This post originally was going to be a reaction to a post at Jack & Jill Politics regarding Amy Bishop, titled Sometimes White Privilege Just Comes Along and SMACKS You Upside the Head. The point of that post was that if Amy Bishop were not white, she would have been in jail a long time ago, so she would not have had an opportunity to shoot several faculty members, including at least three minorities. Yeah, sure, just like Crystal Mangum.
The concept of “white privilege,” however, deserves its own post. Most of you probably have never heard of “white privilege” before (which shows how white and privileged you must be, either that, or you are not a self-wallowing far-left race card player).
There is an entire “white privilege” industry out there, populated by “critical studies” academics and agitators (of all races) who see racism where there is no actual evidence of racism.
Here is how “white privilege” was described by a professor of journalism at the University of Texas:
What does that mean? Perhaps most importantly, when I seek admission to a university, apply for a job, or hunt for an apartment, I don’t look threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me for those things look like me–they are white. They see in me a reflection of themselves, and in a racist world that is an advantage. I smile. I am white. I am one of them. I am not dangerous. Even when I voice critical opinions, I am cut some slack. After all, I’m white.
My flaws also are more easily forgiven because I am white. Some complain that affirmative action has meant the university is saddled with mediocre minority professors. I have no doubt there are minority faculty who are mediocre, though I don’t know very many. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. [yes, him] once pointed out, if affirmative action policies were in place for the next hundred years, it’s possible that at the end of that time the university could have as many mediocre minority professors as it has mediocre white professors. That isn’t meant as an insult to anyone, but is a simple observation that white privilege has meant that scores of second-rate white professors have slid through the system because their flaws were overlooked out of solidarity based on race, as well as on gender, class and ideology.
When I say there is an industry of such people out there, what I mean is that there are dozens if not hundreds of academics and others whose careers are invested in pushing the “white privilege” agenda.
They even have “white privilege” conferences (yeah, I know, you can’t make this stuff up):
If you forget everything else I have to say to you today, I want you to remember the next part. The people who tell you you cannot change the world are lying to you.
Notice in the promo video how “white supremacy” is used to describe “white privilege” (so I guess that makes us all white supremacists?)
http://www.youtube.com/get_player
“Educators” are at the heart of this movement, as demonstrated by the participation of Kevin Jennings in the White Privilege Conference. Witness also this explanation of the purpose of the “white privilege” movement, featured prominently on the White Privilege Conference website (emphasis mine):
Q. Is this about proving how bad white folks are?
A. Our attempts to dismantle dominance and oppression must follow a path other than that of either vilifying or obliterating Whiteness… Whites need to acknowledge and work through the negative historical implications of ‘Whiteness’ and create for ourselves a transformed identity as White people committed to equality and social change. Our goal is neither to defy or denigrate Whiteness, but to difuse its destructive power.
To teach my white students and my own children that they are ‘not White’ is to do them a disservice. To teach them that there a different ways of being White, and that they have a choice as White people to become champions for justice and social healing, is to provide them a positive direction for growth and to grant them the dignity of their own being.
The “white privilege” movement definitely is not driven by only non-whites. White educators play a leading role in self-examination of their own white privilege, in the ultimate liberal guilt trip. Here is part of an essay by a professor at Wellesley:
I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks.
It is impossible to disprove “white privilege” because the concept does not rely on proof of discrimination in a particular situation. The absence of proof is proof.
And the concept, as most twisted concepts, starts from a kernel of truth. There is racism in society, as much as we may try to stamp it out. It’s where one takes that kernel of truth, in a series of “therefores,” which ends up with the caricature that is the White Privilege Conference.
As can be seen from the Jack & Jill post about Amy Bishop, “white privilege” really is just another useful tool for those who want to play the race card for political gain.
And yes, “white privilege” has made its contribution to Palin Derangement Syndrome:
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
Because “white privilege” by definition never can be eliminated, it provides an endless mechanism for those who seek to use race as a political weapon.
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