Y'know I've heard and read some completely fracked-up clueless shit in my time, but I gotta say... wow.
During an interview on Fox News, Carlson noted that conservative columnist Kurt Schlichter had been criticized for a recent column claiming what people thought was white privilege was “just me being better than you.”
“I mean, it’s silly on its face,” the Fox News host opined. “Some white people are privileged, some aren’t. Some black people are, some aren’t. It’s strikes me as, by definition, a racist attack in that it’s making a generalization — a negative one — based on skin color.”
Are you following this logic?
Seeing as the Human Genome Project showed years ago that "Race" is a cultural construct, which is not borne out entirely in genetics, and goes far beyond the simpleminded concept of "skin color" - we have to put this in context.
For Ftucker, it's "Racist" to point out that we as people and as humans - have a tendency to have an affinity for those who are more like us socially and culturally - rather than those who aren't. And that because of that natural cultural affinity - the majority gain conscious as well as unconscious benefits that the minority don't. Some call it "White Privilege". I simply call it "Shit that Happens" all the time, because whether your part of the "In" crowd or the "Out" Crowd - it just does.
But not to Ftucker.
“Absolutely,” Schlichter insisted. “Absolutely, it’s un-American and immoral. It makes you forever and forever stuck in one category.”
“All of us have worked, all of us have achieved something,” he continued. “That is how we measure character, that’s how we measure what the value of a person is, not some arbitrary category imposed by some ponytailed grad students who have taken too many gender study seminars.”
“That is just so fantastic,” Carlson smiled.
Uh, you "measure character" by a persons achievement? So if you don't achieve it's because of a "character flaw"? Yeah, but what if that achievement came from their family (legacy admissions), or their connections, or their wealth? What if you're father is a massively wealthy political operative, and you just happen to get tons of perks and access due to that connection that you wouldn't have otherwise? Y'know - like say,
Jonah Goldberg.
Or for that matter Tucker Carlson himself, whose father Richard W. Carlson besides being a former U.S. Ambassador for President George H. W. Bush was also head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? Even though his CNN program Crossfire was cancelled, and then his program on MSNBC was cancelled for low ratings, despite being a two time loser - rather than an "achiever" - he manages to keep on Fox as the new weekend fill-in for "Fox and Friends"? Privilege? Perhaps thy definition is under :Tucker.
When the majority of those holding the levers of power are of one particular group - they tend to identify with people in their own group. It actually doesn't matter which group we're talking about, it's really a matter of who ever is dominant in that particular venue, tending to stay that way. It's simply inertia.
This is become even more clear this week as we see reports that 60 years after Brown v Board the segregation and quality-gap in our schools between White and Black students remains as bad, if not worse than it ever was.
The average white student, for instance, attends a school that’s 73 percent white, 8 percent black, 12 percent Latino, and 4 percent Asian-American. By contrast, the average black student attends a school that’s 49 percent black, 17 percent Latino, 4 percent Asian-American, and 28 percent white. And the average Latino student attends a school that’s 57 percent Latino, 11 percent black, 25 percent white, and 5 percent Asian-American.
But this understates the extent to which minority students—and again blacks in particular—attend hyper-segregated schools. In 2011, more than 40 percent of black students attended schools that were 90 percent minority or more. That marks an increase over previous years. In 1991, just 35 percent of black students attended schools with such high levels of segregation.
Even more striking is the regional variation. While hyper-segregation has increased across the board, it comes after staggering declines in the South, the “border states”—Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, i.e., former slaveholding states that never joined the Confederacy—the Midwest, and the West. In the Northeast, however, school segregation has increased, going from 42.7 percent in 1968 to 51.4 percent in 2011. Or, put another way, desegregation never happened in the schools of the urban North.
In this supposed "Post-Racial" America we can clearly see that segregation, starting from School and extending to our Churches and ultimately our Workforce
remains and has not miraculously dissipated over time all on it's own. it doesn't happen like that, change takes
effort, particularly when it's running counter to centuries of
inertia.
If you have a natural expectation that simply applying yourself will grant you the rewards of personal and financial success - You. Are. Privileged. - because that's not the reality for a vast number of Americans who are poor and without access to quality education or jobs. For them, working themselves right down to the bone is probably only going to keep their head just above water for decades.
When you don't have to worry about Police arresting you for "breaking into" your own House then lying about it on the Police Report because you complain too loudly - You. Are. Privileged.
When you don't have to worry that you teenage son or daughter might be mistaken for a criminal and as a result be repeatedly Stopped, Frisked, Questioned (by an order of 26 Times as Often), Arrested (8 Times as Often), Charged and Sentenced (20% Longer) Assaulted and/or Murdered by Police or just someone who thinks they're a Cop without consequence (225% more often) just for being in the wrong place - outdoors - at the wrong time - anytime - then You. Are. Privileged.
If you don't have to worry about speaking too "ethnic", or that you're hairstyle might be too "Kinky" or "ghetto" for an interview or the workplace, and you don't have to constantly prove you're "One of the Good Ones" - then You. Are. Privileged.
If you don't have to worry about people repeatedly deciding to spout off "About the Problems of the (Insert Your Ethnic or Social Group)" like the ravings of not just Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling but also Newt Gingrinch (on how Your People should demand Paychecks not Welfare Checks) Ted Nugent (on how Your to Blame for your own oppression), Phil Robertson (on how all your people were "Happier and Singing before the scourge of Entitlements") or ever listen to a New Hampshire Police Commisioner (who refuses to apologize for calling the President "A Fucking Nigger" because he meant it in that magical "Not-Racist" way) - then You. Are. Privileged.
"Privilege", which can come in any color, is in never having to worry about any of the above - and "Racism" is often people who have Privilege, trying to pretend either that they don't have it, or that every one does - when they don't.
Vyan