White Privilege Hokum Craig Funston April 20th, 2017

!!!!!I believe I have never felt more awkward in being a white male than I do

these days. And it’s not because I am both white and male. And it’s not because I am ashamed for being both white and male. !To be more specific: It’s more the “white” part than the “male” part that seems to be the issue. Yet when found in the same person, it’s a lethal combination, at least in the eyes of racists and feminists. !I say the above because of the prevalence of what I call “white privilege hokum” out there. Many of my examples are American, but that thinking has slipped across the border

to here in Canada. It’s pervading many American universities, but it has also found a home in Hollywood, and has filled the streets in many major cities.

!I don’t personally feel threatened, at this point, but I see the trend more than ever before to assail anything white these days. !Outside of North America, one of the latest salvos has come from the black president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, who is encouraging blacks to “take back” all white-owned property in his country. His plan is for confiscation without compensation. He wants his land to revert to African ownership, before the “white invaders and Dutch thugs” came in a couple hundred years ago. !This sounds the same as the failed experiment in Zimbabwe. He will copy Zimbabwe in more ways than one, if he’s not careful. Zimbabwe has been turned into a complete wasteland, and only now, after decades of mismanagement, has the black leadership started to invite white farmers back, in order to restore Zimbabwe’s once-flourishing agricultural economy. !You may recall Zimbabwe’s road to ruin, starting with Robert Mugabe’s rise to power in 1980, and his takeover of white-owned farms in 2000, all contributing to economic collapse and runaway inflation. !Just for the record, Mugabe, now in his ninety-third year, is still the dictator for life of Zimbabwe. !Granted, it’s a stretch from student protests to the loss of private property, and the ouster of a country’s citizenry on the basis of skin colour. But it’s the spirit of that thinking that has me concerned. !On the surface, it appears that there are issues of justice and rights on the one hand, and of poverty and betrayal on the other. !At least, it’s being peddled that way. But like most, if not all, trends of this nature, it goes much deeper and the issues are much greater than mere skin colour. It’s much more than the mindless ranting of some disaffected young person with nothing else to do.

!The liberal media and academia— or is that redundant?— are leading the way in this movement, and many of the protesters are simply dupes of that delusion. !Race is a colour, but it’s only skin deep. The Apostle Paul spoke of “one blood” (Acts 17.26 KJV) and I side with Scripture on this one. There is a race issue here, to be sure, but it’s the human race. Where the deeper issue lies— the antagonism, if you will— is in the culture: one we’re born with, the other we learn. The masses who have bought into this white-versus-black race issue have not really thought this through. !To be sure, there have been decades, even centuries, of abuses by whites against various people of colour. However, they are not the only race that holds that distinction. I could easily speak of the historical antagonism that blacks have inflicted on other blacks, the Chinese on each other, the Japanese on Americans, and the Chinese on the Americans, and Canadians on the Chinese, just for starters. !Did you notice how I subtly switched from a race issue to a cultural one, from the matter of skin (which we can’t change) to cultural ideology (which we can)? In other words, skin colour is not the issue; it merely appears to be. !The irony is not lost here. One cannot correct racism by creating further racism, as though the solution to skin colour imbalance is to create even further colour imbalance. White privilege, so called, is not remedied by black privilege. !Personally, I see no privilege for me in being white. All I know is that I was born that way, raised in a traditional home, had to foot the bill for my own post-secondary education, pay off my mortgage with my own money, and work hard all my life and be a law-abiding citizen. Where’s the privilege in that? !

As an example, there was a little-known move last summer for a black-only class at Moraine Valley Community College, in Illinois— a move that was thankfully rescinded. Would the media have been as silent if the reverse was true? Hardly. How would a white-only class be received today? !Where is the outcry with Black Lives Matter? If a white male started a movement declaring that white lives mattered, would he somehow escape media comparisons with the Ku Klux Klan? Hardly. !The double standard is palpable. !If we believe in equal rights, and we should, we will not embrace race revisionism and mere reversal. That’s a simplistic solution, whereby all the alleged wrongs can be made right by sweeping changes based on the new and approved race card. It’s wrong at every level: economically, historically, biblically, morally, and socially. !I think Afro-American giants like George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington, and even Martin Luther King, would agree. There are no more accurate words that sum up this sentiment than those from Dr. King’s epic speech, I Have a Dream. !Let me finish by quoting two parts of it: King wants to “live in a nation where [his children] will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character...”; where “all God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestant and Catholic, will be able to join hands and sing the words of the old Negro (his words, by the way) Spiritual, ‘Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’” !Amen, brother. I know a whole segment of the American population that needs to re-embrace that concept again. !