This is Your Nation on White Privilege
Is there a double-standard in U.S. Politics?
By Tim Wise
9/13/08
For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who areconstantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this listwill help. White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palinand everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is apersonal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents,because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino familieswith similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible,pathological and arbiters of social decay. White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” likeBristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you,you'll “kick their fuckin' ass,” and talk about how you like to“shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy(and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug. White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six yearslike Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned toafter making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questionsyour intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color whodid this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only gotin in the first place because of affirmative action. White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller thanmost medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the samenumber of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you readyto potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves withlaughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, andconstitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.” White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God”in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the foundingfathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified fromholding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s andthe “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s--while believing thatreading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, theConstitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it),is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals. White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make peopleimmediately scared of you. White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of anextremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, andwhose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or thatof your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to cometo a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school,people immediately think she’s being disrespectful. White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the workthey do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or forcivil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people thinkyou’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of asmall town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond aclass she took in college--you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist. White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agreewith you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway,because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence inthese same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.” White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support yourpolitical campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typicalpolitician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing somefolks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt. White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastorssay that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush aregoing to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the jobof Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, andwho bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’spunishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’rejust a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with ablack pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department ofDefense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy andwho talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’rean extremist who probably hates America. White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by areporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a“trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-wordanswers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question,or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced. White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything atall to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencingracism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a “light” burden. And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allowsomeone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent ofthe time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes,inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion,just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Yaknow, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of thesame, which is very concrete and certain. White privilege is, in short, the problem.
Does the phrase 'I was for it before I was against it' sound familiar? It was used by the Republican's on Democratic candidate John Kerry in a previous election. That phrase alone was key to the demise of John Kerry. When Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin was asked about the bridge to nowhere, ABC news September 15, 2008 stated 'she was for it before she was against it'. In another interview, Palin was asked about the Bush doctorine. Anyone in politics should know what the doctorine means even if we do not. It was so obvious that Sarah Palin did not know the facts, that NBC Saturday Night Live on September 13, 2008 used Palin's ignorance of the facts to open the show. The Republican's would go ballistic if Joe Biden made such a mistake. Barack Obama accurately uses change as a foundation for his message and now John McCain is using it as well. The words 'experience and judgement' were used against Barack Obama. Sarah Palin now makes 'experience and judgement' an acceptable talking point because she is a 'reformer'. Sounds like a double standard to me. John McCain said in September 2008 that 'The economy is fundamentally sound'. He abruptly reversed his position on the economy when he was informed of the seven hundred billion dollar economic bailout plan. If you are an undecided voter, please look at the facts and make an informed descision by voting for Barack Obama.
If you are a Democratic male candidate who is popular with millions of people you are an "arrogant celebrity" If you are a popular Republican female candidate you are "energizing the base"
If you grow up in Hawaii you're "exotic" If you grow up in Alaska and your favorite cuisine is moose stew, you're the quintessential "American story"
If you grow up with a single mom and food stamps, go to college through scholarships and loans, graduate from Columbia and then take a job making $12,000 a year as a community organizer instead of a $300,000 job on Wall Street, stay married to the same woman for 19 years and advocate tax cuts to all Americans making less than $112,000 a year while your own taxes will go up, you’re an “elitist”
If you’re the son and grandson of 4-star Navy admirals, married to a beer-empire heiress (after leaving your wheelchair bound former wife, who had a terrible car accident), now own 7 homes and have a net worth of $38 million, and you propose tax cuts that favor multinational corporations and the top 0.1% of households (a group you belong to) while offering less than half the tax break to middle class your “elitist” opponent does, you’re a “reformer” who is “one of us”
If your mother named you Barack Hussein Obama, after your birth father, you must be a secret Muslim who should be feared If your mother named you Track (or named your brother Trig Van Palen, because she thought it was cute that it would rhyme with the band Van Halen) and you join the military to avoid having a criminal record for vandalizing a school bus, you must be an American hero who should be revered
If you're a Democrat and you dare make a VP pick without fully vetting the individual you'd be called "reckless" A Republican who doesn't fully vet you are “gutsy” and going for a “game changer”
If you spend 3 years as a community organizer growing your then become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new African American voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, then spend nearly 8 more years as a State Senator representing a district with Over 750,000 people, becoming chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend nearly 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of almost 13 million people, sponsoring 129 bills and cosponsoring 545 bills, and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, including the most sweeping ethics reform bill in generations, and manage the largest and most technologically advanced and groundbreaking political campaign in the nation’s history, you are "inexperienced" If you spend 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, raised the sales tax and left the town in debt of over $20 million after taking over a town in surplus, then spend 20 months as the governor of a state with 650,000 people, claim that your state produces 20% of American energy even though the Bureau of Statistics says it is 2.4%, didn’t have a passport until 2007, never met a foreign head of state, have traveled out of the U.S. only once in 2007, are the Commander in Chief of an Alaska National Guard with 4,000 members for which you’ve never made a single decision - you are well qualified to lead the nation should you be called upon to do so because you can “see” Russia from some parts of Alaska and if your opponent calls you inexperienced, he’s “sexist” and “disrespectful.”
If you opposed a war that turned out to be exactly the disaster you predicted, advocated pursuing Bin Laden in tribal Pakistan in precisely the way the Bush administration now pursues him (nearly a year later), and warned two years ago of a “pending implosion” at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, you are an "empty suit" and must be a “political opportunist” who is “on a journey of self-discovery” If you have to re-invent your whole campaign on a dime from the theme of “experience” to the theme of “change” because you’re losing, have flip-flopped on taxes, immigration, voted with the most unpopular president in America 90% of the time, was a cheerleader for the war in Iraq (having raised it the day after September 11, 2001) and launch a vicious campaign in which you accuse your opponent of wanting to teach sex education before reading to kindergartners, you’re a “maverick” If you go to a largely African American south side Chicago church, are not in the church pew while your pastor makes some outrageous statements that you do not agree with, your beliefs are "extremist". If you attend a Church in Alaska whose pastor states, with you on the stage, that at the approaching “end of days” Americans will come from the lower 48 states to Alaska to be saved, if you sit in the pews while the leader of Jews for Jesus called terrorist attacks in Israel a “message from God” that Jews should convert, if you believe in creationism, oppose abortion even in cases of rape and incest, don't believe global warming is affected by human activity, and see the Iraq invasion as "a mission from God", you are "strongly principled"
If you're a 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton, and the present Republican candidate for President joked publicly in 1998, “"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno." then if you take offense, you’re guilty of being “politically correct”
If you’re a Republican VP candidate and you are called-out by the present Democratic candidate for President for dishonesty over your flip-flop on the “bridge to nowhere” then the Democratic candidate is guilty of being “disrespectful”
If you kill an endangered species by shooting at it from helicopters, you're a “sportswoman” If you believe a woman should have the right to choose not to give birth to her rapist’s baby, you are a murderer
The Repuplicans claim that Sarah Palin has been measured with a "double standard" and that she has been unfairly treated by the media and by Democrat pundits. I agree with Barack Obama that family members should be "off limits" in discussions about qualifications for office, but I'm not sure if they are completely off limits in discussions about character. Because our families and our relationships are a major part of our true character.
Even so, I'm not going to talk about Palin's qualities as a mother or even as a female. I believe very strongly in equality and that is a non-issue for me. In fact this blog is not about Palin's own double-standards, such as saying one thing and doing another, or making promises that she cannot keep, or making judgments that she is not qualified to make (such as questioning or measuring another person's experience or qualifications).
No, this is about the double standards of all the people who are suddenly, feverishly, major supporters of Sarah Palin. Case in point: for the same length of time that Palin has been serving as governor of Alaska, GOPers and conservatives across the country have been attacking Senator Obama's experience in public service, questioning his faith, and claiming things about him that simply are not true. Many of the people we have seen in the past 5 days on the Palin bandwagon had never even heard of her before last week, and now are lock-step behind her because she's "Christian", "Conservative", and "one of us". Without question they have claimed her and say that she represents their values even though they don't know about her faith--except for what she has claimed on the campaign for governor and because Dr. Dobson stamped her with his approval, so it must be right and true... More disturbing is what these followers think makes her "one of us" when they know very little about her and don't know her personally (is that a hockey mom "one of us" or something more along racial lines, or just about the one-value "pro life"/war/gun value voters?) For months and months, people have hammered at and lied about Obama's faith (is he a Muslim?), questioned his Christianity (is he "Christian enough"? and by whose judgment?), and questioned his patriotism (again, by whose measuring stick?) But those same people are up in arms because Palin is getting questioned at all about anything.... talk about a double standard.
If we were measuring her political experience, about the only strength I noticed was her ability to smile energetically while lying through her teeth: Palin's most famous quote so far has been "...and as for Washington and that bridge to nowhere, I told them thanks but no thanks, if we wanted a bridge we'd build it ourselves..." which implies that her administration turned down pork barrel money when the truth is that they kept the federal funds that the corrupt Ted Stevens had helped appropriate for that famous bridge to nowhere, and all Palin really did was redirect the $25 million or so (of all of our tax dollars) for other pet Alaska projects. Pretty smooth political scheming and then misleading of the public. Palin should be further measured on her political savvy--she has a high approval rating in Alaska, and you would too, if you took refunds from big oil and put the dollars in the hands of local citizens instead of using those funds for statewide infrastructure (why pay for infrastructure when you can get that paid for by taxpayers from the lower 48 states?) That is kind of like giving "tax breaks" and "stimulus checks" in attempts to appease the public when the government is borrowing from countries like China to pay oil debts to countries in the Middle East... Palin's experience could also be measured regarding her 20 month old administration already under investigation for illegal attempts to fire a state trooper because he was divorcing Palin's sister, and a history of firing anyone who crossed her or got in her way from her time in "city" government up to her current administration.
In her very short tenure as governor, there is plenty to question about her motives, character, values, and whether she truly serves "the people" or is simply serving her own recently skyrocketing career goals. But what I really question, double standard or not, is her ability to represent "all of us" and the best interests of this country and the world as VP, a heartbeat away from the Presidency, the most powerful position in the world. This is one person who believes that the self described "pit bull with lipstick" is NOT the right person for the job.
The conventional wisdom is that the voters need to get to know Barack better. Maybe so. But what about the other guy? How much do voters really know about John McCain? Is the real McCain just that affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero?
McCain crossed the line this week when he said that Obama “would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.” It was a lousy comment, tantamount to calling Barack a traitor, and McCain should apologize for it.
And now his Rovian-style campaign has put up a terribly disingenuous ad criticizing Barack for not visiting our wounded troops in Germany, showing just how desperate McCain really is.
McCain is one of those guys who never has to pay much of a price for his missteps and foul-ups and bad behavior. Just imagine the firestorm of outrage and criticism that would have descended on Obama if he had made the kind of factual mistakes that McCain has repeatedly made in this campaign.(Or if Barack had had the temerity to even remotely suggest that John McCain would consider being disloyal to his country for political reasons?)
We have a monumental double standard here.
Read more here:
Ok, so whether or not you agree with Wesley Clark's position that McCain's specific military service (because of the nature of the roles he was in) doesn't necessarily qualify him to be a good Commander in Chief -- I honestly don't know if I agree with Clark or not -- you have to acknowledge that Clark has repeatedly said that he is not questioning the quality of McCain's service, and has repeatedly said that McCain is a hero (even referring to him as "a hero of mine") and that his service was honorable.
Even with all of those caveats the reaction from "the right" has been that Clark is "questioning" or "criticizing" McCain's "service." Which, btw, is the one thing Clark has decidedly not done, IMO.
Ok, ok, so let's even say that despite all of Clark's caveats, disclaimers, and explanations, that somehow someone really did still see what he was saying as some sort of insult to McCain's service...and they criticized him for that. Let's just go with that...
There are times when I like to hear what Pat Buchanan has to say. He seems to represent an older, more classic form of conservatism, as opposed to the rabid neo-conservatism as of late. However, Buchanan's comdemnation of Senator Obama for his long and continued association with the Reverend Wright isn't sitting right with me. A little research reminded me of another incident, not too long ago, where Pat Buchanan also spoke out forcefully on the issue of race.
Ok.. I really work to focus on what WE are doing and ignore the opponent...but I am confused by all the attention on Obama's faith while I've yet to even hear IF Hillary Clinton attends any church. I presume she can't be going to the same church for 20 years cause she's not lived in the same place for more than 10 years has she?
How is it that the Catholics can support her? Pro-Abortion and Pro-StemCell Research and if she practices any religion it seems to be a secret.
Why is her faith a non-issue but such a big deal for Obama? Just cause his was exposed to expel a rumor? Sheesh..
