Guilty Of Being White

I just read an article on MSN news, it was about the University of Kent having every student complete a mandatory module on ‘white privilege’, use of pronouns and microaggressions.

This really annoyed me and I commented, something I rarely do any more, anywhere! The following comment is what I wrote, a lot of words are *d out because MSN don’t allow certain words.

“As the Minor Threat song goes “Guilty of being w***e”.

This kind of thing will only provide oxygen to the far-r***t and push more poor and working class young people towards them. Then organisations like these and others will wonder how and why such extreme groups are on the rise.

I’ve lived on a Council estate all my life and had second-hand clothes until the age of 13. I’ve had second-hand beds, chairs and an old games console (Commodore 64). At Christmas my Mam had to go to a charity to get us presents. And guess what? It wasn’t ok to the kids and some of the adults where I lived.

My Dad was out of the work through most of the 1980s, because of the massive layoffs, so we had very little. I grew up hearing them talk about “bailiffs” and told not to open the door if anyone like that knocked. This was because my parents had to make the choice between eating or paying the rent etc. So I used to worry about having someone come into our house and take our stuff at a very young age.

I read an article that showed w***e poor/working class males are less likely to go on to further education than their BAME cohorts [Here’s the link to that story]. Where’s the outrage about that? Where’s the drive to encourage them to go on to further education? There aren’t any, and if there are, they’re very rare and I haven’t heard of them. No one cares, I assume because of “w***e p********e. Those poor/working class lads have got it made, living on sink estates with, drugs, crime and violence. I know that happens, because I live here.

Instead of help to lift everyone up, we’re being lectured on our perceived entitled skins and how good we have it. It’s not good, it’s alienating, divisive, life-shortening, education limiting, physical and mental health damaging and generally just as bad as other people living in the inner-city (where the largest group of disadvantaged w***e males and females live).

But hey, you’re w****e, check your privilege, you got it made!

Guess what? It wasn’t posted because “This comment was deleted as it didn’t meet our community guidelines“. I don’t know why, it could be a number of things, including the use of the words “male” and “female”.

I’ve been warning for a long time that not only the limiting of free speech on topics such as this, but the constant discussion of race, identity and how all white people should feel guilty about the past, a past they had no say in, is only going to swell the ranks of the far-right! Read about that here, here, and here.

Although some of what’s going on in the above links can be blamed on other things, such as a reaction to Islamic fundamentalism, this constant attack on white people is not helping.

How long must white people self-flagilate until we can be deemed a ‘worthy’ ethnic group and come out of the naughty corner? I’m well aware of what European powers did all over the world for 100s of years, I’m well aware it made European nations rich. But how am I to blame for it, and why should I feel guilty of something that someone else done who happened to have the same skin colour as me? If the argument is the UK benefited from colonial invasions and resources, and that I somehow benefited from it, um no! I didn’t, my family weren’t rich by any stretch of the imagination, and in fact lived in slums up until the 1960s. The vast majority of the UK during the times of Empire, were only just marginally better off than those in the Colonies. There were white slaves in the UK, too.

I’m not denying history, I’m not denying the human misery that was the slave trade, what I am denying is that I am responsible for it, I am not “the most violent and oppressive force of nature on Earth” as one Transgender Black woman said. My life has not been one of privilege, not any more than anyone else in my age group and from where I grew up. Nor have I used my supposed privilege to step on anyone else’s rights.

I’m not ‘racist’, in fact I think the whole concept is rubbish, as we’re all one race, the human race. And if physical attributes make different races, then the blue-eyed, blonde-haired white people are a different race from the green-eyed, brown-haired white people. The division of humans based on attributes is ludicrous! What’s going on now, with a constant emphasis on race, colour and gender, is not what Martin Luther King had in mind when he said “People should not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character”. But that is all we have now, everyone has the right to feel proud of their ethnicity and skin colour, unless you’re white, or of their gender, unless you’re a straight male (because you’re part of the “Patriarchy”.

This culture is not going to make us stronger as a nation or as a world, it’s just going to keep dividing us and begin making enemies where there doesn’t need to be any.

So if you want to keep alienating your natural allies and make them enemies, then so be it, that way we will all lose in the end.