WOKE AND WHITE PRIVILEGE

 

Wikipedia defines White privilege as:

• Belief in the notion of a myriad of social advantages, benefits, and courtesies that come with being a member of the dominant race (i.e. whites). A clerk not following you around in a store or not having people cross the street at night to avoid you, are two examples of white privilege.

Who can deny the reality of these two examples and the humiliation that blacks have endured because of “racial profiling!”

How do we deal with this and the inevitable psychological stigma that this treatment ingrains? The Bible teaches “speaking truth in love.” This is necessary to counter the anger- and fear-driven narratives that have taken over any discussion on the subject. Whites feel degraded and are fearful that they will be called “racist” or even attacked by virtue-signaling whites. Meanwhile, blacks use the victimization narrative as a weapon to legitimate black rage and to silence the objections of whites. Therefore, such discussions have become a minefield awaiting their next explosion.

Most of us have experienced one form of racism or the other. For example, a black woman had cut in front of me in line, claiming she had a right to do so. When I objected, she called me a racist. I countered, “You are the racist.”

Should I have granted her this privilege? Since whites had historically been privileged, wasn’t it now her turn? As a Christian, I wondered, “What is the best and most loving way to treat her - as an equal, entitled to the same privileges as any other having also been created in the likeness of God, or as a degraded person, a condescending racial attitude?” Wouldn’t this just perpetuate racial divisions? Wouldn’t it instead be more dignifying and healing to treat her as an equal, who has to live under the same moral standards as anyone else!

I think that we need both the courage and soul-searching honesty to discuss these issues. Too much is at stake when we don’t. Jeffrey J. Pyle wrote in the Boston College Law Review:

• Critical race theorists attack the very foundations of the [classical] liberal legal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism and neutral principles of constitutional law. These liberal values, they allege, have no enduring basis in principle, but are mere social constructs calculated to legitimate white supremacy.

To not discuss these issues lovingly and honestly is to surrender the necessary underpinnings of our society and to allow the polarization to continue on its dangerous course.