“Check your privilege”
OK. Let’s check my privilege.
I grew up descended from people from an inhospitable place that nobody wanted to conquer and that nobody managed to enslave (or who managed to kill everyone that tried). My dominant culture has no experience of being enslaved – indeed, it abolished slavery hundreds of years before the rest of the world. It’s a “privilege” that every human in the world should have, and that I’m more than happy to share.
I grew up in a family where the parents stayed together (until we were all adults, anyway), and worked their butts off to give us a stable, loving upbringing where we were expected to grow up into productive, self-sufficient adults. My parents themselves were “privileged” with the same basic family structure, notwithstanding the Depression and World War 2.
Those are privileges I’m more than happy to spread to the whole world, and have nothing to do with my skin color.
I went to a public school system that was more concerned with teaching me to read, write, calculate, present myself, and reason than indoctrinating me in a view of society. It’s a “privilege” afford to very few these days.
I got a post-secondary education (thanks to my Mom working at the local college, with the commensurate tuition break) that focused on reason, logic and critical thought, rather than post-structural twaddle – not merely a “privilege”, but a decisive advantage in so many areas of my life.
Somewhere, I got a work ethic. I was blessed with ways to exercise it – for which I’m thankful. I’m more than happy to do my bit, and more, to make sure you get the same privilege.
I am a free person, with all the rights God endowed me, and all the responsibilities that position gives me. Freedom and responsibility are “privileges” I’ll fight to provide anyone who wants them, and against anyone who’ll deprive either of us of them.
In no case are those “privileges” zero-sum. My freedom takes nothing away from your freedom (that you’re not willing to give up, or at least pretend you’ve given up). And taking freedom away from others gives you no more; Germans, the Klan and Red Guards gained no freedom, no prosperity, no happiness from oppressing Jews, Afro-Americans or “counterrevolutionaries”; quite the opposite, in fact.
Freedom is the ultimate “privilege”. And it’s contagious, if you let it be. Try it, Sparky.
You are, of course, not referring to any of those. You are referring to the stretchy, sketchy concept of racial privilege which is in fact almost entirely a matter of class, not race, and is almost entirely an attempt to expiate White Progressive Guilt.
Enjoyed this a lot. It has always struck me as odd that “privilege” has been negative. I, too, want everyone to have the privilege that I have experienced.
Nice post. Mitch.
I can relate. Neither my mom or dad had more than a high school education. My dad was a Korean War veteran, from a southwestern Minnesota farm family of 9 kids, one of whom died in infancy. My mom was from a southern Illinois.working class blended Italian family. My grandmother’s first husband was killed in a coal mining accident, so she had already had three kids when she married my grandfather. She and her first husband, U.S. in 1920. My grandfather got here in 1921. Sadly, he also passed from black lung before I was old enough to know him. My grandmother, who spoke passable English, told us that when they came through Ellis Island, they were given a medical exam. If they had anything communicable, they were quarantined until they were over whatever it was. They also had to have at least $100 per family, had to tell immigration where they were going to live, what their profession was and whether or not they had a job. Yup! Real white privilege there. They flew a U.S. flag outside of their house, went to mass every day, learned English, became citizens as soon as they could and thought that taking anything from the government was shameful. Again, more white privilege. Two of my uncles served in the Army, one in the Pacific one during Korea.
In our house, we didn’t get a dishwasher until I was a senior in high school, because my dad said that he had two good ones, my brother and I. Mom cooked and cleaned most of the house, but we always had to wash dishes, clean our rooms and the bathroom. We learned to wash clothes and hang them on the clothesline, mow the lawn, rake leaves, etc. There’s that white privilege again!
My dad was a construction worker. Since he was a heavy equipment operator, he made more than the average unionista, but he worked butt tons of overtime during the summer. We didn’t have a new car until my dad had the money to buy a new F-100 in 1972 and my mom never had a new one until after my dad passed in 1974 from a heart attack at 44. My mom never remarried and worked two jobs to raise my four siblings. My parents instilled a strong work ethic in all of us, because they wanted us to have better lives that they had. One of my dad’s favorite sayings was; “if you’re not early (for an interview or appointment), you’re late!” Sadly, that was the only thing that I could pass on to my two liberal kids and they have thanked me for it. They both got jobs because not only early for their interviews, they actually showed up!
no prosperity, no happiness
I would have to disagree. People harassing me on the street looked pretty happy to do so – they were happy there was somebody lower then them in the pecking order. And boy oh boy, where the people at the top prosperous. Being a member of the communist party, never mind politburo, was considered a privilege with all the requisite perks.
Actually, what we have here is yet another example of progressives redefining the English language. For crying out loud, if “white privilege” means my son NOT be able to go to the college of his choice because he does NOT have the right skin color, socio-economic status and admission NOT based on merit, then by golly, I want to be the first in line to abolish this menace. Where do I sign up?
You know, it strikes me that while I do believe there probably are some points of very real privilege related to being white, as far as I can tell, the big hitters are the things which don’t depend on what color or ethnicity one is–well, at least unless you listen to that group whose poster the Smithsonian posted recently, then retracted.