While Oprah is tearing into white people for their ‘White Privilege’ – she says or even the poorest of whites: “they still, no matter where they are on the rung or ladder of success, they still have their whiteness,” former police officer Brandon Tatum offers a different perspective.
I want to use swear words to describe how sickening it makes me feel when people talk about white privilege. Now people see me and people gonna say I’ll hear sellout. Man, nobody give me money to say this.
This is just a common sense person who realized because I’m not racist and I don’t categorize people and base my belief system on their race. Because I do not do that I get offended when people say stupid things about other people that’s unjustified.
I tell you to as sure as I’m sitting here. I had many friends on a police department that were white. Some of them had stories of overcoming adversity that I could not even begin to understand.
They had situations, social economic situations that they were in that blew my mind. As a black man in America I have never dealt with some of the things that some of them had.
And so when I see people bring up this false narrative that all white people somehow have this privilege from birth is the stupidest thing that I’ve ever heard. It’s absolutely ridiculous.
Take this for example. I was the spokesperson of the Tucson Police Department when I had maybe two years on a police department. You tell me I have never in the history of the police department ever heard of anybody being a spokesperson with with two years on the department. I’m in front of the camera. My name is behind things that I’ve said and I’ve been on the police department for 30 minutes pretty much. That’s how we feel in the police and the police.
OK, you know,it was for about two years but you’re still a rookie. I ain’t never heard a white person having it their access to being a spokesperson of a police department.
You name a white police officer that can get on TV and say that they believe black lives matter is ineffective and I’ll show you that same person that lose their job.
Tell me what privilege that person has.
More from Brandon Tatum in the Ceres Courier-
For starters, what is “white privilege” anyway? Because you were born with white skin, you have all these advantages that I don’t have?
Like what?
Like, you can get a mortgage loan that I can’t get?
Hmm. I got a loan – at a great rate by the way – and I got the house. Why would a banker not give a loan to someone who met the loan requirements? He doesn’t want to make money? I’ve never heard of such a banker.
Or, how about this: You can enter a store and not be looked upon with suspicion, but I – a black person – cannot. Except that has never happened to me.
But if I was a young dude with my pants hanging down to my butt, I could understand why a store owner would be concerned. I used to be a cop. Believe me, I understand. If I owned the store, I’d be tracking that kid, too – whether he was black, white, or anything else.
Or, what if I had a store that had a history of being shoplifted by young black women, and a young black woman with a bad attitude walked in. Would I be suspicious? Yeah, I would. Who wouldn’t?
I call that common sense, not bigotry.
But there’s another way of looking at this: In many ways, in today’s America, blacks have more privilege than whites. It’s been my experience that whites bend over backwards to give blacks every possible advantage.
If two people are equally qualified for a job, the black person will usually get it. Big companies and prestigious universities fall all over one another trying to sign up talented black people.
If you deny this, you are denying reality.
Which is what the person who dreamed up this whole thing did – a professor of women’s studies at Wellesley College by the name of Peggy McIntosh. She wrote an article in 1988 about all the “white privilege” she thought she had. She listed 46, including this one: “I can choose…bandages in ‘flesh’ color and have them more or less match my skin.” Wow, that’s some kind of privilege!
Soon others took up the cause.
Today, these so-called progressives dominate our colleges and universities, imposing this absurd notion of white privilege on their students. That’s too bad because it does nothing good for white students. And it does nothing good for black students. But of the two, ironically, the white students get the better of the deal.
Let me explain:
To acknowledge you’re white privilege is supposed to make you feel bad. Only it doesn’t. It makes you feel good because by acknowledging your white privilege, you’re declaring yourself to be enlightened. And as a virtue-bonus, it also makes you a better person than those whites who don’t acknowledge their privilege.
White privilege, which is supposed to make you feel bad, ends up making you feel good. Meanwhile, the real damage is to blacks. What makes whites feel good makes blacks angry.
More than 50 years after the start of the Civil Rights movement, the message is: “You’re still oppressed.” How can this not create a victim mentality? And anyone of any color who sees himself as a victim gets angry.
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