This article has been updated and added to my new site dedicated to discussing politics from a Biblical perspective. You can find the updated version here.
9 thoughts on “Why Whites Don’t Have to Apologize For White Privilege”
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Biblical Gender Roles 
So when non-whites fail to achieve as much as whites, it simply because we are less hardworking or less capable? Many of us work just as hard, if not harder than many whites, yet, we are almost unlikely to achieve positions of influence, such as president, prime minister, minister, judge, commissioner, full professor, senior counsel, etc.
So whites are more justified in claiming merit for their achievements that non-whites, whereas non-whites who achieve the same achievements succeed because of some systematic bias towards us?
It really does boil down to the personal choices of individuals. If you don’t mind me posting, I dealt with a little bit of this subject (choices, not privilege) in one of my own posts:
https://snappertrx.wordpress.com/2016/05/19/hip-hop-rap-and-choices/
For those who don’t want to read it I point out that my dad and uncle both grew up in and around thugs and gang bangers and had to deal with the death of their mother at a young age. Instead of running with the rest of their peers, as some others in their family did, they made the choices to study and work hard. As a result my father owns his own business doing oilfield automation while my uncle is a full fledged doctor. They chose wisely and took the more difficult route, but the choice was theirs to make. Either way they own the route they took. In like manner every man or woman must own their choices, even the bad ones. The key is to either take time to consider what choice is best or, if a bad choice is already made, to change course. Blaming another culture or race or creed for your poor choices is a sure fire way to dig the bottom of a hole deeper and ensure you never get out of it, which is what we have seen in America for the past 50-60 years with black Americans. Forever told they are oppressed few ever decide to make better choices with their lives, leaving themselves and their children in a deep pit that only gets deeper. The only way out that will actually benefit them is to make better choices, and they can help each other by encouraging each other to make better choices rather than oppressing each other when better choices are made. When was the last time you heard a white guy tell another white guy he was a sucker for improving himself or pulling himself up from a bad situation? In my post I also talk about a black guy I was friends with in high school who was punished by other blacks for dressing well, studying and getting good grades. How did that help him at all? You know who encouraged and supported him? Us! His buddies! Us “nerds” who were white, brown and yellow!
It may be too late for America to turn around. The fever pitch is at an all time high and a clear and visible rift has appeared between Americans who want law, order and personal responsibility and those Americans who want lawlessness, anarchy and shift the blame on to others. The next few decades will determine much about the United States, lets hope it ends as something good.
prophet of righteousness,
Your Statement:
I saw this response and it is so typical of attitudes today about racial equality in America that I think it is a very teachable example for my audience.
Did I ever say that “non-whites fail to achieve as much as whites, it simply because we are less hardworking or less capable”? The answer is I did not. This is straw man that you have built.
I did say and the statics prove that non-whites in America(Blacks and Hispanics – not Asians) make more bad personal life decisions regarding their personal relationships and they have a substantially higher out-wedlock birth rate than Whites and Asians. They also tend to raise their children in single parent homes whether because of out-wedlock births or because when they divorce the remarry far less often so the children are not raised with a father and mother as often as Whites are (and Asians).
Children who are raised in single parent homes start off with disadvantage in life. Does that mean they are incapable of being highly successful? No – but it is much harder for them to beat the odds.
But if you actually read the article instead of running to your common straw man talking points you would see that I acknowledged that even if the home life situations were absolutely equal between Whites, Blacks and Hispanics – even if a Black or Hispanic works just as hard or is just as qualified for a position as their white counterpart race can often times be a deciding factor between individuals because human beings have a natural preference toward their own race.
So what that means simply put is this. If a there are four men applying for a certain job and and three are white and one is black and the person doing the hiring is white whether is he realizes is it or not the white person will have a bias toward the white candidates because as human beings we naturally cluster toward those most like us. If the the person hiring was black he would have a conscious or unconscious bias toward the black candidate. However – the skills, talent and background of the four men in many cases will override that racial preference. So if the hiring person is white – but the black man has skills and talent that exceed those of his three white counterparts in most cases he will get the job. But if his skills are simply equal to those of the white candidates race will be a deciding factor(whether the hiring person consciously or unconsciously realizes it) and he will not get the job.
So the fact is that some non-whites achieve success because they worked hard and they are they were the most talented out of the groups that applied for jobs and the rose simply because of the merit of how good they are. But some non-whites succeed yes because of “systematic bias” or in other words racial quotas.
While I did talk about the problem of single parent families and out of wedlock marriage in minority communities in the United States the largest point was trying to make is that yes I do believe “White Privilege” exists. I absolutely believe it is a factor in why non-whites do not achieve positions of power and influence matching their demographic size in the United States. Again its not the only factor, but it is a factor. And without government overriding the free will choices the natural preference we have for our own ethnicity that will not change. And when government does do that forcing the majority to act against their own instincts to artificially create some result this is violation of freedom of choice which will then cause other problems in society.
My point in all this is this – if you as a minority want to be treated as the majority – you need to become the majority. It really is that simple. That means your people have to outgrow the majority or you have to move to a country where your ethnicity is the majority. Again this is why Communism failed. Because its principles went against human nature. A society must be built around the reality of human nature not some fantasy of how we can change human nature to be whatever we want it to be.
Let’s go back to that hiring manager. Sometimes a hiring manager will purposefully hiring a non-white to meet a racial quota even though he actually was not as skilled as his white counterparts who were applying for the job. In fact that is what this whole “white privilege” garbage is teaching – it is repackaging the idea of racial quotas just with a different label. So basically you are supposed to override your natural preference for your own race or even if the non-white is not even as qualified as the whites you need to give him extra help because he is an underrepresented minority class. That is garbage. This is what I am speaking against.
Snapper,
Thanks for sharing that story. And it really does handle one side of the equation. But the thrust of my article was that the reason non-whites(whether black or Hispanic or others) do not achieve positions of power and influence as often as whites is two fold. One is exactly what you talked about and so did I – bad personal life decisions. But I believe we must be truthful about the reality of human nature as well. Even if non-white minorities made great personal life decisions in mass, even if they had just as good of home lives or even better than whites and had exactly the same skill sets and education the reality is they are ethnic minorities and that does have an impact.
If you are a minority in any given nation you will never be treated as if you were the majority. So I was saying here that yes – part of the reason whites have more positions of power and influence is yes because they are the majority. That is reality. That is math. That his human nature.
And if we are born white we don’t have to apologize for that fact or for the fact that in many of our life choices we may consciously or unconsciously prefer our own ethnicity. In other words – we don’t have to be ashamed of white privilege – it is a reality of how human nature works.
But at the same time going back to your point – no non-white person in the United States should have the attitude that “since I am not of the majority ethnic group and am a minority I will never be able to do well in life.” That is garbage! That is wrong! That is like saying “because I don’t like how the game is stacked I won’t even play.” I love reading stories of how great men have risen from poverty(and yes even single parent homes) to become great business or political leaders. The deck was stacked against them – yet they did not give up but they fought harder and worked harder and became better than everyone around them so they would stand out and achieve.
And finally – what if a minority person is not really smart or talented(there are people like this in both the majority and minority groups). Even this person has a choice to make. Will they make the best of who they are and where they are placed – will they work hard still and just be content living with what they have or will the become embittered at society or God or others because they could not have more? There is something to be said for contentment if you have done the best you can do.
Yeah, I don’t think a lot of people have the depth of thought to consider their being an ethnic minority in the United States. At least not on the way your asking them to consider. But they need to! And they need to understand why comprehending this fact is important! I think it would certainly help to assuage some of the racial tensions in the U.S. if people just understood the “ethnic minority” dynamic, but so many people have been infected with the whole “white people are bad and hate anything not white” narrative that we may be beyond that. Great article.
So much of racism stems from envy. Yes Europe and western Asia were blessed with gospel of Christ. That gospel provided a worldview and pathway toward even more blessings. The Reformation brought even greater blessings to the cultures that embraced it. Shall I be ashamed of the gospel? Never! Nor it’s blessings in this life.
Rather than embrace that gospel and follow the path of blessing, the race-baiters try to punish the blessed and block others from adopting the Gospel. Unlike the rising tide that lifts all ships, envy is a angry storm that sinks all ship to depths. It shackles the downtrodden and replaces hope with revenge, substitutes hard work and perseverance with entitlement and ingratitude.
North Africa never left the middle ages because of the worldview of Islam, Sub- Saharan Africa never embraced a dominion mandate or escaped tribalism. East Asia and South America produced many wonders, but lacked the blessing that flow from Christianity. But now there is no excuse, worship the Lord, fear Him and He will lift you up. (Not a health and wealth gospel, rather an aknowlegment that even Christ’s temporal kingdom is a place of blessing though the struggle is marked with suffering and blood).
I did not choose my race, and I am not ashamed at my ancestry. For my very life, parents, the gospel, a Christian heratige and upbringing, for being chosen before the foundations of the World my reaction and attitude is awe and gratitude. I feel no guilt, for I am guilty save the blood of Christ, I carry no responsibility for those hard hearts that refuse the gospel and defy the Lordship of Christ. I posses no animosity toward other ancestories and histories; everybody got here somehow, the part that matters is what they do with the life they have been given. Envy, jealousy, strife are the result of gospel-less thinking and evil hearts. These characterize the race-baiters of our day.
Jonadab,
Excellent points you raise – especially about envy and the positive influence of Christianity throughout the world. If you look over the last few centuries that brought us the modern era – which countries had the greatest impact on the world both culturally and technologically? These countries were Great Britain and then its child the United States. Both of these countries were heavily steeped in Christianity were responsible for sending missionaries out all over the world. Even in Britain’s various conquests it often left the areas it conquered in better shape than they were when they came. Britain gets a beating for how it chopped up the Middle East and there may have been some mistakes there – but over all Anglican culture and American culture which were both steep in Christian values have had a very positive effect on the world.
And envy is absolutely a huge problem in this country. Envy actually forms the basis for most of the positions of the democratic party in America. They encourage women to be envious of men, they encourage blacks to be envious of whites, they encourage the poor to be envious of the rich and they encourage illegal immigrants to be envious of the rights of American citizens.
Reblogged this on kommonsentsjane and commented:
Reblogged on kommonsentsjane/blogkommonsents.
When will all cultures realize that working together for the common good is the road to victory? At this point in victory, all cultures have been given an opportunity to share; but, their share has turned into greed and hate. The hate is due to envy of our country and what it has to offer to anyone willing to work for it. Instead, the envious which is prevalent do not want to do in what it takes to “‘make the grade.” All cultures in our country should be tested for an IQ in order to allow people to understand their own failures and not mislead them.
And, we have the Dem’s who are white and are perpetuating the hate in the U.S. for control and political purposes and the other ethnic groups have the freedom but don’t know how to use it. So, here we are hurling slurs at each other.
kommonsentsjane
Thanks for this explanation. Im weary of being shamed for being white and feeling responsible for the sins of others.