White Privilege, White Entitlement and the 2008 Election-a MUST-read!

[liberalhistorian]

This was recently posted on Buzzflash, and deserves to be spread as far and as wide as possible. If I'm not mistaken, the author used to write for Alternet on race-related issues, and the all-too-blatant hypocrisies involved.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1755

Snip:

"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."

"White Privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color whodid this wold be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action."

"White Privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar means you're "untested."

"White Privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you. White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from teh Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first", and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, whie if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be hme with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful."

"White Privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt."

"White Privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense), that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America."

"White Privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it, a "light" burden.

There's a lot more, equally good. I didn't mean to snip so much, but it really deserves a far and wide reading. There really isn't much I can add to it!!!

[emilyg]

1. Dupe

[liberalhistorian]

2. Is it really? I thought I

was careful in trying to find it here previously, but must not have looked hard enough.

[emilyg]

3. I do that all the time.

[liberalhistorian]

4. I guess when the volume and speed of posting of threads

is so high, it's kinda hard to keep track. It's still well worth as wide an audience as possible, though. The discussion following the posting on Buzzflash is really interesting, too, including some great smackdowns of the usual whining racist tripe.