Below is a good paper exposing the weaknesses of the complaint about so-called “White Privilege,” which has become the latest catch-all slur aimed at anyone with white skin.
When I was on vacation recently, a very nice Canadian black man with whom I was drinking and chatting (who had emigrated from Jamaica to Canada as a young boy), looked at me in a quizzical sort of way, and asked me point-blank: “Are you aware of your white privilege?”
My immediate answer was, “Sure. And I love it.”
You should have seen the look on his face!
“And,” I continued, I am sure if I lived in Jamaica, I’d be very aware of your black privilege. And when I lived in Japan, I was acutely aware of Japanese privilege.”
He wasn’t so sure what to say at this point. Especially when I pointed out that he wears a very fine watch, lives in an upper-end home he owns outright, drives a luxury European car, and (this got a laugh at least) is a wine snob.” We enjoyed the rest of the evening, but I think he got my point, which was that all societies and cultures subsist on many forms of privilege, whether obvious or unconscious.
Here is the article. Study it a little. It will arm you against that silly phrase.
And here is a little more related to the business of privilege and slavery (which as I say seems to be historical framework for this kind of victimology).
Seems to me that even if all those who insist that their lives are somehow more satisfying or improved by indulging in victimology to explain away their failures, they at least ought to get their target right, no?
BTW, the phrase “white privilege” certainly has some legs, as it was mostly whites who oppressed blacks in the trans-atlantic slavery epoch (though they mostly bought their slaves from blacks who made them slaves in the first place, or from brown people such as Arabs who are still doing it). But anyone who reads the copious, highly-detailed and deeply-researched work of the contemporary black socio-economists, Thomas Sowell, who informs us that the black races of Africa (most of whom have always exercised powerful black privilege over the black tribes they consider(ed) inferior) were themselves deeply involved in enslaving each other for thousands of years prior to the white man’s run at this nefarious and evil practice.
So in historical terms – who is responsible, and who guilty, and who “privileged”. Everybody. So it’s a wash.
Here are some words of the master himself from his book The Thomas Sowell Reader, from his chapter called “Twisted History.”
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“Of all the tragic facts about the history of slavery, the most astonishing to an American today is that, although slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years, nowhere in the world was slavery a controversial issue prior to the 18th century. People of every race and color were enslaved – and enslaved others. White people were still being bought and sold as slaves in the Ottoman Empire, decades after American blacks were freed.
“Everyone hated the idea of being a slave but few had any qualms about enslaving others. Slavery was just not an issue, not even among intellectuals, much less among political leaders, until the 18th century – and then it was an issue only in Western civilization. Among those who turned against slavery in the 18th century were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and other American leaders. You could research all of the 18th century Africa or Asia or the Middle East without finding any comparable rejection of slavery there. But who is singled out for scathing criticism today? American leaders of the 18th century.
“Deciding that slavery was wrong was much easier than deciding what to do with millions of people from another continent, of another race, and without any historical preparation for living as free citizens in a society like that of the United States, where they were 20 percent of the population.
“It is clear from the private correspondence of Washington, Jefferson, and many others that their moral rejection of slavery was unambiguous, but the practical question of what to do now had them baffled. That would remain so for more than half a century”
[my comment on Jefferson: I recall him saying that slavery corrupted owners even as it degraded the humanity of slaves. He said “We have the wolf by ears and cannot hold him safely or let him go.” WDG]
“In 1862, a ship carrying slaves from Africa to Cuba, in violation of a ban on the international slave trade, was captured on the high seas by the U.S. Navy. The crew were imprisoned and the captain was hanged in the United States – despite the fact that slavery itself was still legal at the time in Africa, Cuba, and in the United States. What does this tell us? That enslaving people was considered an abomination. But what to do with millions of people who were already enslaved was not equally clear.
“That question was finally answered by a war in which one life was lost [620,000 Civil War casualties] for every six people freed [3.9 million]. Maybe that was the only answer. But don’t pretend today that it was an easy answer – or that those who grappled with the dilemma in the 18th century were some special villains when most leaders and most people around the world saw nothing wrong with slavery.
“Incidentally, the September 2003 issue of National Geographic had an article about the millions of people still enslaved around the world right now. But where is the moral indignation about that?
According to that National Geographic article titled “21st Century Slaves“:
“There are an estimated 27 million men, women, and children in the world who are enslaved — physically confined or restrained and forced to work, or controlled through violence, or in some way treated as property.
“Therefore, there are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade [11 million total, and about 450,000, or about 4% of the total, who were brought to the United States]. The modern commerce in humans rivals illegal drug trafficking in its global reach—and in the destruction of lives.
