Being White is Unfair
The thing about noblesse oblige is that guilty rich people can allay some of their guilt by giving money to charity, or starting foundations, or advocating redistributive policies such as the "Buffett Rule."
But what redress exists to ease the burden of white guilt? To the chagrin of a group calling themselves the "Un-Fair Campaign", sponsored by the University of Minnesota — Duluth, it's simply not possible to transfer one's own whiteness to those whom the cosmos cursed at birth with the affliction of a higher concentration of melanin. So the Un-Fair Campaign's solution? Confessing their guilt upon their faces with black Sharpie.
In the video, we white folks learn that we're "privileged" to be white, "privileged that people see us and not a color", "privileged that we don't get stared at when we walk into a room," and "privileged that society was set up for us." (What does it mean for a society to be "set up", anyhow?)
The problem with this approach is that those decrying how wrong it is to see a color instead of a person are the very ones insisting on labeling themselves and others (with a Sharpie, no less!) by color. As one student at UMD wrote in response to the campaign, "It may be drawing awareness to factors that we might otherwise not pay attention to, but it's creating a gap between people. It's only making people more racist on both sides."
Update: A senior at UMD (and sibling of a Ricochet Member) sent me the following note:
The Unfair Campaign has [a] feel that I think is off-putting. I'm interested in hearing what they have to say, but when I read into their reasoning, I feel as though I am being accused of actively perpetuating a problem simply because I am white. Perhaps there is a conversation worth having [about racism], but placing it in the context of ‘dismantling white privilege’ is frankly demotivating.
I would be more interested in building underrepresented people up than deconstructing ‘over privilege.’ I hesitate to get involved in the conversation at all for fear that my skepticism that ‘white privilege’ is the problem will be misconstrued as racism. I believe I am not alone in that fear. This is a sensitive subject and the current framing of it is polarizing.
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Comments:
Apr '11
Re: Being White is Unfair
"Society was set up for us"
Which society? Do they mean the societies started by white people (European societies). I am quite sure the Chinese and Saudis have set up societies for non-white people? Yet it is only white societies that actually have the most racial diversity.
Jun '12
Re: Being White is Unfair
The really sad thing is, the people who did this think they are doing a good thing, and won't understand the problem we the great unwashed have with it.
BTW I have some words I can let you have. They're short words..4...8 letters. :-)
Jun '11
Re: Being White is Unfair
And after they graduate, they wonder why they cannot find a job.
Hey, kids, hope those student loans are worth it!
Nov '11
Re: Being White is Unfair
My liberal friends and I talk often about oppression. It's almost their favorite subject.
Our conversation usually takes place in comfortable surroundings, a cafe (other than Starbucks!), with pleasant music in the background and inspiring beverages in front of us. Although we are patronizing a less globalistic purveyor, the politically correct setting still complicates their discontent because they yearn, deeply, to think of themselves as oppressed, . . . but in such circumstances one cannot plausible consider oneself oppressed . . . unless one feels oppressed to have been served a latte at not quite the proper temperature.
It is unfair!
They soon recall with relief that they are oppressors. Such is the perverse psychic refuge to which liberals retreat in defense of the sacred tenets of their religion of victimology. Because they have never been oppressed themselves, the only sustainable alternative is to confess (to me of all people!) that they are oppressors. A confession through which they might gain admitance by grace to liberal heaven? (I bless them and admonish them to go and sin no more. They miss the joke.)
Besides muddling my skin to a lovely shade of tan, my impure blood seems to convey immunity against infections of collective guilt.
Jun '12
Re: Being White is Unfair
I'm privileged that my Mom and Dad loved each other for 65 years, sharing their love with their eight children. I don't feel guilty about it though. Should I?
Dec '10
Re: Being White is Unfair
Dear University [clowns],
When you get done scrubbing that Sharpie off your faces and patting one another on the back, you may kiss my muscular white buttocks.
Sincerely,
Some RedNeck who's tired of being assumed a racist at all times unless proven Liberal.
Edited on June 22, 2012 at 6:40amDec '11
Re: Being White is Unfair
Wait someone still takes the idea of white privilege seriously?
Aug '11
Re: Being White is Unfair
No, no, no, no. Wrong word. According to these precious academics, you are LUCKY to have come from such a family. Your parents didn't work at their relationship. Love had nothing to do with it. It's all LUCK!
Dec '10
Re: Being White is Unfair
DrewInWisconsin
No, no, no, no. Wrong word. According to these precious academics, you are LUCKY to have come from such a family. Your parents didn't work at their relationship. Love had nothing to do with it. It's all LUCK!
Rober Heinlein had the definitive quote on luck:
"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people.
Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as 'bad luck.' "
Re: Being White is Unfair
Who stares at black people when they walk into a room? Holy Cow, exactly how white is the neighborhood these people live in that a black person is such a rare occurance he gets stared at when he walks into a room?
The people who made that video are likely the most racist people in the country.
Jan '11
Re: Being White is Unfair
Quick - send these kids an email from that Nigerian guy who just needs their social security number to get a loan and save his country.
Apr '12
Re: Being White is Unfair
Being an idiot is unfair.
May '11
Re: Being White is Unfair
DrewInWisconsin
THANK YOU! I've been trying to find that again. (For reasons of mockery.)
EDIT: Ugh . . . I watched it again . . . now I feel very, very ill. · 3 hours ago
Edited 3 hours ago
I had to shut down dear woman after 40 seconds. I could not watch it.
May '10
Re: Being White is Unfair
If any of your Facebook "friends" posts this drivel, return the volley:
Oct '10
Re: Being White is Unfair
I hate this line of reasoning. It's the intellectual basis for the weird racism that surrounds Democrats. They don't seem to realize that not all white people are so privileged. I've suffered a lot of discrimination from being "invisibly disabled"--far more than most blacks, I guarantee you--and I resent overprivileged college eggheads lashing out at all white people.
At times I really resent politically privileged minority groups. Do a google search for "who invented the traffic light." An obtuse invention from 1923 comes up, created by a black man. On the other hand, if you add "salt lake," you're learn that ten years earlier Mormons invented something much closer to modern traffic lights.
But of course, blacks are politically privileged, while Mormons are not, so they get the "invented here" award, totally ignoring what actually happened.
Sep '10
Re: Being White is Unfair
1) Have you all ever been to Duluth? Look it up on Google Maps. It's probably the whitest non-Alaskan city in America with a major college campus. 2) As some have mentioned, privileged kids are the ones born into a stable nuclear family with sober parents that instill proper values, regardless of color, or even income level.
Aug '10
Re: Being White is Unfair
The people who created this video incite resentment and promote misunderstanding between people of all races. Their best pay off will come from engaging , and then branding as racist or as uncle toms , open and trusting , white , black , and hispanic kids who deny that they are necessarily privileged or oppressed due to their skin color. These kids will have their words twisted--and used against them as evidence of racism or wrong thinking--whenever , say , they dare criticize Affirmative Action or comment on welfare's long term effect on families or bring up--in the course of discussions about this video--6 "privileged" lacrosse players in N.C. .
Their second best pay off will be reinforced racial identity , because the sharpie marked white kids evoke in most people , especially kids , a focus on real and imaginary race related grievances , self pity and anger.
There won't be much pay off for the video's creators in the polite , studied indifference of the very few young adults--young adults of all races and shades--savvy enough to refrain from taking this bait. These kids can only be used as bad evidence that we are a "nation of cowards" about race.
Do the older people in the video look malicious to anyone besides me?
Edited on June 24, 2012 at 9:18pmRe: Being White is Unfair
Half of the people in that video are certainly not kids by any standard of the word. Juvenile thinking, I'll grant you, but not young if we're going by the numbers on the birth certificate. They should know better.
May '12
Re: Being White is Unfair
What do you mean I was lucky to be so handsome? It wasn't luck, it was privilege! I was privileged that women saw my looks, not the color of the white hairs in my goatee. Privileged that I used to get stared at when I entered a room. Privileged that strange women would follow me around the mall, giggling.
I'm aging.
And that's unfair.
Dec '11
Re: Being White is Unfair
Tommy De Seno: Who stares at black people when they walk into a room? Holy Cow, exactly how white is the neighborhood these people live in that a black person is such a rare occurance he gets stared at when he walks into a room?
The people who made that video are likely the most racist people in the country. · 9 hours ago
A stint in the Army will straighten them right out.