There are ideas that are so ridiculous that the knee-jerk reaction of thinking people is to dismiss them without much thought. One such idea is “white privilege.” But before you simply brush it off as a mere tangent, consider that same-sex “marriage” and transgender use of whichever public restroom one chooses both seemed like impossibly insane ideas just a few short years ago. And yet, here we are.
Last week’s 17th Annual White Privilege Conference (WPC) in Philadelphia was — in many ways — very run of the mill. The speakers’ presentations were steeped in the typical rhetoric about how white people are oppressors just by the very nature of their whiteness. In fact, even white people who do not espouse any racist ideas — even those who actively resist such ideas — are supposedly beneficiaries of “institutional racism” because they enjoy “white privilege.” The idiocy of the idea that an entire ethnic group can be accused of being racist based solely on the color of their skin appears to be lost on the organizers, speakers, and attendees of the conference.
In at least one way, though, the conference was much more than run of the mill. As The New American‘s Raven Clabough reported earlier this week, “This year’s conference was the most well-attended yet, with 2,500 teachers, school administrators, and counselors present.” Any event that manages to indoctrinate that many educational opinion molders in the radical notions of “white privilege” is worth taking note of.
In much the same way that homosexual and transgender activists continued to peddle their ideas until they seemed palatable enough to gain ground, the anti-white racists are pressing forward “educating” educators about the evils of being white. And the propaganda is getting traction. Those educators are taking the message back to the classroom and passing it along to students at every level. With nearly two decades of work under their belts, they are beginning to see their ideas bear fruit.
One case in point is a letter that appeared in the Iowa State Daily last week. Written by Leaders United for a Change (LUCHA) — a leftist student group whose logo includes the communist clenched fist — the letter claims that the “sickness” of white privilege is “spreading at Iowa State.” As proof of the spread of the “sickness,” LUCHA offers the following test to see if you are infected:
• You can get your hair cut wherever you want.
• You can walk into the supermarket and find your favorite foods.
• You can see yourself positively portrayed in the media.
• You can speak your native tongue without getting looks or comments from other people.
By that list of symptoms, a black feminist who prefers a buzz-cut hairstyle, eats vegan, and speaks English (I’ll just assume that we all know she would have no trouble finding positive portrayals of herself in the media), is infected with “white privilege.” That must be a weight to bear.
The letter goes on to advise:
If you have symptoms like those described above, you may want to be checked for white privilege. White privilege is like a virus. Carriers are often unaware of their infection for decades while spreading their disease to everyone they come in contact with.
The acronym LUCHA originally stood for Latinas United for a Change, but the name was later changed to Leaders United for a Change to be more inclusive. Apparently, if you want to have more than a handful of people in your club on a campus in Iowa, limiting membership to only people of Hispanic ethnicity is a non-starter. Besides, can you imagine the outrage if a student group called itself Caucasians United for a Change (CUCHA)? Such a group would be deemed racist — but not so for non-white groups. But why is that? And if the purpose of a group is to bring people together, why would its membership be limited to a particular racial group?
Of course, leftists of all stripes — particularly those with communist leanings — have always sought to divide people along racial lines to help deliver their message of revolution. LUCHA appears to take that same tack. Steeped in Marxist thought, the group’s letter to the campus newspaper attacks not only the mythical privilege that is enjoyed simply by virtue of being white, but also the very nature of capitalism on which this country was founded. In an effort to defend race-based scholarships, the letter says:
White people have spent decades building wealth while many of our ancestors were blocked from buying property, owning homes and building businesses. As a result, white families have double the wealth on average than families of color, meaning we often have less financial support from our families.
Moreover, recipients of non-race-based scholarships are overwhelmingly white due to selection biases and numbers: a white woman is more likely to be given a scholarship than a black woman (especially if she has an “ethnic” sounding name) with similar GPA, writing skills and experience because there are 10 times as many white women to choose for the scholarship.
Many of us need scholarships to even fathom attending an institution of higher learning, and the gap is only getting wider. At its most extreme, women of color who graduate from college are paid 46 percent less than their white male counterparts, meaning it would take them astronomically longer to pay off their loans and send their own kids to college.
The idea of eliminating race-based scholarships ignores the historical context of legalized discrimination and proves that people who believe this school of thought have fallen into the myth of meritocracy.
So, because oppressive government policies south of the border made building wealth difficult (or even impossible), the answer is to blame white people (who — just to put in the for-what-it’s-worth column — had nothing to do with those oppressive policies) and decry meritocracy as a myth? Furthermore, the writer of the letter thinks that things will somehow be better if we introduce similar policies on college campuses here in the United States. Because, in the very next paragraph, that is exactly what is proposed:
White privilege isn’t one person. It’s not your neighbor or your classmate. While we can all appreciate the First Amendment, it is reckless and dangerous to allow such hateful and blatantly wrong rhetoric to continue to circulate. White privilege means you are not only blind to racial inequality, you can also brag about this ignorance publicly and without consequence.
Restrict free speech, demonize a merit-based system, divide people along racial lines, and call it the path to greater freedom. Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky would be proud. The letter ends on a fairly subversive note:
White privilege is so ingrained in our society that there’s no way that we could cover this epidemic in one letter to the editor. But don’t be scared. While there is currently no way to cure white privilege, there are definitely ways to deal with the symptoms. Educate yourself. Don’t expect your minoritized friends to explain your privilege to you. Innoculate. Educate others. Be an ally. And rest assured that we are working hard to eradicate the disease here on campus.
If there is “no way to cure white privilege” one can only “eradicate the disease” by getting rid of those who carry the “virus.”
The issue of combating white privilege is ridiculous, but that hasn’t kept it from spreading. The message is being picked up by educators, the media, and pop-culture at large. If the trend continues, white people may find themselves riding in the back of the bus on their way to a school they pay more for so that “people of color” can pay less. And the lessons that will be taught there are that being white is a curse and everyone else is equal.
