{"id":62974,"date":"2015-02-09T13:12:43","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T21:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=62974"},"modified":"2015-02-09T13:12:43","modified_gmt":"2015-02-09T21:12:43","slug":"white-privilege-myth-or-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=62974","title":{"rendered":"White Privilege: Myth Or Reality?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Selwyn Duke writes<\/a>: If you look for the worst in a group, you\u2019re sure to find it. Using a twist on an Abraham Lincoln line, I made that statement on the Mildred Gaddis Show (Radio One Detroit WCHB AM) last Wednesday during a debate on \u201cWhite Privilege: Myth or Reality.\u201d Finding myself pitted against the other guest, whose name isn\u2019t important, and the black callers, it was a spirited discussion, to say the least.<\/p>\n

It was also, unfortunately, a good example of how hatred is like darkness: the more there is, the less you can see.<\/p>\n

To the other guest and the black callers, white privilege\u2019s reality was simply a \u201cfact\u201d everyone was obligated to acknowledge, and the only legitimate question was the extent to which it has affected our lives. My debate opponent was flabbergasted that I denied this.<\/p>\n

Of course, the general explanation for \u201cdeniers\u201d such as me\u2013and this is the white man\u2019s plight, the dogma goes\u2013is that we\u2019re so immersed in our privilege we just can\u2019t help ourselves and see beyond it. Thus is our opinion on the subject irrelevant.<\/p>\n

This demonization is a bit like what befell the Jews in Nazi Germany. It mattered not if they didn\u2019t have two pfennigs to rub together; by virtue of being Jewish they were automatically deemed privileged and guilty of taking advantage of that status. This justifies all manner and form of discrimination against the target group to \u201cbalance the scales.\u201d Of course, those scales never do get balanced. For instance, even though South African whites are politically powerless today and subject to great discrimination and violence, they\u2019re still blamed for their country\u2019s woes.<\/p>\n

But accepting white privilege as supposition is prejudice itself. If someone wishes to claim this phenomenon exists, the burden is on him to prove it; it is not on those who would have to prove a negative.<\/p>\n

This proof is never forthcoming. The only argument offered is that whites are more prosperous and healthier socially than are blacks, which proves white privilege as much as blacks\u2019 numerical dominance in the NBA proves black privilege. After all, Hindus (exclusively non-white) are the highest-earning religious group in the U.S., and Jews are number two, yet no one today takes this as proof of Hindu or Jewish privilege. In fact, in a radio debate some years ago I challenged a different guest\u2013who cited whites\u2019 higher incomes as proof of privilege\u2013to be true to his rationale and speak of Jewish privilege (which he wouldn\u2019t dare do). His response?<\/p>\n

Jewish people can\u2019t be privileged because we know they\u2019ve suffered discrimination.<\/p>\n

Of course, this is circular reasoning. Higher incomes were proof of his ideology\u2013except when his ideology said that higher incomes weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s the left-reason Left for you. They don\u2019t need facts or logic. They know white privilege exists. They know whites discriminate. It\u2019s just a matter of accepting the terms of surrender and your place in the re-education camp. Because they know. Yet the guest on that second show, a Ph.D., didn\u2019t even know that whites (non-Hispanic) were only 63 percent of our population; he thought they constituted 80 percent. It was especially striking that he didn\u2019t know the country\u2019s racial and ethnic make-up\u2013his Ph.D. was in ethnic studies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,29594],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jews","category-whites"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62975,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62974\/revisions\/62975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}