Leonard Pitts Jr.: A Whiter Shade Of Privilege

[babylonsister]

http://www.nationalmemo.com/a-whiter-shade-of-privilege/

A Whiter Shade Of Privilege
March 25th, 2012 1:54 pm Leonard Pitts Jr.


snip//

“Hispanic” is not a race, but an ethnicity. As the U.S. Census Bureau puts it in its 2010 Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin, “People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be any race.”

The long reason begins with an understanding that the word in question — race — is a term both meaningful and yet, profoundly meaningless. It is meaningful in the sense that it provides a tool for tribalism and a means by which to organize our biases, fears, observations, social challenges and sundry cultural products. It is meaningless in the sense that, well … it has no meaning, that there exists no definition of “black” or “white” that carries any degree of scientific precision.

We are taught to believe the opposite, that “black” and “white” are self-evident and immutable. But I invite you to look up Walter White, the blond, blue-eyed “Negro” who once led the NAACP, or Gregory Howard Williams, the university president who didn’t even know he was black until he was 10 years old. Dig up the old Jet magazine story about a woman who gave birth to twins — one “black,” one “white.” And then think again. Race is a fraud, a cruel and stupid fraud.

snip//

White, then, is not simply color, but privilege — not necessarily in the sense of wealth, but rather in the sense of having one’s personhood and individuality respected, a privilege so basic I doubt it registers with many whites as privilege at all. We’re talking about the privilege of being seen, of having your worth presumed, of receiving the benefit of the doubt and some human compassion, of being treated as if you matter.

Consider that; then consider the fair-skinned Hispanic man, George Zimmerman, who evidently stalked and killed an unarmed kid he wrongly thought was up to no good, yet was not arrested, nor even initially investigated. He said it was self-defense. Police took him at his word and sent him on his way.

Folks, that’s not just white. It’s blinding.

[ellisonz]

1. People don't understand how race is a social construction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_interpretations_of_race

That's all it really is, when we try the counter argument that it is a biological fact we fall into a trap of objectivist thought that denies the subjective element of its application as a concept.