A commentary on "Race To Our Credit" at http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-01/06wise.cfm
Originally published as Birdman's Weekly Letter #328 - June 7, 2005
In articles and speeches here, there and everywhere, antiracist supremo Tim Wise beats his breast to the point of bloodiness on the matter of white privilege, an entity which he never bothers to define, but which he implies is the worst thing since unsliced bread. Beyond this, he lachrymosely laments that white people cannot admit this, and are therefore forever cast into outer philosophical darkness, with weeping and gnashing of whatever.
As for myself, I have no trouble affirming white privilege -- this is more-or-less a white country (tho rapidly becoming browned, if not actually burned), and every race prefers its own kind, including (gasp!) whites. So because of this preference to live, work and mate with one's own kind, and therefore to avoid living, working and mating with Others, whites do indeed have a leg up in a white country, including this one. But of course just as whites have a leg up over Others in their own country and with their own kind, so do Others have a leg up in THEIR own country and with THEIR own kind. So the next logical step is of course to ask, if Others feel so discriminated against because they are in a country not of their own, then why the hell don't they leave and go back to Wonderful Africa, Wonderful Mexico, or whatever hellhole they or their ancestors were sprung from? The answer, of course, is that they LIKE IT BETTER HERE, LEG DOWN NOTWITHSTANDING. So put that in your bong and smoke it, Mr Wise.
But there is more to the matter than that. Wise, in effect, is asserting that white privilege is some kind of moral crime -- something now labeled derisively as 'discrimination' and having its roots in the newly-coined pathologies of 'xenophobia' and 'hate', when in fact until just a couple of seconds ago such 'pathologies' were known as 'natural reaction' and 'common sense'. And they still are, even among such off-whites as Jewish leftist Wise, since even in his racially-retarded state he would not make the mistake of walking alone at night in the "'hood of hoods" known euphemistically as a "black 'neighborhood'". Right, Timmy?
But Wise is probably not merely talking about a leg up on Others, but also the fact that wealthy and well-educated parents give their kids a head-start in life -- a head-start that the less-wealthy and well-educated do not have, which would of course include a lot of Wise's favorite minority, People of de Coloreds. I am of course speculating about this: as I pointed out earlier, Wise -- as the ditzy intellectual he is -- never bothered to define or describe what he means by 'white privilege', so it is possible that he never even thought about how brats can get an additional leg up from parents. However, it is clear that leftists have considered this problem in the past, since Marx's Communist Manifesto advocates the abolition of inheritance, and this at least partly addresses the problem, if not especially well. This problem, I might add, is an important one, as it suggests the possibility of accumulated privilege leading to a 'power elite', as C Wright Mills called it; but since I have discussed this matter elsewhere, and since it does not directly relate to 'white privilege', I shall not address it further here.
It remains, however, to discuss Wise's implied assertion that white privilege is somehow immoral. The answer, of course, is that it is not: For one thing, to attempt to 'remedy' it, as the 'feral government' has been attempting to do (and failing) for half a century, requires abolition of many cherished freedoms, such as freedom of association, freedom from intrusive government, and the like. But there is more to it than this; because the discrimination which is at the root of white privilege is a product of evolution -- something which used to be well-regarded by the liberal/left when it could be used to beat stupid religion into the ground, but is now regarded by this same cabal with a perfervid Pecksniffian pallor because it suggests that People of de Coloreds might ought to be allowed to go the way of all flush, instead of propped up with 'de welfare' and all the other special privileges that the Dad Gummit nowadays gives to useless eaters and breeders.
It is worth noting that the charge which Wise uses to argue that white privilege is immoral is the assertion that it implies 'oppression' of others. A partial answer to this is one we have already given -- if People of de Colored feel 'oppressed', then let them go back to Wonderful Africa or Wonderful Mexico or Wonderful Whatever Turd-World Hellhole they sprung from where they can be 'unoppressed' by their own fetid kind. It is not sufficient to leave the answer at this, however; for it is vital to realize that Turd Worlders and others whom Wise would label as 'oppressed' are literally beating down our doors to get into our country -- they are quite happy to trade the 'oppression' of which Wise virtually orgasms over for the privilege -- yes, PRIVILEGE -- of LIVING IN A WHITE COUNTRY. The same of course is true in Europe and Australia, the other principal loci of horrid whiteness. It was certainly true of South Africa when it was in white hands -- blacks were literally pouring into the land of horrid apartheid for the jobs and other forms of 'black privilege' which were so much more important than the fact that blacks had to live in their own areas, which they would have pretty much done anyway. And it is certainly true of our native stock of browns, blacks and yellows -- we do not see these folks lining up at the Embassy of Boonga-Boonga for their Passport To Paradise. All of which means that Wise's extreme unctions over 'white privilege' do not amount to so much as a fart in the wind when it comes to what anyone -- and particularly those from the Turd-World -- actually care about.
There is, however, another point which Wise raises in a different essay ("Situational Ethics Conservative Style") which bears addressing here. His point is that an injustice in one place does not cancel out an injustice in another, so that, for example, if blacks are oppressed in Wonderful Africa, this does not remove the moral obligation for them to be treated properly in America. Wise views this as a sort of refutation of the argument 'If you don't like it here, go back where you came from' which, after a fashion, we have made above. I think this is a powerful argument, but also a wrong one. For suppose we have a black who leaves Africa where he is treated very unjustly, and comes to America, where he is treated more justly, but not perfectly. What Wise is saying is that the black has a moral claim on America, or rather on whites, because he is not treated perfectly. Now when we analyze things this way, it is pretty clear where the error in Wise's reasoning lies: He is saying that, whenever whites behave less than perfectly toward blacks, they incur a moral obligation, so PAY UP, MUTHA FUKKAS! But the reality of the world is that there are all kinds of moral obligations, so that the moral obligation which whites possess toward the black must be seen in the context of other obligations which whites have, AND ALSO IN THE CONTEXT OF MORAL OBLIGATIONS POSSESSED BY BLACKS GENERALLY, AND THIS BLACK IN PARTICULAR, TOWARD WHITES. Thus if blacks claim a moral obligation against whites, this must be measured against the moral obligation which blacks have TO whites; and if the particular black in question is to make a moral claim against whites, this must be measured against the moral obligation which he has incurred to whites who have allowed him the considerable privilege of living in a white society. And in measuring the obligations of whites and blacks together, it does not take a rocket scientist to determine that blacks have incurred a grievous moral obligation to whites for their crime and other misbehaviors, in spite of any moral debt which whites may have incurred by enslaving their ancestors. In fact, the very act of bringing blacks to America gave those blacks and their descendants a huge leg up on the rest of their race, and indeed on most of the world; and if whites are to be faulted for having slaves -- a practice which was customary all over the world until the Civil War period -- then surely blacks must be faulted for the same slavery, which many of them still practice, and for selling their fellow blacks to whites, which was where most black slaves came from.
As an aside, I would like to comment on the psychology of the above argument. Wise is a Jew, and Jews are known for their chutzpah -- a practice enshrined in the joke about the kid who kills his parents and then asks the judge for mercy because he is an orphan. My point here is that the argument which Wise has made to justify the moral claim of blacks against whites even tho blacks are better off in white society is simple chutzpah -- it is not just wrong, but absolutely outrageous. This outrageousness is shown in the ease by which the counterargument 'if you don't like it here, go back where you came from' is so readily accepted by most people -- most understand the argument intuitively, and realize that any argument against it can only be outrageous. Of course maybe Wise does not even realize that he is practicing chutzpah -- perhaps it just comes naturally to the Jewish psyche -- but in any event the argument is wrong, and thus will not cut the mustard, or even muss the custard.
The basic problem with Wise and other leftists is that their ideology blinds them to the realities that all normal people see. From the first communist-like revolution of history -- the French Revolution of 1789 -- thru the Revolutions of 1848, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the numerous other communist revolutions which have taken place and are still taking place around the world, the leftists simply cannot see that, in spite of all their rhetoric about 'workers' losing their 'chains' and similar warm fuzzy bafflegab, the fact is that leftist governments have always been the greatest source of genuine oppression. Certainly the Terror of the French Revolution will forever remain a stain on history, as will the 60 million victims of the Russian Revolution, the 80 million victims of the Chinese communist revolution, the Pol Pot communist revolution in which a third of the population was 'liquidated', and the many other revolutions and mini-revolutions which have been carried out under leftist banners. In fairness it should be said that the real problem is not leftism as such, but Big (Ugly) Government, and more properly the fact that, in Lord Acton's famous phrase, 'power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely'. But leftists, easily succumbing to the infantile delusion that human problems can be rectified by force, have continually insisted on imposing their own form of oppression, and -- as leftist George Orwell depicted in his book 1984 -- equating this oppression to 'freedom'.
Now to return to the matter of white privilege, Wise defends the proposition that whites should give a leg up to 'oppressed' peoples because, even if they (whites) were not slaveholders, Indian killers or other oppressors themselves, they nevertheless have benefited from the advantages obtained by their forebears, and therefore are morally obligated to 'help' the progeny of the 'oppressed' who are still suffering from their forebears' 'oppression'. In doing this, Wise ignores the fact that whites have already spent, in the estimate of black economist Walter Williams, FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS in attempting to 'uplift' the higgledy minorities of this country, mainly blacks. He also ignores the even more important fact that, in spite of all this 'uplifting', it doesn't seem to have worked, since blacks continue to be grossly dysfunctional and a virtual criminal class. But the most important fact that Wise ignores is that all the other 'oppressed' minorities -- the Irish, the Jews, the Polacks (that's what they called themselves), the Chinese, and perhaps a few others -- all these folks 'UPLIFTED' THEMSELVES in a matter of a generation or two after coming to America. The conclusion, of course, is that blacks are inferior, not 'oppressed', and that in trying to 'uplift' these people we have merely enabled them to breed like cockroaches and create an even worse problem. What is really unfortunate, of course, is that we did not allow blacks to remain as 'oppressed' as they were before their 'liberation' beginning with the 1954 Brown decision: They were doing OK at that point, but liberation -- mainly by Wise's Jewish brethren -- sent blacks into a cultural and moral tailspin from which they have never recovered, but as a result of which they have learned well the lesson that leftist Jews had had a program of teaching them since the late 20s: HATE WHITEY. All of which suggests that the real oppression has been done, not by whites against People of de Colored, but rather by the Self-Chosen against WHITES.
In passing I think it is worthwhile to note an important implication of the above discussion, namely, that BLACKS THRIVE UNDER WHITE 'OPPRESSION'. No doubt this will be too mind-boggling for Wise to contemplate, but all I am really saying is that blacks, by being mentally inferior, need the guidance of white 'oppression' in order to have the conditions in which to thrive. Kipling in his racial wisdom spoke of 'the white man's burden' and 'lesser breeds without the Law', and I think the implicit comparison with children is most apt. In particular, we do not allow children the same freedom as adults because they do not have the knowledge or wisdom sufficient to handle that freedom safely -- a proposition disbelieved by the liberal/left, but one whose truth is usually discovered by parents who let their brats run wild. Likewise, when blacks were 'oppressed' under Jim Crow laws and a tradition of lynching -- a tradition which had virtually died out by 1950, presumably as a result of blacks learning better behavior from their white 'oppressors' -- they nevertheless found their way 'up from slavery' and had begun to develop a separate -- if not quite equal -- culture and economy.
Now returning to the matter of white privilege, Wise asks the following interesting question:
"For those reading this who are white, ask yourselves, when was the last time you felt the need to stand up and apologize for a crime committed by another white person? Better yet, when was the last time you felt the need to do this for fear that if you didn't, your community would come to be viewed as inherently violent and dangerous, and perhaps be attacked as a result? And when was the last time someone suggested that our failure to openly condemn white criminals implicated us in their wrongdoing?"
The correct answer to this question is one that would probably surprise Wise, and is simply that whites spend scads of time apologizing for the many crimes of which they are regularly accused in the media, altho the apology is somewhat indirect. The crimes, of course, are those of 'racism' and particularly 'antisemitism', and the apologies are of the form "Ain't it Awful", to use the name of one of Jewish psychiatrist Eric Berne's "Games People Play". Indeed, the Jew-controlled media has made an art form out of creating white guilt for 'racism' and other forms of 'groupism', and this guilt has been a fabulous money-maker for Jews ("There's no business like Shoah (Holocaust) business") and probably for liberals and blacks as well. It's true, of course, that whites do not apologize for the likes of white criminals of the ordinary variety, but then that is because whites are not seen -- yet, anyway -- as a virtual criminal class, as are blacks, tho leftist Jews like Wise certainly have this particular snake-filled loaf in the oven.
In conclusion, we would like to take note of a most stunning statement which Wise makes:
"But part of white privilege is never having to examine the peculiarity of white behavior (or even acknowledge that there is such a thing as white group behavior at all)..."
What is so stunning here is that Wise acknowledges the need to look at group behavior, and that is a matter on which I can certainly agree with him. Problem is, Wise does not wish to look at bad group behavior when the behavior involves People of de Colored, since statistics clearly show that black crime is thru the roof while black IQ is in the basement, relative to whites. And no wonder he doesn't want to look at black group behavior, because if he did so honestly, he would no longer be making a living traipsing around the country telling lies about whites to stupid and brainwashed liberals.
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