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Personal Essay: My White Privilege

881 Words4 Pages

What Jesus said about White privilege isn’t what you hear from professors, politicians, and many pastors today. Jesus doesn’t command White people to check their privilege, he commands them to count their blessings. And that’s the problem, isn’t? We’ve buried our heads so deeply in the sand to bow to the golden calf of our time that we do not recognize that what the world calls privilege, the word of God calls blessing.

My White neighbour is richer than I am, like most White people. He doesn’t live paycheck to paycheck like I do, like most Black people. He was born into a better environment than I was, like most White people. I’ve experienced more barriers to success than he has, like most Black people. My White neighbour is more privileged …show more content…

Our rights come from the government, our privileges come from God. My White neighbour is more privileged than I am because God gave him more unearned advantages than he gave me. My neighbour is more privileged than I am because he’s more blessed than I am.

If White people today were more privileged than Black people because of racial injustice, that would be an entirely different story. But my government is not secretly plotting my demise. I do not believe Justin Trudeau—and Donald Trump for Black Americans—is clever enough to pull that off, anyway. I do not believe in conspiracy theories. My White neighbours’ blessings come from God, not the government.

White privilege is a Marxist concept developed by feminist writer Peggy McIntosh in her 1988 article, Male Privilege and White Privilege. It’s a silly oversimplification at best and racist as worst. White people who believe in White privilege affirm much of the same things White racists do, except they feel guilty about it. White privilege essentially suggests that Black people are inferior to White people. It suggests that if only Black people were granted special provisions by the government, then maybe they might be stand on equal footing with White people. It’s the soft bigotry of low expectations, and they congratulate themselves for it. And perhaps that is why many of them use racial slurs like “coon” and “Uncle Tom” against

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