Re: ‘white privilege’
Dear editor:
This past Tuesday syndicated writer Ruben Navarrette wrote an article on the phony issue of white privilege. Mr. Navarrette in this article provided both his and his wife’s definition of “white privilege.” So, let us examine both starting with her definition first: “Being in the dark about what people of color experience.” Now his definition: “White privilege is not about how has treated you, but how society and its institutions treat you.”
Those two statements imply that people of color always experience a different action and negative reaction from society and that being white, white people always have a completely different but positive experience.
Think about those statements for a minute, they are judging all white people and falsely assume, that all interactions are tainted with some form of preference even to social greeting. No rational nor reasonable person would accuse a whole race or class of people of always having some negative reaction to another class or person. Further, any time someone uses the terms all or none (meaning 100%) in reference to something, they are simply wrong because that never happens in the real world.
From my perspective, individuals like Ruben Navarrette assume that I and others have some moral obligation to investigate and apologize for unacceptable actions a minority of our population has displayed toward others. He and others like him assume that this bad conduct is restricted to other races when from my experience is often universal conduct by these fools when dealing with people of all races.
Has Ruben been insulted by others because of his Hispanic origins? I am sure he has. However, others have been insulted, chastised and even threaten because of their religion (Ask the Jews in New York about white privilege), political beliefs or inept English language skills (as any native speaker of a foreign language can explain).
Please explain why stating everyone white has this “white privilege” is not a racist statement when other stereotype statements about Hispanic and African Americans are racist. Isn’t saying all African Americans are lazy, racist? Or how about Hispanics refuse to learn English? All these statements are terribly wrong and certainly would seem to me to be racial in their context.
Mr. Navarrette is a charter member of the social justice/woke cult which seeks to blame and accuse white people of a mythical advantage based on skin color. If that isn’t a racist concept, I don’t know what is. Dennis L. Bosch Hot Springs