There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved…. After all we have been through. Just to think we can’t walk down our own streets, how humiliating.
Jesse Jackson, November 27, 1993
Very, very strong content warning as to the Chris Rock video above. Dave Griffey at Daffey Thoughts has a post on the concept of white privilege:
Courtesy of National Review. I notice that most who beat the drum of white privilege are, in fact, white. A common trend today. Of course the most popular criticism of those questioning the dogma is to call them racists. An oldie but a goodie. Still, since I know many people who have missed the good ship White Privilege, and furthermore dismiss the idea that a white person starved to death is better off than a non-white person starved to death, it’s worth the read for a dissenting view.
Go here to read the comments, which, since Dave blogs at Patheos, contains a fair number of liberals seeking to deny the obvious. When it comes to the concept of white privilege, I view it as a bad joke. Growing up in a family where money was scarce as love was abundant, I guess I was privileged but it had nothing to do with my skin color. In the Jim Crow South, an area ruled solely by the Democrat Party, government action did foster a regime of white privilege, but to pretend, as leftists do, that nothing has changed is simply delusional, as delusional as supporting government policies today that discriminate on the basis of race in order to fight racism.
In the comboxes of the post by Dave, the subject of traffic stops came up. The Chris Rock video mirrors advice I have given to clients of all races over the years: be polite, be business-like and do not argue with the cop. If there is something wrong with the stop we can fight it in court. Cops are like the rest of us, good, bad and indifferent, and most of them, in my experience, respond well to simple politeness. Actually politeness works well in most areas of life, and should never be confused with weakness. It costs nothing to be courteous, even in an adversarial situation, and usually pays a dividend. If 35 years of litigation has taught me anything, it has taught me that.
“Privilege is just another word for family.”
Don’t remember if I’ve mentioned this here before or not. If so, pardon the repetition.
Near as I can tell, the only privilege there is to being white is you get to be responsible everybody else’s mistakes along with your own.
That goes double if you’re male and white.
Triple if you’re heterosexual, male and white.
That Chris Rock video has been out for several years now. Even though I must have watched it hundreds of times, it still cracks me up. Those rule apply equally to whites as well as blacks. The cops in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn had no compunction in face planting any white kid stupid enough to get froggy with the fuzz. At least that’s the way it was 35-40 years ago when I was growing up in Detroit.
The kind of “privilege” I experienced as a white kid in an inner city Detroit public high school back in the early 80s consisted of getting my face kicked in, as well as being terrorized, because of the color of my skin. The race hatred of these blacks toward whites I saw firsthand was ginned up by the white left. And the harm it has done to blacks has been irreparable.
“The race hatred of these blacks toward whites I saw firsthand was ginned up by the white left. And the harm it has done to blacks has been irreparable.”
Precisely.
I have pointed out several times that I used to work in Washington, DC for over five years. On a daily basis, I commuted through the parts of the District that no tourist ever sees…or has any business ever spending any time in. I drove by a welfare hotel . The parking lot was covered in litter. Small children could be seen wandering about and this was at the intersection of Bladensburg Road and New York Avenue. A station wagon with three black passengers tried to run me off the ramp from the never finished Southeast-Southwest Freeway to Pennsylvania Avenue. On the Baltimore Washington Parkway there was a car with two black men who insisted on driving in front of me at a speed about 15 miles an hour under the speed limit and when I attempted to pass they cut me off. I had to wait to get to an exit ramp, fake passing on the left and floored it turning right. i drove on the berm and on the grass to get away from them.
For 17 years I have taken the bus to work. There is one stop in a black neighborhood. The worst behaved people on the bus always use this stop.
I don’t have the awful stories some people do, but I can tell you it can be very hard not to blame the problems black people face entirely on them and mentally wash my hands of it all. God, how I loathe political correctness. There is nothing correct about it and it can be suffocating.
Political correctness is virtue signaling. Its aim is to divide the country, to shame anyone who disagrees with progressive ideas. Even to question them is bigotry. But mainly it is to acknowledge those who hold them as the rightful rulers of the country.
Here you go, Penguins Fan, a classic article the Rush from Judgement.
I don’t have the awful stories some people do, but I can tell you it can be very hard not to blame the problems black people face entirely on them and mentally wash my hands of it all. God, how I loathe political correctness. There is nothing correct about it and it can be suffocating.
The thing is, you have a large population of wage-earning blacks who live in slums or in sketchy neighborhoods where security is poor. (The homicide rate in central Rochester is 35 per 100,000). The cultural dynamics of the black population are such that the interests of these people is never articulated and seldom addressed. You have a stable equilibrium between suburban interests, white progrtrash, black politicians, and the business-as-usual elites within the Democratic Party that leaves these people in the lurch. Rudolph Giuliani and Wm. Bratton are among the few people that matter who ever cared about their interests in an effective way. The vociferous element among black politicians is very concerned that the police and courts treat hoodlums delicately. For whatever reason, this sort of asininity does not cost them their careers.
DC is a great deal safer than it was a generation ago, with a homicide rate about 1/2 what it was during the period running from 1970-85 and a quarter what it was during the period running from 1986 to 1998. It’s still over 30 per 100,000 in the black section of town. There’s more work to be done toward a restoration of public order. Instead, Democratic Party lawfare artists, media frauds, and salaried rabble-rousers are attempting to trash the accomplishments law enforcement have had to date. (And, of course, they receive the endorsement of the adolescent crew commonly called ‘libertarian’).