{"id":14700,"date":"2016-05-18T15:51:43","date_gmt":"2016-05-18T20:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/frenchrevolution\/?p=14700"},"modified":"2016-05-18T15:51:43","modified_gmt":"2016-05-18T20:51:43","slug":"its-not-wrong-to-be-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/frenchrevolution\/2016\/05\/18\/its-not-wrong-to-be-white\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s not Wrong to be White"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 350px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/507179537\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 140.000000% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/507179537?et=VlOrA3QwT-t3AQAf0tnczQ&amp;viewMoreLink=off&amp;sig=RBINK4ypVkGYuJHWhLlyYkZr2Eu5HjTpzr4wWPWMr8g=\" width=\"350\" height=\"490\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>When I was twenty-one, I transferred from my small southern Christian college to\u00a0New York University. \u00a0At the time, I was a feminist and was eager to shed the confines of my conservative Christian college for the more liberal streets\u00a0of Manhattan. \u00a0I figured they\u2019d welcome me with open arms, ready to embrace their long lost sister who\u2019d finally made it \u201chome.\u201d\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I was woefully misguided.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently, there were things about me that were\u2026 \u00a0just wrong. \u00a0First, my accent made me sound like a racist, they told me. \u00a0My hometown of Paris, Tennessee pretty much guaranteed that\u00a0I was one. \u00a0I was heterosexually married, which meant that I couldn\u2019t understand the plight of the oppressed homosexuals in my class. \u00a0I believed in God \u2014 worse, that He was a \u201che\u201d \u2014 so\u00a0I was a bigot. \u00a0I did get some points for being a female. \u00a0(They told me I was a bird trapped in a birdcage of missed opportunities, even though I lived in Gramercy Park, had a car service, and attended one of the more expensive private universities in the nation. \u00a0My husband famously told me, \u201cUm\u2026 \u00a0you are not a member of the oppressed minority.\u201d) \u00a0But worst of all, I was white.<\/p>\n<p>Ever feel like there\u2019s something wrong with being white? \u00a0Certainly you would think so if you were learning everything you knew about America from television, where pundits talk incessantly about whiteness as if it\u2019s a choice that\u00a0reveals your moral compass is surely broken.<\/p>\n<p>David French, writing at National Review, explains:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For those soaked in progressive identity politics, skin color was a stand-in for virtue. It was impossible for a black person to be racist; it was impossible for a white person not to be. Any in-depth discussion of history had to acknowledge past injustice. It was tough even to talk about, say, Omaha Beach without in the next breath acknowledging the systematic segregation in the World War II-era U.S. Army.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And, even though President Obama was supposed to usher in a post-racial world, it\u2019s not getting better.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Now the true cultural and historical demons are white \u2014 gasp! \u2014 \u201ccisgender\u201d males, and any white cisgender woman who doesn\u2019t appropriately check her privilege. The ticket to white acceptability in progressive politics is a form of self-loathing: a constant attitude of repentance not just for the sins of the past but also for the benefits of the present, which are presumably enjoyed only or mainly because of the plunder and exploitation of \u201cbrown bodies.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The wealthy among us \u2014 the elite at the higher universities and the media moguls who shove this racial identity politics down our throats \u2014 don\u2019t really pay a price. \u00a0But the rest of America? \u00a0Well, it\u2019s pretty expensive. \u00a0David writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Here\u2019s the problem: Progressives don\u2019t like to admit this, but identity politics work as the mirror image of white supremacy \u2014 compressing the extraordinary rich and complex histories of nations, continents, and cultures into one characteristic: skin color. For the white supremacist, white people are natural-born victors. For the identity-politics leftist, white people are natural-born predators.<\/p>\n<p>But actual history belies the stereotypes. To take just one hot-button example, the history of slavery since the Colonial Era is not just a history of Europeans and white Americans enslaving Africans. It\u2019s of Africans enslaving Africans, of Africans enslaving Europeans, and of Arabs enslaving Africans (and that\u2019s just a partial summary). Yes, brown people enslaved white people by the millions:\u00a0Should Americans of North African or Turkish descent check their privilege and believe their wealth was built on plunder?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That gets to the heart of it. \u00a0Why didn\u2019t the election of America\u2019s first black president usher in a better day?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When identity politics rule, racism and polarization thrive. It is no coincidence that we are seeing a resurgence in outright white nationalism \u2014 embodied in the so-called alt-right \u2014 at the same time that America\u2019s leftist cultural elite are decisively rejecting Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s dream that Americans be judged by the \u201ccontent of their character\u201d and not the color of their skin. When one side decides that skin color is a virtue, then \u2014 as sure as the sun rises in the east \u2014 the other side will eagerly agree.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, in this day of political correctness, here\u2019s a good reminder:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There is nothing wrong with being white. There is nothing right with being white.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>David concludes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We\u2019ve always had a race problem in this country, but to deny our progress on this front is to deny reality. That progress, however, is not inevitable, and this political generation \u2014 in its mindless rage and commitment to identity politics \u2014 threatens to undo the work of generations before. When one side screams that white is wrong, another side will scream that white is right, and the concept of an actual \u201cracial conversation\u201d \u2014 much less the notion of \u201cracial healing\u201d \u2014 will be little more than a sad joke.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the whole thing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/435567\/identity-politics-race-ripping-us-apart\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is nothing wrong with being white. 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