The hottest political fad in America today is “Get Whitey.” Across the country re-education sessions are routinely held in businesses, professional offices, medical schools, universities and even kindergartens, whose purpose is to teach the “un-woke” about the evils of “white privilege,” and make the whites who participate uncomfortable about their skin color. The bottom line in these sessions: Whites need to own up to the fact that regardless of their intentions, beliefs, behaviors or status in life, they are elite participants in a racist system that oppresses “people of color,” and are so merely because they are white. But discrimination on the basis of skin color has been outlawed in this country for more than 60 years. Therefore one might reasonably ask, “WTF is white skin privilege”?
Here’s my politically incorrect answer: White skin privilege is the gift of being the only racial/ethnic group on the planet which it is okay to single out for abuse. Indeed, handing out such abuse is obligatory for all who regard themselves as “woke,” and aspire to create a brave new world of “social justice.” This is a category that includes the media, the popular culture, the educational system and such racist shapers of public opinion as Don Lemon, Joy Ann Reid, JoyBehar, BrianStetler, RachelMaddow, the editorial boards and reporters of theNY Timesand theWashington Post, and their clones, and the Democratic Party.
“White privilege is the privilege of being regarded as untrustworthy, prejudiced, and blind to the injustices one’s whiteness allegedly inflicts. White privilege is the privilege of being damned for alleged crimes like “Stop and Frisk” laws, and also the often imaginary crimes of one’s often alleged ancestors. Thus it is fashionable in today’s politically correct culture to seek reparations for slavery from Americans whose ancestors never owned slaves, were not even in the country at the time, and were oppressed themselves in ethnic and religious ghettos across the globe. Reparations for slavery are also sought from the descendants of Union soldiers who gave their lives to abolish slavery. Facts are irrelevant. It’s all about skin color.
Thus white skin privilege is the privilege of being held responsible for slavery when white America accounted for less than 1% of the African slave trade globally, which was mainly run by “people of color,” while white America led the world in abolishing slavery, an institution which still exists in non-white Africa today.
White skin privilege is the privilege of being scapegoated for every failure of “people of color” who are unable to take advantage of the opportunities America affords to all races, and in particular to the majority of African Americans who have successfully made it to the middle class.
Our country is now facing a national political crisis over borders because of the poverty and oppression caused by the corrupt politics and leftist economies of Central and South America, which have prompted their citizens to break into our country illegally. Conditions in the resource-rich southern hemisphere are so bad that 20 million of its residents have already broken the law to violate our sovereignty, bankrupt our social services and educational systems and fill our jails. According to the left, to seek a wall to stem this flood is white racism – or, as a top Democratic strategistput itrecently, “Building a wall says, “If you’re brown turn around.” Such twisted logic would also provide an excuse to open our borders to the world’s Islamic terrorists who are also brown, and have killed hundreds of thousands of mainly brown victims since 9/11.
Here is how the social justice website,Tolerance.org, which is run by the Southern Poverty Law Center, explains the invisible powers of “white privilege” to its target audience of K-12 teachers: “It seems logical that a person should have the chance to prove themselves individually before they are judged. It’s supposedly an American ideal. But it’s a privilege often not granted to people of color—with dire consequences. For example, programs like New York City’s now-abandoned ‘Stop and Frisk’ policy target a disproportionate number of black andLatinx[sic] people.”
Stop and Frisk was originally a New York law enforcement policy designed to make random checks for concealed weapons, and thus to prevent potential armed robberies and homicides. It was instituted by conservative Republicans and subsequently “abandoned” byleftwingDemocrats as “racist.” To make Stop and Frisk a racial issue, its opponents inevitably left out its specifics, including the profiles of individuals whom the police target for searches. Like all “analyses” promoted by identity politics enthusiasts, the Tolerance.org explanation eliminates details like the motivations for the policies, and the characteristics of their applications. It thus obscures from view all the actions of individuals that might account for the disproportionate number of blacks and Hispanics affected, in order to focus on the invisible but sinister oppressor, “white skin privilege.”
In reality, the selective nature of the policy was dictated by the fact that 98% of the homicides in New York are committed by blacks and Hispanics. Blacks constitute only 23% of the city’s population buy they commit 70% of the robberies, while whites are responsible for 4% of the same. In other words, the Stop and Frisk policies that discover “disproportionately” concealed and illegal weapons among blacks and Hispanics have an explanation that is behavioral not racial. So-called white “privilege” is a mirage. The fact is that whites are only 3% of the homicide problem and 4% of the robbery problem. Therefore, law enforcement officials are wise to be less interested in them. On the other hand, more than 90% of the homicide victims of blacks and Hispanics are other blacks and Hispanics. So “Stop and Frisk” should really be seen as a privilege for the black and Hispanic communities who are the potential targets of lethal criminal behavior, and therefore favored for protection. Or were until the left, led by the radical mayor of New York ended the practice.
Most examples offered by proponents of the “white skin privilege” scam depend on attributing all disparities between races to “systemic racism”- a practice outlawed by the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 – rather than to the habits, attitudes and actions of individuals. For example, the Tolerance.org article tells us, “the ability to accumulate wealth has long been a white privilege—a privilege created by overt, systemic racism in both the public and private sectors.” Tolerance.org doesn’t identify any overt racism or racist acts (which are illegal under American laws) or examine any of the individual behaviors that lead to wealth accumulation. It would be news to Oprah Winfrey, daughter of a share cropper, raised in segregated Mississippi, whose net worth is $2.9 billion, or billionaire basketball player and TV host,ShaquilleO’Neill, or hip hop mogul, clothing magnate and outsize celebrity Sean “P.Diddy”Coombsor Snoop Doggy Dog or any of the many blacks who have managed to accumulate tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in a single lifetime.
Seventy percent of black children are born out of wedlock thanks in part to a welfare policy inflicted by leftists on America’s poor that cuts off benefits for homes where a father is present. All other factors being equal, including race, a child raised in a single mother household is five to six times more likely to be poor, than a child raised in a household with two parents. But facts like this are generally excluded from the “studies” that claim the wealth gap is intractable. “Inherited wealth” is often invoked as an insuperable advantage – a privilege that allegedly whites alone can take advantage of. But 70% of all millionaires are first generation millionaires. In other words, they earned their deserts, and did so in a single generation.
“White skin privilege” is not only a racist term, but part of a totalitarian ideology – identity politics – which erases the individual in favor of collective identities based on race and gender. It warps language to conceal the facts that refute its claims. Thus “white skin privilege” is an Orwellian construct to scapegoat whites who in reality, and in alliance with minorities, have created the most tolerant and inclusive society in human history.
The adjective “undocumented immigrant,” for example, is a form of OrwellianDoubleSpeakdesigned to suppress the fact that millions of aliens have violated the nation’s laws, circumvented its citizenship process and stolen places that belong to those applying for entry legally. It is part of the left’s efforts to eliminate the concept of citizenship along with the obligations it entails in exchange for the rights it bestows.
Similarly, the term “under-served communities,” universally used by colleges to provide privileges on the basis of skin color, suppresses the truth that these privileges are only necessary because the beneficiaries are unable to qualify under the same standards as required of others. In other words, to obscure the fact that nobody is under-servingthese communities and the privileges are racist in intention and result. No one in his right mind thinks that the admissions staffs at America’s liberal colleges are excluding minorities for racist reasons. Especially not when the same colleges are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to seek out and recruit qualified minorities. The only reasons for the subterfuge “under-served” are to suppress the fact that the applicants are unqualified and then to create the fiction that minorities are “marginalized” and “excluded” by …whitey.
America is at a crossroads. The progressive left has embraced a racist doctrine in which white people are the villains. Equally disturbing, the left has embraced a totalitarian doctrine that erases the individual – the cornerstone of America’s revolutionary idea that all human beings are equal in the eyes of their Creator, and should be judged according to their merits and not on the basis of their skin color. Is it any wonder that the Democratic Party has formed a “resistance” against a duly elected government that seeks to defend America’s core principles of individual freedom and individual accountability – or are constantly calling for its overthrow?
David Horowitz is the author of the forthcoming bookDark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America, which will be published byHumanixBooks on February 19.
Leave a Reply