Race in America – The Myth of White Privilege

Realizing fully well that there are those who will quickly jump to label us “racist”, for merely writing the headline that is written above, we are nevertheless going to take issue with the concept of “white privilege” because, to do otherwise, would betray our own search for the truth, as it exists in America, today.

We were born as the civil rights movement of the 1950s was just in its infancy, and we well remember a time when black Americans were not granted the full benefits of American citizenship. We remember watching on television, the fire hoses and police dogs that were turned on those who were peacefully marching to demand racial equality, particularly in the Deep South. We remember the animosity of whites who were opposed to integration and desegregation of schools, churches, and businesses of all types. To deny this reality of race relations, as it existed in the 1950s and 1960s, is to deny the reality of that which occurred during that time period.

Then, as the 1960s turned into the 1970s, we witnessed a fundamental change in the civil rights movement- one that transformed peaceful demonstrations into militant and terroristic expressions and acts of violence, inspired by all-too-calculating and race-baiting opportunists, who sought not justice, but rather power- the power to incite, the power to exploit, the power to destroy. We saw what had been an altruistic movement to achieve equality transcend into a seditious and corrosive desire for revenge and retribution. To deny this reality of race relations, which began in the 1970s, is to deny the reality of that which occurred during that time period.

Considering today, what is happening in large cities and university campuses across the country, with regards to race relations, we are witnessing the slow but steady descent into anarchy, which is sowing the seeds of racial discord which we had once thought long dead, a generation (or two) ago. We see misguided young people- people who were not yet born in the early 1990’s, taking to the streets and screaming that “black lives matter”, absurdly suggesting that black lives matter more than white lives, matter more than brown lives, matter more than yellow lives, matter more than blue lives. We see feckless liberals, in politics and academia, cowardly caving in to the delusional demands of mindless youths- youths who are acting on lies that are being fed to them, in the mainstream media, in the collegiate classrooms, and in the very streets, by those who seek to profit by fomenting hatred and misery, and by those who are encouraging the absolute breakdown of peaceful coexistence, individual liberty, and the freedom of expression and divergent ideas, in a country whose very existence has been dedicated to all of these values.

To suggest that in these years, the two thousand teens, that there exists in the United States today, an all-pervasive “white privilege” is nothing more than a dubious means to sanction anti-white racism by militant blacks, as well as white radicals, most of whom did not yet exist in an era where black people truly were second-class citizens, in an era before the Civil Rights Act of 1965, in an era before equal opportunity legislation and before affirmative action in hiring and university admissions. These young people have never experienced racism like that which was witnessed by their grandparents and great grandparents, and yet find themselves to be the hapless prey of politicians who seek nothing more that the offices of power, by exploiting their useful anger to pursue their own nefarious agendas.

Worse, the visions of a truly color-blind society, once expressed by men and women of all races, who based their advocacy upon good will and hopeful desire of healing, are thus being rendered asunder in all of the screaming and yelling based on a lie- the lie that police officers are out to kill blacks, the lie that white people want to return to the days of “Jim Crow”, the lie that white people only succeed due to “institutionalized white privilege”, the lie that America is an evil place, where only the few are allowed to succeed.

If, in writing this, we are to be labeled “racist”, then so be it…but that is the truth as we see it…and no number of demagogues, screaming to the contrary, and no amount of political correctness, or attempts to silence and censure, can change this truth- that the concept of “white privilege”, in the autumn of 2015, is nothing more than an evil lie, designed to divide, rather than unite, us as a people, and as a nation.

-Drew Nickell, 12 November 2015

© 2015 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.