Privilege as Perception
I keep hearing references to this elusive thing called white privilege. At first, I resented it because it seemed to encourage everyone else — blacks, Hispanics, Arabs, Muslims, illegal aliens — to despise me, my wife, my friends, my relatives and even my dog, Angel, who happens to be white.
I keep hearing references to this elusive thing called white privilege. At first, I resented it because it seemed to encourage everyone else — blacks, Hispanics, Arabs, Muslims, illegal aliens — to despise me, my wife, my friends, my relatives and even my dog, Angel, who happens to be white.
But then, one morning — this morning, actually — I woke up and realized that white privilege actually exists. That doesn’t mean we are all born with a silver spoon in our mouth, which is fortunate for all those white mothers in the delivery room.
I fully admit that I am the recipient of white privilege, so long as we can all agree that it consists of being born and raised in a predominantly white country that more times than not rewards honest effort, scholarship, elbow grease and a positive, cooperative attitude.
There is also such a thing as black privilege, Hispanic, Arab and Muslim, privilege. That’s because in every group in America, there are success stories galore. They all weren’t born to wealthy parents; they achieved their success the exact same way that white folks did; they worked harder, longer and smarter, than the competition. What they didn’t do was curl up in a fetal position, which is often a fatal position for an adult with asperations.
They didn’t sit around and sulk about the unfairness of (the United States) (Capitalism) (God) (Caucasians), and they sure as heck didn’t take to the streets to expose the very reason that they are now and will forever remain bitterly resentful failures.
The real privilege, which these ungrateful ignoramuses have chosen to ignore, is that they are among the blessed 300 million of the world’s seven billion people fortunate enough to call America home.
Only in the bureaucratic morass of Washington would anyone accept that when Hillary Clinton used an unsecure server to convey classified material, she was being “grossly negligent,” and committing a serious felony; however, if she was merely being “extremely careless,” it was an honest mistake, one easily made by someone so unsophisticated about the nature of electronic surveillance that she believed that one could literally wipe a hard drive with a dish towel.
Speaking of swamp creatures, why is the FBI being allowed to get away with stonewalling Senate committees being chaired by Republicans? Why is President Trump not telling Attorney General Sessions to tell FBI Director Christopher Wray to start paying attention to the Constitution, which gives Congress oversight authority?
Why do all these high-ranking Republicans appear to be content to allow a rogue agency to get away with ignoring the legitimate requests of Congress? It was bad enough when Obama, Holder and Lynch, all egged on the IRS to make life hell for conservative groups and individuals. Speaking as someone who saw the election of Donald Trump as a matter of divine intervention, it’s making me wonder what the FBI has on these people that makes them so reluctant to discharge their constitutional duties and command the mongrels to heel.
A friend of mine recently was scammed by an outfit that had offered its services to keep his computer free of those viruses that attack the just as well as the unjust. After several months, my friend was contacted and told that due to unforeseen problems, the company couldn’t do what they had promised. They were offering a full rebate. But in the process of receiving the refund, my friend had apparently hit a wrong key on his computer, which apparently took too much money from the company and placed it in his checking account.
Torn with guilt over taking money he wasn’t entitled to, and hearing the pleas of some minimum wage employee that my friend’s honest mistake could cost him his job, my friend took total leave of his senses. He was then told to make restitution by buying gift cards at Target or Walmart and providing the outfit with the numbers on the cards. Fortunately, thanks to the intervention of his wife and a good friend, he was provided with the equivalent of a slap in the face before he could make a complete ass of himself.
It’s embarrassing to admit that I was that friend. I can only say in my own feeble defense that I fell for what must strike any reasonable person as an obvious con game because I felt such an obligation to return money that wasn’t mine and felt such guilt over playing a role, no matter how inadvertently, in costing this fellow his job, that I threw caution, along with commonsense, to the wind.
Did someone just say something about the road to Hell being paved with good, or at least honorable, intentions? No? I guess that was just me wishful thinking aloud.
I am only coming clean in the hope that I can alert all of you to the danger of signing up with an outfit you only know from the Internet. I know we all regard Washington, D.C., as a swamp. But compared to the creepy crawly creatures who lurk inside our computers, those legislators, bureaucrats and lobbyists, are angels, complete with harps and halos.
But, when all is said and done, at least I have the heart-warming satisfaction of knowing this Yuletide that I saved the poor fellow his job.
Bert Black, the pride of Silver Spring, MD, sent me a joke which he assumed I had heard before. I hadn’t, and perhaps neither have you.
Bob was sitting on a plane waiting to fly to Chicago when Jack took the seat next to him. Bob was an emotional wreck, pale, hands shaking and a scrim of sweat on his brow.
“What’s the problem?” Jack asked. “Fear of flying?”
“It’s not that. I’ve been transferred to Chicago, and I hear the people there are crazy. All those shootings, gangs, race riots, drug addicts and the highest murder rate in the country.”
“Relax,” Jack advised. “I’ve lived in Chicago my entire life. It’s not as bad as the media makes it out to be. Find a nice home, go to work, enroll your kids in a good private school and mind your own business. I’ve worked there for 14 years and never had any trouble.”
Bob was greatly relieved. “Thanks. I’ve been a nervous wreck, but if you’ve worked there for all that time and not had any problems, it sounds okay. By the way, what do you do for a living?”
“I’m the tail gunner on a Budweiser truck.”
Sometimes, when you hear about a jihadist blowing up a train station or a Stephen Paddock shooting up a concert because, so far as we know, he really hated country music, you could easily conclude that the world is a very scary place full of very spooky people.
But I get that same queasy feeling every time some $250 million movie with “Harry Potter,” “Lord of the Rings” or “Star Wars,” in the title opens, and I see a TV reporter interviewing people who have been camping out on the sidewalk for a week in order to make sure they see it before their friends.
Of course, even that calls for a gigantic leap of faith; namely, the assumption that these oddballs have actual human friends, and not merely figments of their overwrought imaginations to whom they’ve given names and with whom they’ve had sex.
