Let's mow down a bad idea, shall we?
This bad idea is a nasty little word-turned-philosophy – an idea pushed in progressive ideology that should be considered an epithet. The word is "privilege," a hateful curse chucked about like a poison-tipped spear, goring unsuspecting targets with the idea that white privilege is the root of most, if not all, our problems.
"The concept of privilege as used in Critical Social Justice seems to be a dramatic expansion of the more common usage that refers to economic privilege, which has long been reserved for the extremely wealthy," the website "New Discourses" explains.
“This usage carries the same mix of connotations now familiar from the usage in Critical Social Justice, a pejorative and shaming connotation that indicates disconnection from the harder realities of life when used by those accusing someone of having it (e.g. ‘he’s just a privileged ass’) and a rather humbling or even self-effacing connotation when used by people with it (e.g., ‘I know I have been very privileged in my life’). Thus, the term carries rather heavy moral valence.”
This idea is promulgated by history books which teach that our founders committed genocide and that we don't deserve this country. That's what kids, young adults, and too many low-information people milling about in today's culture believe.
People are also learning that even though our constitution is color blind, we've built curriculums and colleges around the vacant idea that skin color matters, even though we've worked for years to say that it didn't.
Now our academic betters have decided that's not true.
The recent Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action proves their point and validates their thinking that white people are evil and want to keep others away from their stuff and opportunities. Hard work, individual achievement, and personal responsibility be darned.
It's the delightful Marxist paradigm of oppressor versus oppressed. And you, good sir and dear ma'am, milky-skinned as you are, are likely oppressors. You and anyone else deemed to have privilege – male, female, white or brown, yellow or orange, gay, straight, rich, poor, or somewhere in between, it doesn't matter.
YOU, privileged turd, are evil. But they, whoever they are, are good.
All that derived from one tiny little word. That word, that idea, set the academic world – and now our own – on fire. That's why it matters.
So who invented this idea? Apparently, a wealthy white woman named Peggy McIntosh is responsible. It seems she wanted us to know how much privilege she had so that she would feel less bad about it.
"Not only is McIntosh white, she is, by any measure, astonishingly privileged," a 2019 article in "The Critic" explained. "She grew up in an affluent suburb of New Jersey where the median income was four times the national average, and her father, a high-ranking scientist at Bell Laboratories, owned patents in several valuable electronic inventions."
From her enclave at Wellesley, Peggy McIntosh wrote, "I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was 'meant' to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions…."
Y'ALL. Really? This woman, who spurned an entirely new, though decidedly Marxist philosophy, is a wealthy white lady?! Who never left her privilege behind?
Yet she asks us to do that very thing. That's rich.
The great philosopher and writer Ayn Rand "understood that history is moved by ideas and if you have rotten ideas, you have rotten outcomes," Yaron Brook, the chairman of the institute named in Rand's honor, told Fox News recently. Rotten outcomes. Based on an awful philosophy that threshes and separates, shames and destroys.
Surely you've heard and seen it with your own eyes. It comes through phrases such as "check your privilege," or "they're overprivileged," or even this phrase heard from the pulpit, "how much is too much?"
Doesn't it seem funny that the word privilege is a weapon most often used by the people who claim to do the least amount of judging?
What can we do about it? How can we throw sand in the gears of this rotten philosophy?
If we hold to a biblical worldview, and many of us do, find out what the Bible says about it. Let us reason together. Because if we're talking about true equality, we're talking about God.
He said that we're ALL sinners. We're ALL equal in our desperate need for a savior.
He also says that in Him, we are one race. And although mankind (such as McIntosh and Marx) looks at the outward appearance, He looks at the heart.
Finally, the word privilege addresses greed. But greed is a problem only God can solve.
God does, however, tell us to be kind and generous. To share what we have. To give to anyone who asks. God is the giver of wealth and adds no trouble with it.
We'd do well to remember this, especially where the philosophy of privilege is concerned.
"See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ." – Colossians 2:8
Amie Beth Shaver is a speaker, writer and media commentator. Her column appears every Wednesday in 1819 News. Shaver served on the Alabama GOP State Executive Committee, was a candidate for State House District 43 and spokeswoman for Allied Women.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819News.com.
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