OPINION:
White privilege is the greatest scam going. It is an all-purpose excuse for personal failure and bad behavior.
The latest absurd claim of victimhood comes from DiJonai Carrington, a player for The Chicago Sky, which is part of the Women’s National Basketball Association.
In an Aug. 8 game against the Indiana Fever, Carrington hit Fever player Sophie Cunningham so hard to the head and jaw that she knocked her to the ground.
For this hard foul, Ms. Carrington was ejected from the game, a rare case of a black player actually being punished for a hard foul against a white player in the WNBA. Carrington, who comes from an economically privileged background, later posted on Threads the words, “WHITE PRIVILEGE” (all caps), tagging the Indiana Fever.
After critics blasted her, Ms. Carrington said that she never claimed the assessment of the foul and her removal from the game was white privilege. But what else could it be? Did she just feel like posting those two words, not connected to anything in particular?
The context shows the absurdity of the charge. Black athletes dominate professional sports, including football, the NBA and the WNBA.
Is white privilege why it seems like black actors are in almeost every commercial on television, even though African Americans are 13% of the U.S. Population?
Does white privilege account for Martin Luther King Day, Juneteenth and Black History Month? There is no White History Month.
Is the success of Asian Americans, Cuban Americans, Jewish Americans and people of color from the Caribbean due to white privilege, or could ability and effort have something to do with it?
If anything, society goes out of its way to bestow unearned benefits on blacks, including quotas in education and hiring. Every time the courts strike down one form of race-based admissions, colleges think of a new way to ensure that their student body has the desired racial composition.
Slavery and segregation were very great evils, but thankfully, they belong in the increasingly distant past. Almost every group has suffered discrimination of one form or another, including the Irish, Italians, Poles, Hispanics and Jews. And yet you don’t hear Jewish Americans whining about gentile privilege.
Charges of white privilege are a loser’s lament. Stop the excuse-making and get back in the game.
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