Working While White
Perhaps now more than any time in history, it is okay to attack white people. The recent events that followed the tragic murder of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis Police Officer (never mind there were three other complicit Officers, two of whom are people of color) have created a widespread acceptance of a radial, racist movement that includes the likes of Black Lives Matter. Take a look at the BLM website and you’ll find a Marxist manifesto devoid of fact and reality. The concept of systemic police racism or general institutional racism for that matter is easily disproved. In 2019, only 9 unarmed black men were killed by police. That’s 9 out of 40,0000,000 black people in America. There’s no pointing to an specific policy of companies or systems to justify the claims of systemic racism. It’s just an accepted idea among white liberals, academics, and democratic politicians. Now they call to defunding police department. Lawlessness is at an all time high as riots burn down out cities and black on black crime kills the majority of blacks each year, but getting rid of the police will solve that.
That’s the backdrop. White people, and specifically white men, are the target. They are the demonized people who have some sort of original sin of racism. Promoted by the radical and factually inaccurate 1619 project and other propaganda taught in schools and universities, radical racialism has infected an entire generation. Whites have become the group that is blamed for all the faults of minorities, especially blacks. Forget root causes like single parenthood, astronomical out of wedlock birthrates, poor health and lifestyle choices, and many other factors (culture among them, i.e. rap music) that actually explain these issues, even these factors are the white man’s fault.
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Working at a technical college in Wisconsin these ideas are reinforced with training programs that focus on anti-racism, whiteness and the like. Conferences on white privilege promote these very ideas. They feature books and talks by people like Tim Wise who has called for violence against whites. They subscribe to the outdated beliefs of Peggy McIntosh — an article written in the 1970s that has no applicability to life today. Stereotyping is fine as long as it’s white people who are being painted with a broad brush. All white people, they content, are privileged. We are required to teach this propaganda in our classes and the students hate it. They come here to learn a trade, not be brainwashed. Of course the entire focus of the diversity program is anti-white. Black people can’t be racist. An entire department is funded to promote these agendas. In a time of decimated budgets, these activist employees hold a not so secret hatred of their white counterparts.
There’s no defending against it. Having other ideas means you’re racist. Saying that stereotyping is wrong makes you a racist. I had a conversation with a colleague who told me that my belief that whites are the targets of the current hostility and he, who is black, told me that I don’t have the ability to say that because I am part of the group that oppressed others. They seem to think that my success, gained by hard work and good decisions, somehow took something from someone else. The economic pie isn’t fixed. There is upward mobility for anyone who wants it and is willing to work for it. Even though my family immigrated to America 2 generations ago from a persecuted country, I am somehow responsible for oppressing a generation of people when I didn’t do anything to anyone. And that, they claim, is the problem. I can’t just be non-racist. I must be anti-racist because if a white person doesn’t subscribe to the liberal viewpoint on race, then you’re labeled a racist. Circular illogic anyone?
This, my friends, is what it is like working while white and it sucks.
