My White Privilege

In case you're wondering I have never walked a mile in a black man's shoes. I have never been black and I have never played a black man on TV. Since the left's president, all prominent black race-baiters, several black college professors all sharing the same village idiot's brain, and CNN have declared that I am racist because I am white and it can be no other way, then fine. I am racist because I was born white. (Somehow that seems like a racist point of view itself but the Associated Press says it's so, so who am I to argue?)

My life is littered with white privilege. Unfortunately, my parents weren't smart enough to sign us up for that part of the white privilege program I keep reading about in the Denver Post where you just get up in the morning and go out in your back yard and fill your wheelbarrow full of the money that fell there overnight because you're white but let me tell you what they were smart enough to do.

They were smart enough to raise me to believe that if you work hard and stick with it you can be whatever you want to be.  Sadly I didn't want to work that hard but I'm ok with what I am. They made sure I understood that results weren't always going to be commensurate with the effort I put out but they would be a lot closer to the desired result than if I put out less effort.

They were smart enough to make sure I understood that opportunity in this great nation exists in abundance but it wasn't going to come looking for me.  I was going to have to go look for it, and again, finding it might not guarantee success but searching for it would guarantee more success than burning down the neighborhood barber shop.

They were smart enough to make sure I understood there is nothing more important than family.  They set an excellent example of marriage and family until my mother's death. I knew who my daddy was, which statistically is a definite privilege of being white. And my dad would never claim he was perfect but I will claim he was a great example of how to live my life by a set of standards and expectations that made me successful and someone people could count on.

My life of privilege in a loving, caring family ensured that I understood that regardless of my own spiritual commitment that the Christian principles on which this nation was founded were rock-solid and as bad as I am at it, I understand that if we all followed The Golden Rule we wouldn't need another one.

My privilege as a family member taught me right from wrong. It taught me there were consequences for bad decisions and that the worst consequence of all was disappointing someone who believed in you.  It also taught me that there was love and acceptance and second chances if I was willing to try.

The privilege of being able to watch my father interact with other people and deal with life's triumphs and failures taught me how a man is supposed to behave and respond and step up. My father taught me that stove tops are hot (much more successfully than my mother's mere warnings), that sweat yields results, that most people are decent, that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar (that's a metaphor you guys), and that you have to do your chores before you go play.

Somewhere along the line they also taught me, though I don't remember a specific conversation, that if a police officer asks you to stop and let him talk to you that doing so is probably more prudent than pointing a gun at him, trying to cut him with a knife or run over him with a car. It's probably even smarter than just fleeing. Oh, and in addition to being smart it is the right thing to do.

A lot of my white privilege has to do with my education on the right thing to do. You help others when you can. You get up and go to work everyday. You take care of your wife and kids. You don't steal stuff or hurt people. Selling illegal drugs as a career choice is a bad idea. You do treat others as you would like to be treated.

And the greatest white privilege of all in my life has been the opportunity to, along with my wonderful white wife, raise my own family and pass along to my own children what I hope is the best I know about how to get through this world with pride and satisfaction and minimal regrets. If how my kids have turned out is any measure of my wife and I we are brilliant. Probably my wife more that me.  Brilliant is not a word used in the same sentence as my name very often. Both my kids are successful, married, white privileged little home owners and I am proud of their loving, caring, successful lives.

One of them is even a police officer.  Not because he really wanted to get into a profession where he could kill all the black people he wanted to but because he believes serving and protecting his community is the right thing to do and he is really, really good at it.

I was unemployed for a year, which I realize is way different than 50 years of generational unemployment and being told there's nothing you can do about it except keep voting for democrats because that's worked out so well.  But never once in that lone year did it occur to me that I ought to set every business in my neighborhood on fire just to let people know it wasn't fair. Never once did it occur to me to throw bricks at cops or march in protest of people who weren't me having stuff I didn't have. And it most especially never occurred to me to vote for Barack Obama.

No, instead my white privilege kicked in and I looked for a job every single day.  When it became clear that my skill set was more common than I thought, or at least that it was available in a younger more affordable version of Executive 2.0, as white as I was then, I was able to lower my sights a bit and take a job at a level I used to supervise.  Seems unfair.  In hindsight I probably should have burned down a liquor store or something but instead I took the job so I could keep my house and provide for my family and I have showed up to work every day since.

I hope there is a black person who can read this and get angry and think they were also raised in a loving and caring family and how dare I think that is uniquely white.  I don't. But in truth, 24% of white kids are born into fatherless homes while 72% of black kids are.  You don't even have to do an Associated Press magical adjustment of the data to figure out that white kids have a tremendous advantage right there.

And I don't know what to do about it.  I'm sorry. But I don't know how to make black families whole.  That's why I hope I can make some, any, even one black person angry enough to yell about this a little.  Go out in the street and do it. Go tell every other black person you know that it doesn't have to be this way.  That being somebody's baby momma is a really bad choice.  That being somebody's baby daddy is really irresponsible.  That if you're going to bring a kid into this world you have an obligation to raise it the best you can.  You don't have to be perfect. You can even be pretty bad at it. Mostly all you have to do is care.

The biggest single factor between young black men in prison and young black men not in prison is that the ones not in prison can identify at least one person they would have disappointed by committing a crime and the ones in prison cannot.

So is it just me or shouldn't it be more intuitive that alleged black leaders should be more about trying to re-establish a little black privilege along the lines of the white privilege that we undeserving oppressors were born into? Why would you not promote dads manning up and being dads over tipping police cars over and setting businesses on fire to express their anger? Why would you not promote trying to improve your situation rather than trying to ruin someone else's?

My white privilege tells me I'd get a new set of leaders, but Hillary may well end up being the next president so what the hell do I know about what an abject loser Barack Obama has been?

I am certain in a lot of ways I am not able to understand how highly the deck is stacked against black culture.  Maybe black people do have to work twice as hard to get half as far. I don't know. But if that's true, so just do it already. Half as far is further than you're going to get playing professional victim. And if you stick around and watch your kid grow up maybe he'll get twice as far as you did and before you know it black people might be too busy succeeding to remember how much they hate white people or vice versa.  I forget whose fault it is now. White people right?

I am beating a dead horse now but I do have one final thought on white privilege and how it is not uniformly applied to all white people.  I cannot golf worth shit which seems grossly unfair.  Every thing about me is white except the way I swing a golf club.  Why? Bill Clinton posted good scores although it is fairly accepted he cheated (SHOCKER!). Barack Obama is rumored to be a pretty good golfer and he is only 1/2 white (oh, yes he is).  Maybe I just need to practice as much as Obama does but God help my fat white derriere, I just can't see myself spending as much time doing anything as much as Obama does golfing.