White Privilege

I've been noticing a disturbing trend on YouTube lately, but upon reflection of my own college experience, this trend is really nothing new - just the name. Below is the YouTube video that "triggered" me.

When I was in college, we were forced to take a number of diversity courses. They contributed nothing to my education. We were mostly ticked off by them because it was an hour wasted that we could have otherwise spent in the lab or to do virtually anything else. The worst one I took was during my Freshman year. There was an exercise where they had everyone stand at the edge of the auditorium. The speaker would then describe a potentially discriminating event and asked for people to step forward if they had experienced it. The clear intent was for all of the white students to stay near the back and all of the minority students step forward. Well, I took the speaker as literally as possible and stepped forward every time I could think of an instant when someone asked me for my race, was denied a scholarship because I was a white man, or when a group was pledging for members but from a specific racial group. I got some weird looks once the exercise was over.

Now I don't have a problem with diversity. Considering that most of my college class comprised of

Diversity should be realized, not forced.

Chinese and Indian students, I would be hurting myself not to seek help or work with those students. To limit myself to only other white students would've made my already rough college years that much harder. I didn't need a class to teach me that. One thing that bothered me in one of my diversity classes was when a student asked the speaker, "Instead of promoting diversity, why don't we just try to recruit the best and brightest?" I'll never forget the speaker's answer. He starts off by saying that it is flawed logic, but then never explains how!

Dinesh D'Souza does a great job in the video deconstructing the argument of white privilege. Again, I never heard that term before watching the video, but I can't help but think that was the idea trying to come across through all of my diversity training. Unfortunately, this video is not unique. I've seen quite a few instances of these "diversity advocates" basically be blatantly racist against white people for past deeds against another racial group. Yes, slavery was wrong. Yes, the GI Bill mentioned in the video was wrong. The reality is that I -as a white man- am not responsible for the actions of other white men. How these people don't see this as just as racist of me thinking that all black people are criminals because a man was mugged in Tacoma by a black man is astounding. Should I call out Asian privilege because of the Mongol invasion of Europe in the 13th century? Instead of trying to look into the past in order to get present day comeuppance, let's acknowledge the fact that people were crappy to each other back in the day and move forward to create a better future.