Five Minute Friday: "Privilege"

 

Warning: I already know this one is going to take longer than five minutes.

As a rule, I don't read anyone else's FMF post until after I've posted mine.  However, when I saw the prompt for today, along with cussing under my breath, I was compelled to see where this was going.  Unfortunately, it went exactly where I'd hoped it wouldn't.  No, I didn't read everyone's posts, but I read enough to feel sick to my stomach and be madder than a wet hen!

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First, let us define privilege.  It is "a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people."  I don't know about anywhere else, but in the United States, that word is usually associated with "white" privilege.  And that privilege is always paired with shame.

Let me ask my white friends who are reading this a question:  Did you wake up this morning and think "Hmm.  Who can I marginalize today?  Oh, how can I be more ungrateful, selfish, and racist today?"  So, did you?  Of course not!  So, let's stop this, shall we?

Whenever I hear about "white" privilege, I throw up in my mouth a little bit.  I'm also fed up with the trend of attempting to shame each other for whatever reason--race or otherwise.

It would be erroneous to say that this type of privilege never existed.  My parents lived in the Jim Crow South and my older siblings went through the Civil Rights era where whites did have privileges that blacks were, by law, denied.  I just recently finished rereading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and I'm in the throws of his second biography My Bondage and My Freedom.  Both of these volumes speak clearly on systematic racism and privilege.  These horrible periods in our country's history tried to make blacks ashamed of their race.

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And I continue...

However, we are in 2018.  Now, groups are wanting to turn the tide and make being white shameful, which is JUST AS WRONG!  Yes, there are individual pockets of racism and unmerited privilege in this modern age.  The difference is, systematic racism is now off the books and illegal (US Constitutional Amendments 13, 14, 15 & 24), thus, we have choices.  For example, if I see that an employee blatantly privileges employees because of race, I have the choice to expose what's going on, file grievances or lawsuits, and work for someone else. 

Today, most things that are considered "white privilege" are simply signs of achievement and hard work.  There's no racial standard for that; any willing individual can work hard and achieve.

Make. It. Stop!

Might want to take a gander at this:

https://www.facebook.com/RickAndBubba/videos/10155821683014570/