The United States suffers from three colors of privilege. Each privilege is an independent variable; alone or in combination, as we shall see, they are harmful to the well-being of Americans and to the well-being of everyone else as well. The three entities are white privilege, green privilege and red privilege. We shall discuss each one in turn, followed by some closing remarks.
White Privilege
I do not watch Fox News, but do occasionally listen to a YouTube excerpt when the subject of the snippet catches my eye. I couldn't resist clicking on one that contained a discussion Bill O'Reilly had about racism, white privilege in the broadest sense. When he angrily told his opponent that racism in America no longer exists, my jaw dropped, figuratively and literally. How could anyone say something so patently absurd?
Racism, which took the most heinous form possible for well over a century, namely, slavery, has been a national disgrace. True, great progress has been made. The weeds of prejudice have extensive roots, however; dig up a a few inches of American soil just about anywhere and you will find them, still choking the growth of fairer perennials.
Yes, racism, unfortunately, is still very much with us. Do I have to give examples? Here's one: identical resumes were sent out to businesses, some with a black-sounding name, say, Jamal, and others with a more generic one, such as James. Guess what the striking pattern of responses was?
Anecdotes pile up. I will relate one. I, an old white man, go to my bank once or twice a week. During past transactions, I had pleasant exchanges with a teller. I considered her to be a very friendly, polite person. One day a black acquaintance of mine went to the same teller. He is a very decent, polite person, one of the kindest human beings I know. His crime: being young, black, and male. He told me that she treated him as if he were a thug. He wasn't even angry; I suppose you get used to it. You shouldn't. Now I, too, look at that teller with suspicion. The friendly exchanges are gone.
The statistics are, to put it mildly, alarming. Blacks and whites use illegal drugs at about the same rate; black drug users tend to smoke crack, white drug users tend to snort or inject powdered heroin. Two forms of the same drug, yet the possession of 28 grams of crack is the legal equivalent of the possession of 500 grams of heroin; each carries a mandatory five-year prison sentence. This and other factors have resulted in the obscene fact that 60% of those who have been sentenced to life-time imprisonment without parole for non-violent crimes are black, a statistic way out of proportion to the percentage of blacks in the population. Over 90% of those imprisoned for life for non-violent crimes in Louisiana are black! Do you think this might be an attempt to remove black males from the population? If you don't think so, think again.
Darryl Pinckney, in an article, "Black Lives and the Police," (New York Review of Books, August 16, 2016), presented a convincing list of the effects of white privilege. Prejudice against blacks has resulted in, "racial profiling, stop and frisk, discriminatory sentencing practices, the disproportionately high black prison industry, the hallucinatory disaster of the war on drugs, and the double standard when it comes to race and class and law."
We have a very serious problem in this country, and we all need to work together to fix it.
Green Privilege
Green privilege is class privilege. It is the widespread belief that talent, achievement and wealth are proofs of superiority. Green privilege tends to divide humanity into winners and losers. (This was the credo of Donald Trump before he suppressed this belief in order to gain working class support for his obnoxious candidacy.)
I would like to ask every successful person to answer these questions: Did you create your intelligence? Did you create your talent? Did luck, family circumstances and connections have anything to do with your success? If you had a less talented brother, would you still consider him your brother? Aren't we all brothers and sisters?
I am convinced that no one has the right to consider himself/herself superior--or inferior--to anyone else. If you are rich and successful that's great--but don't you think a little "there but for the grace of God go I" is in order? Have you made the world even a little better with your efforts?
In countries like India and Great Britain, social position depends on birth as well as on possessions. In America, if you're rich, that's royalty enough.
Dividing humanity into winners and losers has resulted in the dehumanization of the working class. They are viewed by management more or less as things, cogs in a wheel. Management strives to pay workers the least amount they can get away with. Corporate profits soar; working class wages remain stagnant. It is a national disgrace that the wealthy--and Congress is dominated by green privilege--refuse to raise the minimum wage, which hasn't kept up with inflation for years, even though the monetary gains of elites have outpaced it by many percentage points.
Green privilege differs from white privilege in at least one important aspect. All racism is bad, but not all green privilege is bad. That the talented and innovative are paid better might not be fair, but it is justifiable. Without the incentive of wealth, many professionals wouldn't have worked so hard to achieve. Many of their innovations have benefited all of us. For instance, inventors, many of whom are a lot smarter and more talented than I am, have developed computers, the internet, word processing applications, etc, all of which have made my life more efficient and more enjoyable. The talented deserve their higher wages. Serious problems arise, however, when things get out of balance.
Green privilege is out of hand. 59% of the profits since 2008 have been appropriated by the wealthiest one percent. Another national disgrace!
It is not a question of redistribution, it is a question of justice. Justice demands that anyone who is willing to work must receive a living wage. More than that: everyone deserves health care, access to at least adequate schools, a safe environment, and decent housing. (Housing that meets the minimum requirements of decency can be quite simple.)
Green privilege and white privilege are independent variables; when they combine, however, the effect is especially pernicious. Have you noticed that nearly all black victims of police brutality come from the working class? A black member of the elite, say a lawyer or a doctor, is sometimes harassed by the police on racial grounds, despite the former's fancy car, (white privilege), but such incidents occur more rarely than those involving working-class blacks, (green privilege).
Sometimes green privilege trumps white privilege. Do you think O.J. Simpson would have been acquitted if he hadn't been rich and famous? A sad, comic incident happened a few years ago when Henry Louis Gates Jr., the renowned Harvard professor, attempted to force open a jammed door of his residence. Someone reported this as a potential burglary in progress. A white police officer responded. (Later, a commission determined that both parties were at fault, but that's not the point here.) Gates, justifiably angered by being confronted by the police at his own door, suspected racism--and who can blame him? But what he said was significant: "Do you know who you're messin' with?" In effect he was telling the cop that he, the professor, a member of the elite, was somebody, while he, the police officer, a member of the working class, was nobody. (Gates is better than this, however; what is said in a fit of anger should not be used to judge a person. On the other hand, the confrontation is a clear indication that green privilege is part of Gates's identity.)
The current waging of class warfare by the upper classes, whether done consciously or unconsciously, continues to have a devastating effect--on us all, but especially on the working-class and the poor. The evil of racism, bad as it is, is not the only major problem in America. Unbalanced green privilege is a very serious threat to our democracy, all the more because it is insidious and insufficiently acknowledged.
Red Privilege
Red privilege, which has wide support in America, has caused millions of deaths. Red privilege is the belief that America is the best country in the world and has the right to impose its will on every nation. Both political parties are guilty of red privilege. Michelle Obama, for instance, in her effective Democratic Convention speech, correctly stated that America does not need to be made great again, as Trump asserts; it is already a great nation. Granted; she should have stopped there, however. She went on to assert that America is the "greatest country in the world". In military power yes, but its lack of universal health insurance, its widespread poverty and inequality, etc. make the claim somewhat dubious. Later on that same night, Vice President Joe Biden, in a very stentorian voice, claimed that "America owns the finish line," implying that if the world as a whole hasn't yet acknowledged American supremacy, they had better.
The Republicans, as one might expect, are far worse. They denounce President Obama for "leading from behind," which, I assume, means trying diplomacy and coalition-building before resorting to force. The Republicans demand an increase in military spending, even though the United States spends more on its military than all the major military powers combined. The Republican view, shared by many, is that America is an island of good in a sea of evil; the sea needs to be patrolled and the sharks need to be eliminated.
The belief in American exceptionalism has not had a benign effect on our neighbors. (A Mexican adage is as follows: "Pity Mexico--So far from God and so close to the United States!) A belief in manifest destiny, that is, that a continent dominated by European immigrants was God's will, turned the immorality of ethnically cleansing Indians from the best land into a supposed virtue, another example of God's chosen people displacing godless Canaanites.
The list of American interventionism is long. The Philippines and the brutal war that followed; blatant intervention in South American and Central American politics that often entailed the propping up of brutal dictators; the disastrous and unnecessary war in Vietnam during which thousands upon thousand died--this, unfortunately is only a partial list.
In recent times, red privilege resulted in one of the greatest blunders of American policy ever: the invasion of Iraq. Remember what Cheney and Bush said? In a few months, the Iraqis would be waving American flags, as American troops, their liberators, passed by. Not exactly how things have turned out.
The tenets of red privilege, namely, that the rest of the world consists of cultural inferiors that need to be Americanized, often by military force, is still very much with us.
America is the foremost military power on earth. In the modern world, the benefits of military force, are, however, moot. Did the bombings of Vietnamese and Iraqi cities turn them into Hollywood imitations of Normal, Illinois? Have those two disastrous interventions made America safer? Have trillions of dollars been spent for nothing?
The evil Nazi regime was, in a way, a gift to America. Its defeat assured that America became the greatest power on earth.
Since the fifties, however, the Chinese and Indians, among inhabitants of other nations, have decided that they deserve the benefits of modernity as well. They are not willing to be footnotes to American history. This trend will not be reversed, no matter how much is spent on America's military.
Red privilege is thus a variant of white and green privilege. America is the richest nation. America is the best nation. America must rule.
The belief in American supremacy is as pleasing to the world as is the belief of white supremacy is to minorities.
Red privilege cannot last. International cooperation, however, can. No, I am not naive--America needs to be able to defend itself--the world is seething with resentment and willingness to act out grievances with force and with acts of terror.
Americans have every right to be proud of their country and its glorious Constitution. The line between just pride and unjust arrogance is, however, often a thin one. Red privilege, another word for American hubris, tends to encourage politicians to opt for folly over pragmatism. Just what is not needed!
Conclusion
We have discussed three cultural variables that can act independently and in combination to produce mild to severe negative influences on American life and on the well-being of the rest of the world's population as well. The harm white privilege does to minorities is much in the news; the harms done by the other two privileges are much less widely acknowledged. The purpose of this article is not to dilute the problem of racism; my intent is to bring to the readers' attention two additional problems, so that, with effort and non-violent struggle, all three false privileges can be turned into the one true privilege we all share, Americans and non-Americans alike, our common humanity.
White Privilege
I do not watch Fox News, but do occasionally listen to a YouTube excerpt when the subject of the snippet catches my eye. I couldn't resist clicking on one that contained a discussion Bill O'Reilly had about racism, white privilege in the broadest sense. When he angrily told his opponent that racism in America no longer exists, my jaw dropped, figuratively and literally. How could anyone say something so patently absurd?
Racism, which took the most heinous form possible for well over a century, namely, slavery, has been a national disgrace. True, great progress has been made. The weeds of prejudice have extensive roots, however; dig up a a few inches of American soil just about anywhere and you will find them, still choking the growth of fairer perennials.
Yes, racism, unfortunately, is still very much with us. Do I have to give examples? Here's one: identical resumes were sent out to businesses, some with a black-sounding name, say, Jamal, and others with a more generic one, such as James. Guess what the striking pattern of responses was?
Anecdotes pile up. I will relate one. I, an old white man, go to my bank once or twice a week. During past transactions, I had pleasant exchanges with a teller. I considered her to be a very friendly, polite person. One day a black acquaintance of mine went to the same teller. He is a very decent, polite person, one of the kindest human beings I know. His crime: being young, black, and male. He told me that she treated him as if he were a thug. He wasn't even angry; I suppose you get used to it. You shouldn't. Now I, too, look at that teller with suspicion. The friendly exchanges are gone.
The statistics are, to put it mildly, alarming. Blacks and whites use illegal drugs at about the same rate; black drug users tend to smoke crack, white drug users tend to snort or inject powdered heroin. Two forms of the same drug, yet the possession of 28 grams of crack is the legal equivalent of the possession of 500 grams of heroin; each carries a mandatory five-year prison sentence. This and other factors have resulted in the obscene fact that 60% of those who have been sentenced to life-time imprisonment without parole for non-violent crimes are black, a statistic way out of proportion to the percentage of blacks in the population. Over 90% of those imprisoned for life for non-violent crimes in Louisiana are black! Do you think this might be an attempt to remove black males from the population? If you don't think so, think again.
Darryl Pinckney, in an article, "Black Lives and the Police," (New York Review of Books, August 16, 2016), presented a convincing list of the effects of white privilege. Prejudice against blacks has resulted in, "racial profiling, stop and frisk, discriminatory sentencing practices, the disproportionately high black prison industry, the hallucinatory disaster of the war on drugs, and the double standard when it comes to race and class and law."
We have a very serious problem in this country, and we all need to work together to fix it.
Green Privilege
Green privilege is class privilege. It is the widespread belief that talent, achievement and wealth are proofs of superiority. Green privilege tends to divide humanity into winners and losers. (This was the credo of Donald Trump before he suppressed this belief in order to gain working class support for his obnoxious candidacy.)
I would like to ask every successful person to answer these questions: Did you create your intelligence? Did you create your talent? Did luck, family circumstances and connections have anything to do with your success? If you had a less talented brother, would you still consider him your brother? Aren't we all brothers and sisters?
I am convinced that no one has the right to consider himself/herself superior--or inferior--to anyone else. If you are rich and successful that's great--but don't you think a little "there but for the grace of God go I" is in order? Have you made the world even a little better with your efforts?
In countries like India and Great Britain, social position depends on birth as well as on possessions. In America, if you're rich, that's royalty enough.
Dividing humanity into winners and losers has resulted in the dehumanization of the working class. They are viewed by management more or less as things, cogs in a wheel. Management strives to pay workers the least amount they can get away with. Corporate profits soar; working class wages remain stagnant. It is a national disgrace that the wealthy--and Congress is dominated by green privilege--refuse to raise the minimum wage, which hasn't kept up with inflation for years, even though the monetary gains of elites have outpaced it by many percentage points.
Green privilege differs from white privilege in at least one important aspect. All racism is bad, but not all green privilege is bad. That the talented and innovative are paid better might not be fair, but it is justifiable. Without the incentive of wealth, many professionals wouldn't have worked so hard to achieve. Many of their innovations have benefited all of us. For instance, inventors, many of whom are a lot smarter and more talented than I am, have developed computers, the internet, word processing applications, etc, all of which have made my life more efficient and more enjoyable. The talented deserve their higher wages. Serious problems arise, however, when things get out of balance.
Green privilege is out of hand. 59% of the profits since 2008 have been appropriated by the wealthiest one percent. Another national disgrace!
It is not a question of redistribution, it is a question of justice. Justice demands that anyone who is willing to work must receive a living wage. More than that: everyone deserves health care, access to at least adequate schools, a safe environment, and decent housing. (Housing that meets the minimum requirements of decency can be quite simple.)
Green privilege and white privilege are independent variables; when they combine, however, the effect is especially pernicious. Have you noticed that nearly all black victims of police brutality come from the working class? A black member of the elite, say a lawyer or a doctor, is sometimes harassed by the police on racial grounds, despite the former's fancy car, (white privilege), but such incidents occur more rarely than those involving working-class blacks, (green privilege).
Sometimes green privilege trumps white privilege. Do you think O.J. Simpson would have been acquitted if he hadn't been rich and famous? A sad, comic incident happened a few years ago when Henry Louis Gates Jr., the renowned Harvard professor, attempted to force open a jammed door of his residence. Someone reported this as a potential burglary in progress. A white police officer responded. (Later, a commission determined that both parties were at fault, but that's not the point here.) Gates, justifiably angered by being confronted by the police at his own door, suspected racism--and who can blame him? But what he said was significant: "Do you know who you're messin' with?" In effect he was telling the cop that he, the professor, a member of the elite, was somebody, while he, the police officer, a member of the working class, was nobody. (Gates is better than this, however; what is said in a fit of anger should not be used to judge a person. On the other hand, the confrontation is a clear indication that green privilege is part of Gates's identity.)
The current waging of class warfare by the upper classes, whether done consciously or unconsciously, continues to have a devastating effect--on us all, but especially on the working-class and the poor. The evil of racism, bad as it is, is not the only major problem in America. Unbalanced green privilege is a very serious threat to our democracy, all the more because it is insidious and insufficiently acknowledged.
Red Privilege
Red privilege, which has wide support in America, has caused millions of deaths. Red privilege is the belief that America is the best country in the world and has the right to impose its will on every nation. Both political parties are guilty of red privilege. Michelle Obama, for instance, in her effective Democratic Convention speech, correctly stated that America does not need to be made great again, as Trump asserts; it is already a great nation. Granted; she should have stopped there, however. She went on to assert that America is the "greatest country in the world". In military power yes, but its lack of universal health insurance, its widespread poverty and inequality, etc. make the claim somewhat dubious. Later on that same night, Vice President Joe Biden, in a very stentorian voice, claimed that "America owns the finish line," implying that if the world as a whole hasn't yet acknowledged American supremacy, they had better.
The Republicans, as one might expect, are far worse. They denounce President Obama for "leading from behind," which, I assume, means trying diplomacy and coalition-building before resorting to force. The Republicans demand an increase in military spending, even though the United States spends more on its military than all the major military powers combined. The Republican view, shared by many, is that America is an island of good in a sea of evil; the sea needs to be patrolled and the sharks need to be eliminated.
The belief in American exceptionalism has not had a benign effect on our neighbors. (A Mexican adage is as follows: "Pity Mexico--So far from God and so close to the United States!) A belief in manifest destiny, that is, that a continent dominated by European immigrants was God's will, turned the immorality of ethnically cleansing Indians from the best land into a supposed virtue, another example of God's chosen people displacing godless Canaanites.
The list of American interventionism is long. The Philippines and the brutal war that followed; blatant intervention in South American and Central American politics that often entailed the propping up of brutal dictators; the disastrous and unnecessary war in Vietnam during which thousands upon thousand died--this, unfortunately is only a partial list.
In recent times, red privilege resulted in one of the greatest blunders of American policy ever: the invasion of Iraq. Remember what Cheney and Bush said? In a few months, the Iraqis would be waving American flags, as American troops, their liberators, passed by. Not exactly how things have turned out.
The tenets of red privilege, namely, that the rest of the world consists of cultural inferiors that need to be Americanized, often by military force, is still very much with us.
America is the foremost military power on earth. In the modern world, the benefits of military force, are, however, moot. Did the bombings of Vietnamese and Iraqi cities turn them into Hollywood imitations of Normal, Illinois? Have those two disastrous interventions made America safer? Have trillions of dollars been spent for nothing?
The evil Nazi regime was, in a way, a gift to America. Its defeat assured that America became the greatest power on earth.
Since the fifties, however, the Chinese and Indians, among inhabitants of other nations, have decided that they deserve the benefits of modernity as well. They are not willing to be footnotes to American history. This trend will not be reversed, no matter how much is spent on America's military.
Red privilege is thus a variant of white and green privilege. America is the richest nation. America is the best nation. America must rule.
The belief in American supremacy is as pleasing to the world as is the belief of white supremacy is to minorities.
Red privilege cannot last. International cooperation, however, can. No, I am not naive--America needs to be able to defend itself--the world is seething with resentment and willingness to act out grievances with force and with acts of terror.
Americans have every right to be proud of their country and its glorious Constitution. The line between just pride and unjust arrogance is, however, often a thin one. Red privilege, another word for American hubris, tends to encourage politicians to opt for folly over pragmatism. Just what is not needed!
Conclusion
We have discussed three cultural variables that can act independently and in combination to produce mild to severe negative influences on American life and on the well-being of the rest of the world's population as well. The harm white privilege does to minorities is much in the news; the harms done by the other two privileges are much less widely acknowledged. The purpose of this article is not to dilute the problem of racism; my intent is to bring to the readers' attention two additional problems, so that, with effort and non-violent struggle, all three false privileges can be turned into the one true privilege we all share, Americans and non-Americans alike, our common humanity.
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