Terry Keleher

White Privilege on the Campaign Trail

Anti-racist writer and activist Tim Wise cuts loose on the white privilege of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in his recent essay “This is Your Nation on White Privilege.”

In the interest of non-partisanship, I’ll bet an equally scathing rant could be written about the Democrat veep candidate, Joe Biden.

Wise is spot-on with many of his points. A few of my faves…

“White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay…”

“White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action…”

Posted at 9:03 AM, Sep 19, 2008 in Elections | Permalink | View Comments