by Peter Pavarini
I’ll admit it. Over the past several weeks, I’ve found it difficult to unpack America’s invisible knapsack of white privilege.[i]
Like most white Americans, I’ve been stunned and somewhat chastened by scenes of burning cities and toppled monuments. No decent person could have viewed the video of George Floyd’s horrific death and not concluded something had gone terribly wrong. In the aftermath of the COVID lockdowns, I had expected this to be a tumultuous summer, but I now know we were witnessing something of historic proportions.
Is white privilege just a rallying cry or is it real?[ii] Has the speck in my eye become a proverbial log?[iii]
Defining Privilege. I don’t often quote former President Obama, but I fully agree with his observation that “words do matter”. Therefore, I reached for my trusty dictionary and found these definitions of the word “privilege.”
“a right or liberty granted as a favor or benefit to some and not others”
“a special unearned advantage or entitlement used to one’s own benefit or to the detriment of others”
In essence, a privilege cannot exist unless it somehow differentiates between people. In some instances, the consequences of the privilege are deemed to be unfair, i.e., those who received the privilege did nothing to deserve it. What makes this kind of privilege unfair is its arbitrary nature – the recipient didn’t earn it.
No one earns the color they are born. In contrast, some privileges are earned by one’s character, achievement and talent.
Racism Is Not the Norm But It Still Exists. Since the concept of white privilege falls along racial lines, it requires racism to exist. So, let me state unequivocally – I believe elements of racism continue to exist in the US as they do in every country in the world without exception. It saddens me to think that James McWhorter, a linguistic scholar whose books I’ve enjoyed, was dead wrong when in 2008 he wrote “Racism in America is Over”.[iv]
Even though the election of America’s first black president was a landmark event, it did not eliminate all vestiges of racism in our society. Nor was it enough that his successor’s economic policies caused black unemployment to fall to an all-time low in February 2020, among other accomplishments that favored black Americans. I get that. What I don’t get is why so many Americans still pretend that racism is the norm rather than the exception.
Why Millions of Blacks Continue to Immigrate to the US. If we truly lived in a fundamentally racist country as claimed by the protestors (peaceful or otherwise), the mainstream media, and a large number of self-loathing white politicians regardless of party, then someone needs to explain to me why more than 4 million black immigrants[v] have in recent years chosen to leave countries in which blacks are the majority and voluntarily assume minority status in the US. Could it be that they see advantages in the American system that outweigh any disadvantages which remain the legacy of historic slavery and Jim Crow laws? Compared to the real hopelessness they left, do they see opportunity here that no other nation in the world can give them?
Contrary to what former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice recently said, America is not racist to its core. For 244 years, it has strived to live up to its founding principle that all men are created equal. Despite its many imperfections, including the dark moments of its history, America’s promise of freedom and equality without regard to skin color, ethnicity or creed is unparalleled in the world. Neither the police nor any other arm of government systematically targets innocent people on the basis of race or any other discriminatory criterion. Any fair-minded analysis of the data proves that.[vi] To be clear, the asserted justification for the recent riots[vii] was premised on a lie.
In November, the people will have a clear choice. One party believes that America is evil and its institutions must be torn down and fundamentally rebuilt. The other party believes America is and has always been a work-in-progress, but nonetheless mostly good and worth preserving.
A Divided Nation. That said, I will admit that our nation is more divided today than at any time since the Civil War. In November, the people will have a clear choice. One party believes that America is evil and its institutions must be torn down and fundamentally rebuilt. The other party believes America is and has always been a work-in-progress, but nonetheless mostly good and worth preserving.
Neither party can afford to ignore the real problems we face, e.g., an unskilled workforce ill-prepared to compete in the 21st century economy[viii], a generation of young people who acquired unrealistic expectations of what society owes them [ix], and a nihilistic culture that teaches life is hopeless and nothing really matters[x]. However, it would be foolhardy to think that, if we could only eliminate all vestiges of racism, these and a myriad of other challenges would suddenly disappear.
The men and women who marched for civil rights in the past did so, not because the US was irredeemably racist, but because they rightfully believed racism and racist government policies betrayed our nation’s founding principles. Those now setting fire to our cities, throwing bricks at cops, and keeping first responders from attending victims of violence should heed the words of President Obama:
“Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding… It’s a story with a simple truth: violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage or power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.”[xi]
Lately, my personal hero, Teddy Roosevelt, has also come under attack for the inappropriate imagery used by a sculptor hired by an art museum years after TR’s death. Otherwise, this excerpt from a letter he wrote in 1903 seems appropriate for today:
“As a people we claim the right to speak with peculiar emphasis for freedom and for fair treatment of all men without regard to differences of race, fortune, creed, or color. We forfeit the right so to speak when we commit or condone such crimes as these of which I speak. The nation, like the individual, cannot commit a crime with impunity. If we are guilty of lawlessness and brutal violence, whether our guilt consists in active participation therein or in mere connivance and encouragement, we shall assuredly suffer later on because of what we have done… The cornerstone of this republic, as of all free governments, is respect for and obedience to the law. Where we permit the law to be defied or evaded, whether by rich man or poor man, by black man or white, we are by just so much weakening the bonds of our civilization and increasing the chances of its overthrow, and of the substitution therefore of a system in which there shall be violent alternations of anarchy and tyranny.”[xii]
Are We About to Put Racism Under New Management? And, to the President, the Congress and our government leaders at all levels, I say this: it would be a grievous mistake to think that the current clamor for racial justice is the same as support for a racialist agenda that persecutes non-blacks for their race. Thomas Sowell put it succinctly:
“Racism has never done this country any good, and it needs to be fought against, not put under new management for different groups.”[xiii]
After a thorough inspection of America’s “invisible knapsack”, I did find one troubling pocket of white privilege. It belonged to the spoiled white kids who are the overwhelming majority of those rioting under the banner of Black Lives Matter. By virtue of being members of the lucky-sperm club, born into affluent families and sent to elite universities, these young people have had the privilege of being indoctrinated to hate capitalism and every American who continues to believe our nation is the “Last Best Hope of Earth”.[xiv]
[i] Peggy McIntosh’s groundbreaking essay, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”, Peace & Freedom Magazine, July/August 1989, is often credited with coining the term white privilege.
[ii] Cory Collins’ “What Is White Privilege, Really?”, www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2018/what-is-white-privilege-really discusses this concept in the context of systemic racism.
[iii] Matthew 7:5.
[iv] Forbes Magazine, December 30, 2008.
[v] A number that is greater than the number of blacks who were brought to North America as slaves.
[vi] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myth-of-systemic-police-racism-11591119883
[vii] https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/jason-brennan-when-the-state-is-unjust-citizens-may-use-justifiable-violence
[viii] Andrew Stuttaford, “The Protests Are a Preview of Our Turbulent Future”, National Review, June 8, 2020.
[ix] https://psmag.com/economics/millenials-a-generation-with-unrealistic-expectations-56761
[x] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/dec/18/sunny-nihilism-since-discovering-im-worthless-my-life-has-felt-precious
[xi] Barack Obama, “A New Beginning” (June 2009), Egypt.
[xii] Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Winfield Durban dated August 6, 1903, Oyster Bay, New York.
[xiii] Thomas Sowell, “Out of Context”, Jewish World Review, June 2, 2009.
(xiv) Abraham Lincoln, Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862.
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