Skip to main content

 

At a High School football game in North Carolina a group of cheerleaders held up a sign that said on White paper  “Privilege”.  Of course,  in North Carolina that would cause a big uproar and in all honesty maybe at a high school football game it should. I don’t know. I have mixed emotions about that. When I was in high school we had the Vietnam War going on and civil rights. There were protest everywhere but I don’t remember any protest at my school. It is not that we were too young to know what was going on because it was in the news every day. We also heard some of the same arguments that we here today about patriotism and the protesters being unpatriotic. Things were said like “America Love It Or Leave it”. In the case of the civil rights protests we always heard  “Go Back To Africa”. Those things were heard every day but just not at school. At least I didn’t. To hold up a privilege sign at a High School football game by the cheerleaders just may not be the most appropriate thing. It may be honest,  but that does not make it appropriate. What it actually tells me is we are not doing a good enough of a job teaching our children about race relations in America.

White people don’t  like to be reminded of their white privilege. Many will deny that there is even such a thing. They will tell you that they earned everything that they have and in most cases that would be right. That does not mean that the color of their skin did not help them along the way. I have worked hard all my life to be in the position that I am in now but that does not mean that my color didn’t help me. I don’t remember ever being in competition for a job with a minority were I got hired and the minority didn’t but that does not mean it didn’t happen. Most people when they apply for a job do not know the other applicants. I am sure that white privilege helped me when I didn’t even know it. Look at the NFL and the NBA. The NFL had to pass the Rooney Rule just to get teams to interview Black coaching candidates. Being White does help whether we are going to admit it or not.

Like White Supremacy, Racism and White Privilege are real things. It has been identified but now how do you solve it. I wish that I had the answer to that but I don’t. I do know that education can help. That is why so many school systems are basically outlawing Race Education. Something really can’t be solved if you suppress it and don’t study about it. That is part of the problem. Too many white people do not want to have it even exposed to their children. They want race to be eliminated from the schools completely. They want alternative facts to racism and alternative facts to the Holocausts. Are they going to bring in some member of the Iran Government to teach how the Holocaust never happened. Are they going bring in the KKK to teach that racism isn’t real that segregation is just people wanting to hang out with just their kind. Our educational system needs to teach the truth no matter how painful it is to some people. In today’s internet age where every library is open 24/7 it is very hard to hide the truth from these kids so you might as well teach it. Alternate  facts are something from the Trump administration. There really are no alternative facts to the Holocaust or an opposing opinion. It happened and we should never hide that fact. The same should be said about Slavery in this country. There are no alternative facts to Slavery or an opposing opinion.  

Where  I live the only minorities are the ones that I see working. There is only one minority couple that I see in our entire condo complex of 100 units. I don’t know what to think of that but I will honestly say that when we looked at the place we didn’t even inquire about that. We liked the unit, the location and the view. If there would have been a larger percentage of minorities I would like to think that I would still have bought here. My wife was a school teacher that worked at Chapter 1 schools pretty much her entire teach career and our old neighborhood in Wisconsin was pretty diverse so I really do not think it would have mattered. I don’t think that everyone can say that. Even after saying that I will not term myself as not being a racist. I will only term myself of being a recovering racist.

Is it proper to hold up a white sign that says Privilege at  football game? After all this writing I still have mixed emotions on it. ‘;

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

  The hidden tax. Tariffs cause a hidden tax that never really goes away. I hope that Americans are tired of being told fairy tales about why everything costs more. Our elected officials point fingers. Corporations blame supply chains. Commentators blame inflation. The truth is much simpler and infuriating: tariffs are a tax on ordinary people, and the pain does not stop when the policy ends. It sticks. It lingers. It rarely delivers what we were promised. This is the mess we are in now because of the tariffs imposed by the current administration. Tariffs are sold as strength, as toughness – a way to punish governments and to bring back manufacturing jobs. That pitch works on conservatives who want control, moderates who want fairness, progressives who want domestic industry, and politicians trying to get elected. It is a message built to unite. The policy itself does the opposite. It drains the wallets of the very people that it claims to protect. Here is how it actually works. ...
1 comment
Read more
  When I was young, I was told that “Sex, Drugs, and Rock n Roll” was going to ruin the country. What I am seeing today is that “Sex, Politicians, and Espionage” is actually what is ruining the country and our democracy. Just think about it. When sex, secrecy, and political power get mixed together, every intelligence service in the world pays attention. The Epstein files aren’t just about a criminal and the rich people that he surrounded himself with. They show how sexual exploitation creates the kind of vulnerabilities foreign governments like Russia dream of. The most uncomfortable part of that truth is that other countries, such as Great Britain, are taking that threat more seriously than we are. Jeffrey Epstein didn’t just commit crimes. He built a system. He targeted vulnerable girls, groomed them, controlled them, and used them to gain access to powerful men. That abuse wasn’t just immoral; it gave him power and leverage. Victims were scared, ashamed, and often silenced. P...
3 comments
Read more
  Something I have written many times on social media is that when our Justice Department becomes a tool of the oppressor, we are losing our Democracy. Dictators have always used the Justice Department to oppress the people. Germany had its Gestapo and the SS, which were used to kill millions. Stalin had his NKVD, which would later become the KGB, that he used to kill millions and consolidate his power. China has its Chenguang, which is known for its violent methods. That is how things work in a country that is run by a dictator.   They use their personal Justice Departments to suppress and eliminate threats to their power. Is that now what is happening in this country? I swear, Trump wants to be just like the Communist and Fascist dictators. Trump seems to want to use our Justice Department more as his personal goon squad than a department that serves the people. He is starting with ICE. ICE is an agency that was formed after 9/11 and put under the Department of Homeland Se...
2 comments
Read more