Who’s Really “Privileged?”
One of the many conceits of the Left in America is that white people are “privileged” and should be punished, shamed, and discriminated against because of it. Granted, they mean non-liberal white people because liberal white Americans, by virtue of their liberalness, are “good” white people who’ve made up for their privileged status. However, this way of looking at the world has a big impact on the way liberals think. That’s something I thought about when I saw this popular tweet:
On the one hand, this is the standard liberal schlock we hear every time the Left loses an election. Essentially, “We were great – amazing really -- and the real problem is how bigoted, evil, and cruel the American people have become.” However, I thought his way of phrasing the “evil of the American” people fit in really well with the way liberals often seem to think. According to him, people who voted for Trump wanted to, “dominate and inflict cruelty on outgroups.”
Of course, that raises some questions like, “What outgroups? What makes a group an outgroup? Are these outgroups fixed? Who decided a group was an outgroup?”
One thing you will notice with liberals is that they always define the people who don’t support them as the “privileged” ones and the groups they believe are “on their team” as the outgroups. In other words, the privileged ones are the non-liberal white people (particularly the men), Christians, and conservatives, and the “outgroups” are people who are trans, gay, women (when it’s convenient), and black Americans. Asians, Jews, Muslims, and Hispanic men are harder to categorize because liberals will sometimes claim they’re outgroups but will also attack members of those groups for not doing what the Left wants.
In Western culture, this is a way of thinking that comes right out of the Middle Ages, where kings and noblemen were privileged by virtue of their birth, and everyone did what they were told because they were paid to do so or out of fear. You could also make a case for it in a heavily class-based society, like India where they have a caste system. But in America, who is a member of the “privileged” or “outgroup” at any given time is almost entirely situational.
Don’t believe me?
Okay, well if you’re applying for college, particularly at an Ivy League school, would you rather have a Christian, conservative, white male on your application or gay, atheist, liberal, and Hispanic? We all know that if all things are equal in that situation, the privileged one isn’t going to be the white guy. Why do you think Elizabeth Warren pretended to be an Indian when she was a college professor? Because being part of that group gave her privilege in that environment that being a run-of-the-mill white woman wouldn’t.
What about getting a job in the mainstream media or as a university professor? White liberals and minorities are the privileged ones, and white conservatives are the outgroups.
How about in Hollywood? Would being a white, Trump-supporting conservative help your career? Not so much, because you are part of the outgroup there:
When the NFL plays the “black national anthem” at the Super Bowl, that’s a sign of how privileged black Americans are in the NFL. DEI is also a privilege afforded to minorities who couldn’t make it under a merit-based system.
Similarly, what is this if not a sign of privilege?
If you’re painting a special symbol on the road to honor a group, then PROSECUTING PEOPLE who spin out on it, what is that if not a privilege for that group? Similarly, if you have a whole month where this same group is celebrated in public schools, that is a sign of privilege. In fact, many people, myself included believe that a big part of what’s driving Generation Z to self-identify as gay is this dynamic:
Anecdotally, several parents have talked to me about the peer pressure that is put on their kids to say they’re gay. If you’re white and straight, liberal kids treat you as unimportant at best and part of the problem at worst. But, if you’re white and gay, suddenly you get treated as special. So, a lot of kids figure why not identify as “queer” or add some pronouns to your name? There’s no stigma to it in their leftward-leaning social groups in many places and you get better treatment.
You could even make a good argument that the most privileged people in America are trans. Trans men are allowed to go into women’s spaces, play women’s sports, and in some places, therapists are not even allowed to suggest that they’re mistaken about being trans while courts along with state governments will try to take children who insist they’re trans away from parents who disagree. They’re coddled in school, “deadnaming” them is supposedly some great faux pas, and the whole world is supposed to lie and pretend they’re the opposite sex when everyone knows they’re not. That’s a level of privilege far beyond what any regular person gets under any other circumstances.
Of course, we could take this much further because we’ve been discussing this in terms of groups, but in many, these terms don’t fit when you look at members of a group as individuals. The best example of this would be that liberals will tell you that black Americans are an outgroup and white people are privileged, but is that true? Well, how privileged is Kamala Harris? How about Oprah? Barrack Obama was President of the United States and thus, arguably the most privileged person on earth, but according to the Left, some uneducated, unliked, unloved white sh*tkicker living in a shack in Tennessee was more privileged than Obama because that poor, sad fellow happened to be white.
All this really ties into a couple of things.
The first is that the Left’s idea of “privilege” is a broken, mostly non-functional concept. Not only is it very much situational, but it’s also in the eye of the beholder.
If you’re a white guy whose kid doesn’t get into the college he wants because of his skin color, you don’t get a job you deserve because of DEI, you see people like you getting attacked all the time on social media and you’re told you need racial sensitivity training for ideological reasons you don’t agree with, you sure as hell don’t view yourself as “privileged,” nor is there any real evidence of this supposed “privilege” in your life. In fact, you could make a fair argument that you’re just as much a part of an “outgroup” as any other group in America. In other words, the whole privilege argument amounts to nothing more than another excuse for the Left to scorn you while they discriminate against you and your children.
Additionally, trying to split the world up into privileged and non-privileged groups is just another way to try to divide people. As a practical matter, people are individuals, and we don’t REALLY know whether they’re privileged or not.
If you grew up with a rich, celebrity mom, but she convinced you that you were trans when you were three years old and spent your formative years using drugs and having mental breakdowns, how privileged are you really? It doesn’t actually sound so great, does it? Who’s more privileged? The black kid who grew up in a middle-class neighborhood, had mom and dad in the house and went to a decent school, or the white kid who grew up poor, in a dangerous neighborhood with terrible schools, and had an alcoholic mom? At the end of the day, you have to look at people as individuals and judge them on their morals, their character, their work ethic, and the type of human beings they turn out to be.
It’s easier just to declare that whole classes of people are good or bad, but easier doesn’t mean better or more accurate. Whether you’re talking about Nazis, anti-Semites, or liberals who engage in this type of argument, it’s lazy, inaccurate thinking, and smart people shouldn’t take it seriously.