions made
by other races but, generally, modern technology and science discoveries were
made by white men.
Students are forced to learn about the Five
Pillars of Islam, in an effort to convert as many students as possible to that
faith. Whatever happened to the atheists suing over “separation of church and
state?” Does it only apply to Christianity, not to Islam?
There is black history month; since the U.S.
black population is about 12 percent, then, to be mathematically accurate,
there should be about a month and a half of learning nothing else but about
black history and the contributions made by black people to civilization.
4. “I Have
the Privilege of Attending Segregated Schools of Affluence”
Many white people do not have the privilege of
attending the schools of their choice for many reasons – they cannot afford the
expensive tuition, perhaps their grades are not good enough, or reside in areas
that do not fall under that school’s jurisdiction. On the contrary, most
“schools of influence” are segregated based on wealth and income and not race.
Obama’s children attended a “school of influence” in D.C. even though they
self-identify as black. If there is segregation, it is based on income, not
skin color.
5. “I Have the Privilege of Finding
Children’s Books that Overwhelmingly Represent My Race”
Most publishers are liberal and tend to accept
for publication books that represent their progressive stance. Books are
written generally in a number representative of the black population in the
U.S. You cannot possibly force white authors to write about something they are
not familiar with since they did not grow up or experience the black culture.
6. “I Have
the Privilege of Soaking in Media Blatantly Biased Toward My Race”
It is hard to even dignify such a statement
particularly today when the MSM has become the laughingstock of fake news,
defending manufactured news which are heavily biased towards the Democrat Party
platform, a platform that has failed black people for decades, keeping them
suppressed and poor (see Detroit). Yet these people of color keep electing
their corrupt Democrat Party representatives and senators to power. I don’t
know many white people who take the MSM media seriously because of their
“social justice” and “collectivism” ideology, both communist inventions which
some of us have been victims of for decades.
If you are a criminal, the media reportage
will generally cover up the criminal’s race or ethnicity, unless he/she is
white.
7. “I Have
the Privilege of Escaping Violent Stereotypes Associated with My Race”
The writer makes the bogus statement that “White supremacists (who tend to be White) have
perpetuated more terrorism in the United States than any foreign threat.” I
suppose 9/11 and the jihadi movement never happened.
8. “I Have
the Privilege of Playing the Colorblind Card, Wiping the Slate Clean of
Centuries of Racism”
He makes a good point that “race is a social construction based on physical
differences.” However, he blames white people for using the invention of race.
I have not met a black student yet who has not shamelessly benefited from his/her
race when competing for scholarships, grants, college admission, jobs, adjustment
to their entrance ACT or SAT scores, and other benefits not available to white
students.
The concept of “colorblindness” is not good
enough for this writer, we have to atone for our “implicit biases,” another
bogus euphemism, claiming that we associate lighter skin to intelligence, that
we give black children less medication for severe pain, and that we “prefer
white-sounding names when it comes to school
discipline, job applications, and government inquiries,” a ridiculous assertion,
which is not true; and it is against the law to discriminate in such a way.
Many of us get our “white privilege” by going to work
every day, sometimes to very unpleasant jobs and when sick because we cannot
afford to miss the paycheck. Others get “white
privilege” by working long hours on a project, by studying hard on a test
instead of partying with the boys, and because we take the hard road of
personal responsibility without crying discrimination and racism. When we were
told no, we never gave up and tried harder.
Because we have this imaginary “white privilege,” race
baiters and their fellow travelers want reparations for slavery which, in some progressive
opinions, had an important role in giving us today’s imaginary “white
privilege.”
Slavery, gone but not forgotten, has been a justified stigma
in the history of our country. Progressives are demanding financial reparations
for slavery which is objected to by Americans whose ancestors were never involved
in or benefitted from the slave trade. Progressive advocates fail to mention
that there were also white slaves who built this country, they were indentured
to industrial projects and railroads.
The Atlantic slave trade took place from the 15th
through the 19th centuries with slaves from central and western
parts of Africa who had been sold by other West Africans to Western European
slave traders.
The Portuguese brought in 1526 the first transatlantic
slaves from Africa to the Americas. They were sold to work in coffee, tobacco,
cocoa, sugar, and cotton plantation, silver mines, rice fields, construction
industry, logging timber for ships, skilled labor, and as domestic servants.
The British, the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch
Empires followed the Portuguese’s example and shipped slaves in cargo ships to
the New World and to the Caribbean area where slaves made goods to be sold
in Europe. More than 12 million slaves
were bought and sold; a substantial number died during the grueling passage at
sea.
By the 17th century slavery became a caste in
which children born to slave mothers were slaves themselves and thus property. At the beginning of the 19th
century, governments moved to ban the trade but smuggling still occurred. In
the 21st century, some governments issued official apologies.
According to historians, slavery was practiced for
centuries in parts of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas, long before the
Atlantic slave trade. African states exported slaves to other African
countries. The African slave trade was a source of slaves to Europeans and many
Muslim countries. From the 9th to the 19th centuries,
slave trades from across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean
benefitted Muslim countries.
The volume in the Atlantic slave trade was larger than the
African slave trade. The victims of the Atlantic slave trade came primarily
from several areas: Senegal and Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone,
Liberia, Ivory Coast, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon,
Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Mozambique, and
Madagascar.
Slavery is wrong no matter who practiced it, how, for what
reason, and during what time. But to create racial strife in 2017 by claiming a
bogus “white privilege” in the United States, one of the most tolerant nations
on the planet, is wrong and divisive, particularly in an environment that
progressives have termed themselves as “colorblind.”
We have many black people in positions of power in the
United States, in business, education, in Hollywood, in sports; the federal
government is dominated by black employees, and we’ve already elected the first
black president who is now very busy overseas, bashing America and the current
president.
