“All Americans are born equal. This does not mean equal in regard to our social status, access to wealth, or even good education. We are equal in the fact that we are free to make our own choices in life and bear the fruit of those choices.”
This country is undergoing a cultural crisis right now. I personally believe that we have combined race and culture to the point now where they are malleable ideas where one can disavow the portions that do not conform with their view points. To this end, I have been trying to do some self-education over the past several weeks on the concept of white privilege. It has been an interesting journey to say the least.
Let’s begin by defining privilege. The Cambridge dictionary defines privilege as “a special advantage or authority possessed by a particular group or person.” It defines white privilege as “the fact of people with white skin having advantages in society that other people do not have.” The problem I have with this is that if there is a white privilege, there must be a privilege for other races as well. However, I believe that for the most part white privilege really means the privilege of family values, hard work, and disposable income. I will explain this later.
Maybe my view comes from almost my entire adult life being spent in the military, where integration was total and any sign of racism absolutely intolerable.
I have found a plethora of material on the subject. As I expected, most of the evidence that I found for supporting white privilege was in the form of stories taken out of context in a thinly disguised attempt to insert an agenda. A few great examples of this were found within an article from a feminist site titled, “10 Examples That Prove White Privilege Protects White People in Every Aspect Imaginable.”
One of the examples was the story of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed black man who was shot and killed by police officers who appeared to have acted overzealously. In this case, I can understand the outrage from the community as four police officers shot this man forty-one times. In the end, what the police thought was a gun turned out to be the man’s wallet.
This case is horrific, and does legitimately seem to have overtones of racial injustice. However, the author then immediately links this shooting to that of Michael Brown, saying, “Diallo was for me what Michael Brown has been to some White people. Too many Black and Brown people are not safe with the police.” Here is where I immediately lose the ability to take anything else that he states with much seriousness. Michael Brown was a street thug and a punk. How dare anyone attempt to paint him as some innocent bystander who was caught up in a show of abuse of power by the police?
In fact, remember when Black Lives Matter first came on the scene? They were all about the abuse of minorities by white police officers until black police officers were highlighted as major perpetrators of police violence in inner city shootings. Then it simply became an abuse of power by police in general.
The fact is that reducing privilege to a race issue is both racist and shows one’s inability to grasp multifaceted issues.
In another example that was designed to highlight racism within the school system the author brings up an article written by Nicole Pelletiere about Kiera Wilmot, a girl who was arrested when she was 16 for simply showing some students her science fair project. According to the article, Florida Girl Arrested Under Similar Circumstances as Ahmed Mohamed Has Advice for Teen is quoted as saying:
“Wilmot, now 19, said that in April 2013 she brought a science project to school in Bartow, Florida – a makeshift volcano that she was very excited to show her teacher. ‘He said he needed to approve it first, so I brought it in thinking he literally needed to see it in person,’ she said. She said the project was ‘more advanced’ than a ‘baking soda and vinegar volcano’ and her classmates asked to see how it worked. Wilmot said she activated the volcano outside the cafeteria of Bartow High School that morning, when the lid popped off and the bottom of the device began to smoke. No students were hurt and no school property was damaged.”
Simply reading this, it would seem ridiculous that a young girl of 16 would be arrested and threatened with jail time for simply showing off her science fair project. What reason other than her race could possibly play into this outrageous school conduct?
Well, it could be the fact that the story above was a white-washed version of the truth. What Wilmot actually brought into school was a water bottle bomb. That is a water bottle with aluminum foil and toilet bowl cleaner mixed. You put the cap on the water bottle and a chemical reaction occurs, over-pressurizing the bottle until it explodes.
Note that I did not say pop. What drew the attention of the school was that explosion. Further, there was no science lesson going on for her to have a reason to bring this to school. Additionally, this mixture can blind or burn human bystanders, and due to the release of hydrogen, catch fire. Once the entire story is properly explained, her suspension and the police investigation now seem very warranted.
Yet in another display of total and unabashed bias, the author attempts to compare the press coverage surrounding James Eagen Holmes and Michael Brown. James, the Denver theater shooter, was portrayed by the media as clean cut and wholesome, while Michael is often shown in street clothes. I believe that there are multiple reasons for this, but none of them come down to issues of race or privilege. The entire point to the media portrayal of James was to emphasize the transition from clean student without any trace of criminal past to a sociopathic mass shooter. Michael, despite what the media and BLM try to twist the narrative to, was a hoodlum.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not to say that there are not perfectly reasonable cases of racism and social injustice, I just refuse to buy into the overreaching narrative that people pushing this story line try to sell.
The point is, the difference between those that do and don’t has nothing to do with the perceived privilege of others, but is entirely based on the choices they make.
The truth is, there is such a thing as privilege, I just refuse to believe it is tied to race. All Americans are born equal. This does not mean equal in regard to our social status, access to wealth, or even good education. We are equal in the fact that we are free to make our own choices in life and bear the fruit of those choices. Does having money, a good family, and private education make it easier? A case can definitely be made for that. Do minorities face challenges that I do not? I am sure that is true; only a moron would deny such things. However, we all face discrimination of one sort or another.
Maybe my view comes from almost my entire adult life being spent in the military, where integration was total and any sign of racism absolutely intolerable. We had a saying in the service, “We’re all green.” This held true in military relationships as well, with interracial couples in every organization I ever served in. This was simply the way things were. I do not care what color your skin is, because that is holistically the least import factor in determining your worth. A person’s values are what most people care about.
Maybe the military is unique in this aspect. Maybe we truly are more noble in our adherence to these ethical principles there than in the rest of society, but I really do not believe this. In fact, I will use a man named Steve Hightower as an example of this.
Steve is a black entrepreneur who used to work as a janitor for his parents cleaning business. He continued with this throughout college, scrubbing toilets and cleaning floors to earn money for school. In 1978, after graduating, he decided that he would open his own business. He started out in construction and then moved into oil transport. It was slow and difficult work. Yet he always believed in his abilities “Because if you don’t think that you can be great, you’ll never be great. And I knew that I was gonna be great a long, long time ago.” Fast forward 39 years and Steve now employees 85 people and in 2015 his company made $350 million.
The problem with privilege is the fact that it is, like most liberal ideals, an over-simplistic look at an extremely nuanced issue. The fact is that reducing privilege to a race issue is both racist and shows one’s inability to grasp multifaceted issues. Everything about us is constantly judged and ranked. Does that include race? Of course. However, it also (and more importantly) includes dress, how you present yourself, cleanliness, how you speak (vocabulary, tempo, volume, accents, etc.), and if you fit into the cultural norms of the group you are attempting to assimilate into. People try to make race the issue because it is simple and fits a convenient narrative.
We all have privilege of one sort or another, and I refuse to believe that is based upon race. You may find you have a unique ability in math, science, music, or art. Maybe you can absorb languages, or maybe you just have a work ethic that is unmatched by anyone else around you. The point is, the difference between those that do and don’t has nothing to do with the perceived privilege of others, but is entirely based on the choices they make.
