Whiteguy Avenger

Ant-Man, Wasp, Thor, Iron Man, and the Hulk. Comicbook marvels.

And now, Tim Wise - White Privilege, White Entitlement and the 2008 Election. Ta-da. Fluff writing white bro passing for serious shit.

A list written by Tim Wise, for those who "still can't grasp the concept of white privilege." Is that white condescension trying to masquerade as goodness or what?

TIM: 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."

KAB: It will be "white privilege" when Bristol is pregnant with baby #4 with no daddies around and selling food funds from her EBT card for 50 cents on the dollar so she can get her hair and nails done for Saturday night clubbing, and defenders claim she is not irresponsible - she just cannot escape her circumstances because "the man" keeps her down.

TIM: 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.

KAB: It would be "white privilege" if Palin got away with admitting she spent part of her education living in a pot haze and a "little blow when it was affordable" and could get a lucrative autobiographical book deal while still a relative nobody and schmucking around with the Chicago political machine. It would be "white privilege" if Palin was head of a law review and law professor who left almost no paper trail of legal thought but was labeled a gifted legal eagle anyway.

TIM: White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."

KAB: It would be privilege when your tenure as state Senator is not examined closely, when you mistakenly vote the wrong way on issues - oops. And people wouldn't piss on themselves laughing because registering community voters for the machine behind you is a really hard test for a Harvard scholar who wrote all of 1 paper for HLR.

TIM: 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 founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office - since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s - while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

KAB: No, it would be "white privilege" if Palin sat for 20 years in a church dancing to the tune of God Damns America because of Rich Black Folk and she can get away with calling it White Liberation Theology.

TIM: White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

KAB: No, white privilege would be if Palin had knowingly for years wined, dined, socialized, and conducted business with a corrupt political machine and its slum lords, but it is okay because her defenders swear those ties were innocent, and not be bashed for being naive.

TIM: White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it, a "light" burden.

KAB: No, it would be white privilege if folks believed that being tailed in a department store or being pulled over for driving while black is equally horrendous to 5-1/2 years in a POW camp.

TIM: White privilege is, in short, the problem.

KAB: No, the problem, in short, are self-appointed "leaders" who have made careers from hustling whitey. Or as Booker T. Washington called them - those "problem profiteers."