For the past year or so Americans have been subjected
to liberal claims that “white privilege” is assuring that non-white citizens
are not allowed to succeed and are kept in a state of poverty. An attempt to
make any achiever, whether black or white, feel guilty about their success, was
at the base of this movement, and of course it was used by the liberal Democrat
political class to call for a “fundamental transformation of America” with new
goodies being promised for those poor folks left behind by the evil white privileged
class.
What the liberal Democrats have not mentioned and
hoped that no one would notice, is the increasing number of black millionaires
who have become successful through risk-taking, hard work, thrift, education, inventing
new products, and development of personal abilities: in other words, blacks
have succeeded for the same reasons and in the same ways that whites have
succeeded.
But I don’t think this revelation of success through
hard work, etc., negates the idea of privilege, but rather expands the
privileged class to the entire nation of America; it’s an American Privilege
that favors all who reside in this great nation.
Actually the word privilege isn’t completely appropriate
because it’s not as though any successful person was granted or inherited the
privilege, it just comes with the package of being an American, sort of like
American Exceptionalism, a phrase that angers liberals every time it’s uttered.
The platform this package is founded on is the United States Constitution and
the Declaration’s promise of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
Traditionally the United States was a nation where a
citizen could do nearly anything he/she wanted to do, as long as the thing wasn’t
illegal or immoral. The nation has changed a great deal in this regard in the
last 100 years or so with the rise of the Progressive movement (a movement that
was anything but progressive) and the implementation of the politics of the
environment, the usage of your own land and of energy usage and development,
all of which have caused a disruption to the paths of success. But for the most
part America remains a nation where it doesn’t matter what your parents did nor
where they came from. If you get educated, stay out of trouble and develop your
natural skills and talents, you will likely succeed; and that’s where the “privilege”
thing enters the picture.
Too often family background and traditions, or even
the unintended consequence of governmental policies and politics, have blocked
the otherwise clear path to personal success and happiness, not the actions of
any ethnic or racial group. The very same Democrats who have falsely tried to convince
the nation of white privilege being the policies and programs that have kept non-white
people in poverty and resentment, therefore ruining many lives, are the very same
group that have indeed kept large sections of the American population in a
state of poverty and resentment. The liberal Democrat policy most harmful to
generations of poor Americans is the one that has kept them shackled to the
government for sustenance via food stamps, welfare and government housing and has
kept them from getting a job that would liberate them and make them proud of
their accomplishments. Add to this entrapment and the despair of poverty, the
claim that white privilege was the cause of non-white suffering and you have
resentment added to a lack of personal achievement and accomplishment which
produces the perfect storm of perpetual failure that Democrats have been nurturing
in order to keep people voting them into office.
Americans are additionally privileged to live in a
nation where tradition has seen each generation live a little better than their
parents lived. Unfortunately the resentment and despair that Democrats currently
offer is quickly undermining this tradition, specifically expressed by Barack
Obama when he claimed that he would “fundamentally transform America” with his
administration. And he’s done a good job of transforming it in just seven years.
To repeat, it’s not white privilege that made America
the wealthiest nation the world has ever seen with the largest middle class in history,
it’s rather the American Privilege of liberty and freedom that has created
wealth and success, and this privilege is slipping away as fewer Americans
prepare themselves to take advantage of its blessings, and as the political rulers
in the federal government reject the nation’s traditional policies and laws and
opt for their personal power, and in the process dis-obey the Constitution and
divide the nation along racial and economic lines.
American privilege is available to everyone, but
increasingly we see government policy denying this privilege that all Americans
have been granted, whether at birth or at the awarding of citizenship, to too
many of its own deserving citizens.
