Year End Reflections, Part II (Privilege)

"Privilege," especially the idea of "white privilege," is currently a very big deal on college campuses and generally on the Left. One professor at the City University of New York expressed this: "the white-nuclear family is one of the most powerful forces supporting white supremacy." The professor also complained about "reproducing white children" that are "part of the problem." Also, when white people leave their homes to their children, they are perpetuating inequality.

At an Ohio State University workshop students were told "whiteness grants you power and access to things." And students were also told that only white people are capable of being racist, and that whites can never be "victims." None of this compares to the comments by a now terminated nurse at the Indiana University Health Hospital. "Every white woman raises a detriment to society when they raise a son. Someone with the HIGHEST propensity to be a terrorist, rapist, racist killer, and domestic violence all star. Historically every son you had should be sacrificed to the wolves b....."

My first observation is that post Obama we are clearly not a post-racial society. As I mentioned often during Obama's eight years in office, rather than acting as a unifying President, he was divisive and encouraged a sense of "victimhood" in the black community. The idea of "white privilege" is by its very nature a racist concept. After all, racism is treating people a certain way simply based on their race or skin color. The individual is not even recognized as such.

This idea of "privilege" is, unfortunately, not restricted to white people. In a recent edition of the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a UCLA student penned an article with this title: "Are Jewish College Students Privileged?" Discussing another Jewish student's comments, the writer states that this other student suffered from a "moral conflict he felt as an American Jew. Yes, Jews face anti-Semitism, sometimes subtly and other times hideously, but Jews also have a come a long way - succeeding at getting our foot in the door of American politics and, by extension, American privilege."

Here's a question. When I think about the Jews who came here after the Holocaust with nothing but the clothes they were wearing, but managed to make a life for themselves and their families, should they be embarrassed about their success? Said the UCLA student: "If Jewish students want to be true partners to our progressive peers, it is our responsibility to check our privilege..." Check our privilege? What does that mean? Stop being white? Stop being Jewish? Don't speak?

This is the kind of drivel that young people are taught at college. I don't know about the rest of you, but I learned that we treat people as individuals. That is also what I taught my children. It is not just discriminatory/racist to treat people as members of groups (black vs white, for example). Think of the various genocides committed throughout history. Genocides were committed because one group was unable to see the individual humanity in others. If the above referenced professor thinks white children are the problem, I am reluctant to ponder what that professor would see as a solution. And the nurse mentioned above? If whites are rapists and killers, well, we can only imagine what her solution would be. Would it be similar to Hitler's "Final Solution" for the Jews? So, allow me to correct myself. This is not simply drivel that college students are being taught about "privilege." It is dangerous and evil.