Where is my White Privilege, or is it a pigment of my Imagination?
I want to know where I sign up for my white privilege, I sure could use the extra help right now. I am out of work on comp after getting hurt on the job. Is there a list of extra benefits due to me as a white person, or do I just develop an entitlement attitude like many in the black community have, and my white privilege will kick in? I wish I had known back in the sixties about my white privilege, I could have used it to stop my parents from getting a divorce. That would have allowed me a better opportunity to grow and develop as a normal child. It might have prevented me from stuttering every other word from the time I started talking until I was in my mid-thirties.
Or I could have engaged it in the mid-seventies to avoid committing criminal acts and ending up in a N.Y. State juvenile facility. Or a couple years later when I quit school and went to work at 16 years old. I could have used that white privilege to get a decent job, instead I worked as a bus boy and a dishwasher. If I would have had a father growing up, he could have instructed me on the proper use of my “whitpriv” my “caucasian persuasion”, my “pigment present”.
Apparently they are teaching the kids in school about white privilege now, I could have used some lessons, it might have helped me later to sidestep the drug and alcohol issues that I experienced. But then again if I had known how to use it I would have missed out on the joys I experienced in the many wonderful jobs I had over time. Jobs such as shoveling horse shit all day, or baling hay, pumping gas, picking vegetables (yes just like a migrant worker), dishwasher again, delivery person (both pizza and parts). I guess my privilege kicked in a little as I got older because I was able to get some really high quality employment then, construction laborer, bathroom and toilet cleaner, the pinnacle of success was my job answering phones all day (getting yelled at by rich people) for just over minimum wage.
The white privilege people say that because I can turn on the television or open the front page to the newspaper and see my my race widely represented, that is proof right there of it’s existence. And I thought it was because my race is the majority population, where is my common sense? Another clear indicator according to the race patrol, is the fact that I can arrange to be in the company of my own race most of the time. The majority of black people chose to live in black neighborhoods, does that give them black privilege? Most people tend to gravitate to areas with people they can identify with, by race, national origin, political agenda and even socioeconomic class. So if black or latino people want to live around other black or latino people it’s normal, but if white people want to, it’s racist.
It pisses me off to find out now in my mid fifties that I could have avoided growing up in poverty and having all of those negative life experiences, had I just engaged my “white privilege”. And apparently I lost my white privilege or it had an expiration date on it, now that I am aware of it, I looked all over for it and it’s no place to be found. I’m thinking about putting posters up around the neighborhood, with all of the white people around some one must have seen it, hopefully it will be returned unopened and in good working order. I could really use it about now, living under the poverty level like I do.
And then there are the highly respected left wing nut jobs at the “white privilege” conference, we can’t rule out their highly evolved and advanced skill levels at rooting out white privilege in even the darkest corners of society. Fortunately they were able to make us aware of the excessive use of white privilege by Tea Party members. Who they described as having forms of racism ranging from “sort of generic to bald-faced racism”, is bald faced racism something clean shaven men practice?
According to the speaker there the Tea Party doesn’t really support “All this business about government and ‘constitutional’ it is a smokescreen that’s really all about, ‘I want this country back for me.’ And ‘me’ meaning ‘white people’. He even elaborated further on his brilliant summation by “noting that tea party supporters do not like to be called racists, the leftist activist suggested that tea party advocates mostly don’t like obama because obama “broke the white monopoly on the presidency.” Dam how did he figure out the true reason some white people don’t like obama, he broke our perfect record on old white men as president, we were trying for an even fifty. We are starting all over, it’s gonna take us another 200 years now.
And don’t forget the brain trusts he has involved in the question and answer period,a woman asked: “What is, like, an African-American tea party member? How could there be one?”
He said he doesn’t know “how people could do it” but compared black people who support limited government and gun rights to “Jewish kluxers.”
The speaker repeatedly referred to black people as “black folks.” He bizarrely suggested that “black folks” didn’t know about the tea party movement when it began because it wasn’t a topic of discussion “at the barber shop.” He also adamantly suggested that there are “no gay people in the tea party,” and that constitutional government and a free-market economy cannot coexist.
At the beginning of his talk, he had asked audience members to volunteer to speak about themselves.
“I live in the bowels of the tea party, and I have the privilege of teaching your children,” explained one White Privilege Conference attendee — a woman with a Southern accent. I am glad she went into such detail and really explained her position, we can really see where she is coming from and her true concerns.
“I teach at a very elite boarding school,” explained a second woman who said she is from the Boston area. She said the school is “full of tea partiers” who “try to, you know baptize” political opponents. This really surprises me, she happens to teach at the only elite boarding school in all of New England that is not totally liberal, what are the odds of that? And I think I have heard of the baptizing antics of the “Boston Family” of the tea party, run by “whitey”, they outfitted their enemies with rubber shoes didn’t they?
A third woman, from Minnesota, lamented that the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party is moving “towards what they call the middle” and becoming “welcoming to the needs of independent voters.” As the woman trailed off after “independent voters,” he interjected “…which means tea party,” as a way to label such voters.
A fourth woman said she attended his lecture because her “in-laws get all their news from Fox.” Michael J. Fox is not all that informative, but I guess she has her reasons. Oh, wait, I think she might mean Fox News Channel. I guess the channel her in-laws watch is as good a reason as any to be concerned about white privilege.
At least I think the lecture was about white privilege, it almost sounded more like a bash the tea Party lecture, maybe he was trying to multi-mask…