White Privilege? Yeah, But Not All of It
Well, I knew it was gonna take something major to get me back here, and a lot of major events have gone down since I lasted posted. Today I'm posting to (kinda, sorta) defend the McCain-Palin ticket from an e-mail/MySpace bulletin forward asserting them of receiving "White Privilege."
My motive: You already know I'm not a conservative, so this may seem at odds with my ideology. I'm doing this because minorities seem to be a little close-minded when it comes to defending their candidate. When you speak of White Privilege, you're not just alienating John McCain and Sarah Palin; you're also (if unwittingly) a taking a shot at white folks with genuine white pride (and believe me, there is such a thing as non-racist white pride). And that matters because if it becomes a Whites vs. Minorities election, McCain wins by a landslide.
On that note, let's take a look at Internet forward that inspired my return (even if brief) to blogging. My added commentary will be in italics...
For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.
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.
No contest here. Though the media hasn't considered the Bristol Palin pregnancy off-limits, it is hypocritical of conservative commentators who've publicly criticized celebrity teen pregnancies and teen pregnancies in general in the past (read, Bill O'Reilly).
White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.
Ehh, I kinda have to call bullshit on this one. If you've ever watched Jeff Foxworthy and the Blue Collar TV comedy act, you'd know that there is a culture of people who proudly refer to themselves as rednecks. And if anyone messes with me, I'll kick their fuckin' ass, too. And I've shot a gun, and it is fun. Are these the makings of the stereotypical All-American white boy? Definitely not. As far as I can tell, the only thing wrong with this self-description of Levi Johnston is that his vocabulary is too vulgar to be associated with a presidential campaign -- but he's not the one running for office.
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 who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.
Well, it's kinda hard to question her commitment to achievement if she did graduate. There are too many people in the U.S. that pursue alternate paths to higher education to criticize how long it took her to graduate or how many schools it took her to earn her degree. As far as how well she performed in school, according to this article, federal privacy laws prohibit the schools from releasing her transcripts, and none of the schools disclosed why she transferred out, so any statements about her college career are speculation and hearsay.
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."
Actually, this isn't White Privilege so much as is it blatant hypocrisy, and if she didn't have so many other skeletons in her closet, the media would probably spend more time pouncing on her for that. What you can credit her political advisors for is spinning the issue. While the Republicans tried to minimize Barack Obama's public service record, Palin shot back at her detractors by riling up small-town voters, suggesting that Democrats are saying that citizens of small and rural towns don't matter.
White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school, requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.
The "under God" portion of the Pledge of Allegiance is especially embarrassing for John McCain because he ought to know those words weren't in the original pledge. He was alive (and definitely old enough to remember) when it was edited in 1954. The talking point regarding reading alleged terrorists their rights stems from the delusion of the ignorant among us that it's easy to spot a criminal and they should have no rights to begin with.
White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.
Sorry, gotta call bullshit on this one. People for stricter gun control would be just as afraid of a White gun enthusiast as they would be of a minority gun enthusiast.
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 the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.
This double standard (if it truly exists) has more to do with biased coverage of what the media outlets deem newsworthy. If the coverage really is skewed, it means one of two things: 1. The supposed liberal media bias we hear so much about doesn't really exist, or 2. There's nothing really extremist about the Alaskan Independence Party.
White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.
Again, this is more a case of imbalanced media coverage than racial double standard. Sarah Palin's dismissal of the duties of a community organizer demonstrate what little she knows about the position. Then again, what more can you expect from someone who asks, "What is it exactly that a VP does every day?"
White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."
I think this is an insult to white women voters. I don't think Palin's nomination has given the McCain campaign any significant boost in the White women demographic in the polls. And even if it has, it will probably fade away by Election Day. If the mere presence of a woman on a presidential ticket truly had an effect on an election, Walter Mondale would have defeated Ronald Reagan in 1984.
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.
The talking point regarding Obama's connections to party bosses in Chicago didn't stick, while Palin is being openly accused of abusing her gubernatorial powers long after the fact.
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.
This is an appeal to the Bible Belt. For the most part, they can't be helped and Obama stands no chance of winning over the most close-minded Christian fundamentalists. The best thing the Obama campaign can do is control the message in the swing states and make sure his spokespeople deliver the message accurately and in (at worst) a neutral tone.
White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.
I really don't see the problem here. On one side, Sarah Palin is so (un)qualified to be the deputy commander-in-chief that she's unaware that the Bush Doctrine isn't just some abstract, debatable set of ideas that the media supposes is Bush's foreign policy, but a concrete document published by the National Security Council in September 2002. On the other side, you have Bill O'Reilly, a man so aware of his intellectual deficiency next to Barack Obama that he resorts to interrupting Obama and shouting him down. By the way, "overly intellectual" is a meaningless term; there's no such thing as being too smart. Again, I don't see where White Privilege applies.
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.
I'm not aware of Sarah Palin dismissing Barack Obama's adversity as "light" compared to McCain's service in Vietnam -- though it does sound like a right-wing political tactic used to stir the base. I say we let John McCain parrot on about his time as a POW in Vietnam; the more he does it, the more he starts to sound like Rudy Giuliani did about 9/11.
And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing.
Sadly, White voters aren't the only ones unsure about that whole "change" thing. It embarrasses me to say that Hispanics are reluctant to vote for Obama based on race. This stems from the sometimes turbulent relationship between Blacks and Latinos in the inner cities, and humans' tendency to judge a person by his race first. Given that the presidential hopeful not named Obama confessed, then denied confessing, he doesn't know much about economics, and the current state of the economy, it's kinda scary to think Hispanics -- the majority of whom belong to the working class -- would vote against their own interests because the other guy is brown.
Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain…
Well, you hit the nail on the head there. That's one major reason to vote for McCain over Obama. Humans, by nature, don't accept change very well, even if the status quo isn't especially good. The problem is that the present situation is very bad and on the verge of catastrophic. It's shit-or-get-off-the-pot time on the "Are we ready for a Black President?" question.
White privilege is, in short, the problem.
No, it's not. It's a scapegoat, and we have enough of those in politics.
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