‘White privilege’ and its cousins have achieved enormous prominence on the American left, from which it now seems to be spreading around the Western world. As a slogan it has an undeniable rhetorical power. But from a moral perspective it is flawed: at best mistaken about the core problem of racial injustice and at worst racist in its own right. At the political level it is divisive – arguably deliberately so – and thus incapable of supporting the consensus needed to build a just society. Thomas R. Wells
The pillar of contemporary leftism is the notion of white privilege, the bastard child of critical race theory. And given that an entire generation of American kids have been taught that a great number of unearned privileges accrue to white Americans, the charge of white privilege keeps gaining ground.
Regardless of the fact that the term is largely meaningless or that it does great harm to blacks, the charge of white privilege will be perpetuated as long as the media and their Democrat allies can sustain the narrative. And it is imperative that they do because the only way they can continue to control the black vote is to keep them victims.
Whining about “white privilege” is nothing more than the liberal equivalent of saying, “Life is not fair.” It is the adult equivalent of the four year old crying that he got “less” than his sister because her hot dog was cut into five pieces while his was cut into four. Children who do that just need to be educated. Adults who still think like little children instead of taking responsibility for their own lives are losers. So, don’t be a loser. Stop obsessing over how many hot dog pieces someone else has, take responsibility and do something great with your own life instead.
White privilege implies that civil rights are distributed according to status – like an Ivy League degree or a New York rent-controlled apartment. But the idea that white people have some rational collective interest in suppressing black people just makes no sense, any more than keeping women out of work made men better off or keeping other countries poor would make America richer.
Seriously, who’s more privileged? Jussie Smollett or the white guy working as a greeter at Walmart; Sasha Obama or a white child of a gardener; Oprah Winfrey or one of the white housewives who watched her show; Spike Lee or a white guy who delivers pizza; Al Sharpton or a white factory worker who’d end up in jail if he didn’t pay his taxes for years? Not only is life not fair, but it’s also unfair for so many different reasons that it’s impossible to make it fair.
There are a host of privileges that dwarf so-called “white privilege.” A huge one is Two-Parent Privilege. If you are raised by a father and mother, you enter adulthood with more privileges than anyone else in American society, irrespective of race, ethnicity, or sex. That’s why the poverty rate among two-parent black families is only 7%. Compare that with a 22% poverty rate among whites in single-parent homes. Obviously the two-parent home is the decisive “privilege.”
Another “privilege,” if one wants to use that term, is Asian privilege. Asian Americans do better than white Americans in school, on IQ tests, on credit scores, and on other positive measures. In fact, according to data from the Federal Reserve, Asians could very well surpass whites as the wealthiest group of Americans. Will the Left soon complain about Asian privilege?
How about “gentile privilege?” For most of American history it was a lot easier being a Christian than being a Jew. Yet, I do not know a Jew who doesn’t believe that to be a Jew in America has always been an unbelievable stroke of good fortune. It is not surprising that an American Jew, Irving Berlin, wrote “God Bless America.”
How about minority privilege? Every high-school student knows that given similar scholastic and extra-curricular records, one’s chances of being accepted into a prestigious college are considerably greater if one is a member of a minority, most especially the black minority.
White privilege is not merely a prejudice about what white people tend to be like and how they behave, it is an essentialist moral doctrine that preaches all white people are morally complicit in white supremacy whether or not they realize it and no matter their own moral beliefs. Such an assignment of moral standing by race is abhorrent.
Hardships and struggles do not care what color we are. Poverty doesn’t look at someone who’s white and say, “I can’t bother you,” but at least that person sleeping on a park bench has their “white privilege,” right? Or have we been so blinded by what we’re being told that we’ll believe anything?
“Something must be wrong. My finances are in shambles; mainstream newspapers won’t publish my pieces; and, no matter how much I try to convince Fox News that they need male eye candy as well, they just won’t give me a show. Then I gaze into the mirror at my alabaster complexion and say, “What’s wrong with this picture? I’ll have to address this at the next White People’s Meeting.” Selwyn Duke, The Myth of White Privilege, American Thinker
Source: The Fallacy of ‘White Privilege’, Dennis Prager, National Review; Why White Privilege Is As Racist As It Sounds, Odyssey; Only Losers Whine About “White Privilege” That Doesn’t Exist, by John Hawkins, Townhall
