I would normally ignore topics like this, but it’s been cluttering my dash, so here’s my penny’s worth, if anything.
I think people that pull the race card are running low on logic. I come from South Africa so think carefully before you accuse me of being ignorant or naive about racial issues or racial tensions. I lived through apartheid in my early adult years, and I continue to live through the challenges of a post-apartheid era where reverse discrimination is the order of the day.
So for those that believe it’s about white privilege, consider this. If you come to South Africa, I’ll show you black privilege till it nauseates you. Go to India and I’ll show you brown privilege till it turns your stomach. Go to the trailer parks of America and I’ll challenge you to show me white privilege. It’s simple. People are as privileged as you allow them to be. This is especially true in the context of society rather than legislated privileges by government.
The apartheid government of South Africa was one of the last bastions of such racial stupidity that I am aware of, so anyone still feeling like they’re the victims of white privilege are in fact victims of their own victim-conscious mentality. If people of colour treat white people as if they’re special, then vent at the POC that do so, and don’t blame the whites for enjoying such elevated ‘hospitality’. That’s like saying that the current generation of white South Africans that were born after 1994 are still to be held accountable for the trespasses of the idiocy of the former generations. The logic is simply astoundingly stupid.
It’s this same deranged mentality of ‘white privilege’ that feeds the slum-mentality of so many individuals of colour. A white person is not responsible for the moral decay of a black person, nor is a black person responsible for the opportunists that hide behind white privilege. When we stop playing the race card to feed our weakness that prevents us from acting outside of our stereotypical roles that society has endowed on us, that’s the day we’ll rise above the stupidity of attacking people just because they are recipients of unwarranted respect or admiration, rather than recognising that it is the pathetically submissive masses that have yet to rise above the effects of white dominance through the colonial years that are actually responsible for the effects of white privilege that we see today.
It requires an independent mind to treat an individual as an individual. When you lack such independent-minded thinking, you’ll hide behind whatever card will suit your fancy and camouflage your insecurities. Unfortunately that card is most convenient when it’s titled with the word ‘race’.
Edit: I am a person of colour. So I’m sorry to take away that convenience for any intended slanderous comments about my position on this as well. But I refuse to act according to the stereotypes that people have in their minds just so that I avoid the risk of being labelled an apologist or worse. It’s about individual merit, and nothing else. If you believe it’s about more than this, you’re paying attention to the wrong agenda.