White Privilege…blah…blah…blah? Part I
By Patrick Hall
It begins. Again! It could have been at a Students-for-a-Democrat-Society rally back in the late 1960s, or in more recent times, as an integral part of a speech by AOC, Barrack Obama, or the current President. It often underpins much of the rhetoric of Black Lives Matter and the racist pedagogy of Critical Race Theory advocates. But the charge of white privilege (a Leninist adaptation) is alive and well in much of the constituency that makes up the Democratic Party. At one time in our nation's history, this was a reality for many Negroes; a term that was conspicuous when I was a youth. Even in my short 70 years of life, as a child growing up in 1950-the 60s, I can still remember that my family could not just stop at any motel or restaurant when we travel beyond the Mason Dixon line. Many parts of the south still practiced open discrimination against Negroes and other non-whites.
Even as a child, I was aware that we seldom saw or interacted with white people when we traveled south. Growing up in an integrated Roman Catholic Parish in Upstate New York, Italian, Irish, Puerto Rican, Black, and German playmates was a given. Conversely, during those summer months, when the roles were reversed, and my cousins and other relatives came North on holiday, they were somewhat surprised that many of my friends were Italian, Irish, Polish, and German. My older siblings, many of them born in the 1930 and 40s, experienced similar cultural discordance. Race mattered in far too many ordinary human interactions. But that was then.
Fast forward to today. We live in an entirely different America. Despite the familiar talking points by today's race-heretics, who preach the false doctrine, America is systemically racist. President Biden’s egregious and disheartening message to the world, that America is systemically racist, and plagued by white supremacy is also verifiably false. For example, if you are a black student, you are virtually guaranteed a college education via many financial aid packages offered by most universities. In the Post-Civil Rights Era, colleges have hired an army of faculty and support staff in order to promote diversity. However, to be honest, much of the diversity that is currently pushed at our institutions of higher learning is a diversity of color and gender, as opposed to thought.
Black student union groups have been a fixture for decades in many of these institutions. Efforts in the area Affirmative Action have changed the employment prospects of many minorities in both the private and public job sectors. Overall, the diversity industry, despite some of its shortcomings, in which there are many, has helped foster a more open and inclusive society.
Also, if white privilege has been such a dominating force, retarding the life prospects of black Americans, Asians Americans (whose median household income exceeds most whites), and many newer African immigrants don’t seem to be hamstrung by the specter of white privilege. A cursory review of the median household incomes of Americans of Nigeria, Ghanaian, Kenyan, Ugandan descent shows them far outpacing the median household income of so-called legacy black Americans. The same also holds of blacks hailing from Caribbean nations.
Now keep in mind that since the advent of the 1960s Great Society Programs of the Johnson administration, more than 7 trillion dollars has been poured into the black communities. If anything, most favored minority status has been the norm for most People of Color living in today’s America.
Yet, in the face of this cultural metanoia, you still hear many white and black public figures level the charge and flagellator incantation of white privilege. From President Biden, Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) to Susan Rice, the Domestic Policy Chief, Barrack Obama, and Rev Al Sharpton, their political faith-statement, their unquestioned racial hermeneutics are governed by the debilitating heresies surrounding white privilege.
As a sidebar, I employ the term heresy, not in the way most lay people interpret the word, which is categorical false. Heresy in traditional religious catechesis met a partial truth that is exploited so that it bears no relationship to the actual situation. To say that far too many blacks don't seem to be progressing in Post-Civil rights America and that white privilege, coupled with systemic racism, ignores more critical factors that affect the black underclass. To paraphrase the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), who conducted an exhaustive study of the black underclass, he noted that you don’t need the excuse of malignant racism to explain the persistent problems of the black underclass. It can be traced to the breakdown of the black family since the late 1960s. Although his findings were shouted down at the time and made anathema by far too many arbiters of Blackness, that is, the emerging Black Studies industry of the 1970s and other public policy experts. The black underclass is still paying the price of this hubris.
Of course, it is easy for politicians like Kamala Harris, Maxine Waters (D-CA), and Cori Bush (D-MO) to pontificate the fashionable bromide of white privilege, systemic to a capitalist country. In former East Germany and throughout the Soviet Block, the class privilege was the axillar served up to the average citizen, blaming someone else for the sorry state of their life under unfettered Socialism, the gateway drug of Communism. As alluded to earlier, Marxist/Leninist dogmas have been recycled by many within the Democratic Party. In the case of white privilege, they have been skillfully repackaged for their political potency. At the same time, little to nothing is done to confront the main barriers that keep the black underclass economically and culturally impotent.
In truth, the only privilege that whites, Asians, and new African immigrants have that is not present in 70% of the black community is a stable family structure. This was largely destroyed by the rise of the welfare state of the late 1960s. Blacks survived the horrors of slavery. They overcame the viciousness of Jim Crow and blatant racial segregation. What many blacks did not survive or fell prey too, was the rise of the welfare state.
[Patrick Hall is a retired university library director. He is a graduate of Canisius College and the University of Washington, where he received three advance degrees. He has published in Freedom's Journal Magazine, America, Commonweal, Headway, Journal of Academic Librarianship, American Libraries and others. He currently volunteers at a local VA hospital in the town of Erie, Pa.]
It begins. Again! It could have been at a Students-for-a-Democrat-Society rally back in the late 1960s, or in more recent times, as an integral part of a speech by AOC, Barrack Obama, or the current President. It often underpins much of the rhetoric of Black Lives Matter and the racist pedagogy of Critical Race Theory advocates. But the charge of white privilege (a Leninist adaptation) is alive and well in much of the constituency that makes up the Democratic Party. At one time in our nation's history, this was a reality for many Negroes; a term that was conspicuous when I was a youth. Even in my short 70 years of life, as a child growing up in 1950-the 60s, I can still remember that my family could not just stop at any motel or restaurant when we travel beyond the Mason Dixon line. Many parts of the south still practiced open discrimination against Negroes and other non-whites.
Even as a child, I was aware that we seldom saw or interacted with white people when we traveled south. Growing up in an integrated Roman Catholic Parish in Upstate New York, Italian, Irish, Puerto Rican, Black, and German playmates was a given. Conversely, during those summer months, when the roles were reversed, and my cousins and other relatives came North on holiday, they were somewhat surprised that many of my friends were Italian, Irish, Polish, and German. My older siblings, many of them born in the 1930 and 40s, experienced similar cultural discordance. Race mattered in far too many ordinary human interactions. But that was then.
Fast forward to today. We live in an entirely different America. Despite the familiar talking points by today's race-heretics, who preach the false doctrine, America is systemically racist. President Biden’s egregious and disheartening message to the world, that America is systemically racist, and plagued by white supremacy is also verifiably false. For example, if you are a black student, you are virtually guaranteed a college education via many financial aid packages offered by most universities. In the Post-Civil Rights Era, colleges have hired an army of faculty and support staff in order to promote diversity. However, to be honest, much of the diversity that is currently pushed at our institutions of higher learning is a diversity of color and gender, as opposed to thought.
Black student union groups have been a fixture for decades in many of these institutions. Efforts in the area Affirmative Action have changed the employment prospects of many minorities in both the private and public job sectors. Overall, the diversity industry, despite some of its shortcomings, in which there are many, has helped foster a more open and inclusive society.
Also, if white privilege has been such a dominating force, retarding the life prospects of black Americans, Asians Americans (whose median household income exceeds most whites), and many newer African immigrants don’t seem to be hamstrung by the specter of white privilege. A cursory review of the median household incomes of Americans of Nigeria, Ghanaian, Kenyan, Ugandan descent shows them far outpacing the median household income of so-called legacy black Americans. The same also holds of blacks hailing from Caribbean nations.
Now keep in mind that since the advent of the 1960s Great Society Programs of the Johnson administration, more than 7 trillion dollars has been poured into the black communities. If anything, most favored minority status has been the norm for most People of Color living in today’s America.
Yet, in the face of this cultural metanoia, you still hear many white and black public figures level the charge and flagellator incantation of white privilege. From President Biden, Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) to Susan Rice, the Domestic Policy Chief, Barrack Obama, and Rev Al Sharpton, their political faith-statement, their unquestioned racial hermeneutics are governed by the debilitating heresies surrounding white privilege.
As a sidebar, I employ the term heresy, not in the way most lay people interpret the word, which is categorical false. Heresy in traditional religious catechesis met a partial truth that is exploited so that it bears no relationship to the actual situation. To say that far too many blacks don't seem to be progressing in Post-Civil rights America and that white privilege, coupled with systemic racism, ignores more critical factors that affect the black underclass. To paraphrase the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), who conducted an exhaustive study of the black underclass, he noted that you don’t need the excuse of malignant racism to explain the persistent problems of the black underclass. It can be traced to the breakdown of the black family since the late 1960s. Although his findings were shouted down at the time and made anathema by far too many arbiters of Blackness, that is, the emerging Black Studies industry of the 1970s and other public policy experts. The black underclass is still paying the price of this hubris.
Of course, it is easy for politicians like Kamala Harris, Maxine Waters (D-CA), and Cori Bush (D-MO) to pontificate the fashionable bromide of white privilege, systemic to a capitalist country. In former East Germany and throughout the Soviet Block, the class privilege was the axillar served up to the average citizen, blaming someone else for the sorry state of their life under unfettered Socialism, the gateway drug of Communism. As alluded to earlier, Marxist/Leninist dogmas have been recycled by many within the Democratic Party. In the case of white privilege, they have been skillfully repackaged for their political potency. At the same time, little to nothing is done to confront the main barriers that keep the black underclass economically and culturally impotent.
In truth, the only privilege that whites, Asians, and new African immigrants have that is not present in 70% of the black community is a stable family structure. This was largely destroyed by the rise of the welfare state of the late 1960s. Blacks survived the horrors of slavery. They overcame the viciousness of Jim Crow and blatant racial segregation. What many blacks did not survive or fell prey too, was the rise of the welfare state.
[Patrick Hall is a retired university library director. He is a graduate of Canisius College and the University of Washington, where he received three advance degrees. He has published in Freedom's Journal Magazine, America, Commonweal, Headway, Journal of Academic Librarianship, American Libraries and others. He currently volunteers at a local VA hospital in the town of Erie, Pa.]
Posted in Opinion
Tagged with white privilege, critical race theory, Democrat party, racism, Civil Rights, Black people, Great Society, Whites, Freedoms Journal Institute, Freedoms Journal Magazine
Tagged with white privilege, critical race theory, Democrat party, racism, Civil Rights, Black people, Great Society, Whites, Freedoms Journal Institute, Freedoms Journal Magazine
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1 Comment
The simple truth of the matter is that as long as professional black race hustlers like Obama, Maxine Waters, and Alexandria Obviously Communist stand to gain money power and control then such Satanic garbage as CRT and systemic racism is going to be all you hear from them.