OpinionTrending Commentary

Liberals Are Wrong: It’s Not White Privilege That Assures Success, It’s American Privilege, And It’s Available To All Citizens

For the past year or so Americans have been subjected to liberal claims that “white privilege” is assuring that non-white citizens are not allowed to succeed and are kept in a state of poverty. An attempt to make any achiever, whether black or white, feel guilty about their success, was at the base of this movement, and of course it was used by the liberal Democrat political class to call for a “fundamental transformation of America” with new goodies being promised for those poor folks left behind by the evil white privileged class.

What the liberal Democrats have not mentioned and hoped that no one would notice, is the increasing number of black millionaires who have become successful through risk-taking, hard work, thrift, education, inventing new products, and development of personal abilities: in other words, blacks have succeeded for the same reasons and in the same ways that whites have succeeded.

But I don’t think this revelation of success through hard work, etc., negates the idea of privilege, but rather expands the privileged class to the entire nation of America; it’s an American Privilege that favors all who reside in this great nation.

Actually the word privilege isn’t completely appropriate because it’s not as though any successful person was granted or inherited the privilege, it just comes with the package of being an American, sort of like American Exceptionalism, a phrase that angers liberals every time it’s uttered. The platform this package is founded on is the United States Constitution and the Declaration’s promise of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.

Traditionally the United States was a nation where a citizen could do nearly anything he/she wanted to do, as long as the thing wasn’t illegal or immoral. The nation has changed a great deal in this regard in the last 100 years or so with the rise of the Progressive movement (a movement that was anything but progressive) and the implementation of the politics of the environment, the usage of your own land and of energy usage and development, all of which have caused a disruption to the paths of success. But for the most part America remains a nation where it doesn’t matter what your parents did nor where they came from. If you get educated, stay out of trouble and develop your natural skills and talents, you will likely succeed; and that’s where the “privilege” thing enters the picture.

Too often family background and traditions, or even the unintended consequence of governmental policies and politics, have blocked the otherwise clear path to personal success and happiness, not the actions of any ethnic or racial group. The very same Democrats who have falsely tried to convince the nation of white privilege being the policies and programs that have kept non-white people in poverty and resentment, therefore ruining many lives, are the very same group that have indeed kept large sections of the American population in a state of poverty and resentment. The liberal Democrat policy most harmful to generations of poor Americans is the one that has kept them shackled to the government for sustenance via food stamps, welfare and government housing and has kept them from getting a job that would liberate them and make them proud of their accomplishments. Add to this entrapment and the despair of poverty, the claim that white privilege was the cause of non-white suffering and you have resentment added to a lack of personal achievement and accomplishment which produces the perfect storm of perpetual failure that Democrats have been nurturing in order to keep people voting them into office.

Americans are additionally privileged to live in a nation where tradition has seen each generation live a little better than their parents lived. Unfortunately the resentment and despair that Democrats currently offer is quickly undermining this tradition, specifically expressed by Barack Obama when he claimed that he would “fundamentally transform America” with his administration. And he’s done a good job of transforming it in just seven years.

To repeat, it’s not white privilege that made America the wealthiest nation the world has ever seen with the largest middle class in history, it’s rather the American Privilege of liberty and freedom that has created wealth and success, and this privilege is slipping away as fewer Americans prepare themselves to take advantage of its blessings, and as the political rulers in the federal government reject the nation’s traditional policies and laws and opt for their personal power, and in the process dis-obey the Constitution and divide the nation along racial and economic lines.

American privilege is available to everyone, but increasingly we see government policy denying this privilege that all Americans have been granted, whether at birth or at the awarding of citizenship, to too many of its own deserving citizens.

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Dave King

Retired AT&T supervisor.

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One Comment

  1. I’m not ‘white privileged’…..I just opened the door when opportunity knocked…call me an ‘Opportunist”

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