The snowflaking of white privilege
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The snowflaking of white privilege
Some white people really don’t want to hear that if they’d been born Black their lives would have almost certainly been much harder. It shatters their ability to cling to the number one most important aspect/benefit of white privilege. It confronts them with the end of innocence.
This is particularly difficult for America’s elite media. The very idea of calling out, for example, Trump supporters for their racism is “beyond the pale.” And I mean that nearly literally.
A “palus,” the “pale” referenced in that old phrase, was a sharpened stake sticking out from a fence designed to keep people within a certain area: it was the 13th century version of barbed or razor wire. They were called “paling fences.” The British used them back then to keep Irish people from leaving their Gaza-like confinement areas in eastern parts of Ireland, the area that, for the British, was “beyond the pales.”
America’s news media is as wary of calling Republicans racists as the Irish were of getting themselves impaled (also where that word came from) on the British fences. Think about it: when was the last time you heard or read Trump, or his cult followers, being explicitly identified as “racist” by any of our major media outlets.
And yet they are racists.
Even when Trump calls Letitia James “ Peekaboo James ,” evoking the old “Jigab**” slur from the era of his childhood, they look away. Even when he uses his favorite descriptor for Black people: “thugs.” Or when he talks about brown-skinned immigrants “poisoning the blood” of America. They’ll acknowledge he’s quoting Hitler but appear terrified of calling him a racist or pointing out he’s using racism as a political weapon.
On my radio/TV program yesterday, a caller brought up the topic of Trump’s racism in the context of white privilege. I commented that I was probably in my 50s before I realized that the biggest, most important, most powerful, most impactful aspect of white privilege was that, as a white guy, I didn’t have to think about the color of my skin every day.
I don’t have to worry how the color of my skin will influence the interaction when I’m pulled over by a cop. I don’t have to wonder if the color of my skin was why I was given a crappy seat in a restaurant. If I’m walking around a department store and somebody seems to be interested in the same things I’m looking at, I don’t need to wonder if they’re following me because of the color of my skin.
A few months ago, Karen Hunter — one of the truly top-notch hosts on SiriusXM — was kind enough to invite me on her show. She asked me what white privilege meant to me and I gave her the description in the previous paragraph. Karen seemed thoughtfully amused, suggesting that perhaps I was bragging.
But what I meant was that I was absolutely shocked when this realization hit me: horrified that I hadn’t understood it earlier, that I hadn’t learned about it in school, that my parents had never discussed it with me.
Of course, I knew it at some deep level. I had all the knowledge necessary for that insight. I’d just never applied it to myself and my own life: I’d always told myself the story that I got where I was because I was smart and worked hard: I’d left home at 16 and never went back. Throughout my life, I’d omitted the color of my skin from my personal origin story (which, of course, is the highest expression of white privilege).
Similarly, I’m aghast at all the racist rightwingers on a jihad against any school or teacher who would help the kids growing up today come to what had been a belated realization for me.
They’re on their crusade against DEI, CRT, and Black history because when white kids are hit with that realization it’s usually accompanied by empathy for those people who are forced, every day, every time they leave the house or apply for a job or even get admitted to a hospital, to confront the many ways in which their skin color can make their experience so very different from that of white people.
And G-d forbid white people have empathy for their fellow human beings born with darker skin.
That could lead to America becoming a society where “the content of your character” is more important than the color of your skin. Republicans love to quote that phrase of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but what they’re really saying is that we shouldn’t discuss skin color and its impact at all.
After my riff on the air yesterday about my personal insight, a listener named Donna sent me the following email:
My point in quoting this email is not to call out or embarrass Donna, but to highlight her almost perfect articulation of how most white people think of their own white privilege. Which is to say, they don’t: “No privilege here.”
And, apparently, no privilege in our media, either.
Dan Froomkin over at Press Watchers has spent a good part of the past year identifying this same type of denial, both among Trump-humpers and in our mainstream media. In his Press Watch newsletter last week, he asked the question, “How much of Trump’s support is due to racism?”
He also explores the problem of the American press’ near-absolute unwillingness to call much of Trump’s and his followers’ behavior and rhetoric what it clearly is: good-old-fashioned all-American racism.
Froomkin points to a recent Washington Post article about how Trump and most GOP politicians regularly take openly racist positions, both rhetorically and on legislative issues. But throughout the article, the authors refused to describe these Republicans as racists. They wouldn’t even quote anybody calling them racists: that would be, by the standards of today’s journalism, beyond the pale:
This is, he notes, even worse than simply ignoring racism because its effect is to normalize it. And he encourages his journalistic peers to take the next step and do some real reporting:
As I was writing the first draft of this article yesterday afternoon, an email came into my in-box from Donald Trump.
It was absolutely dripping with the racism that Trump has proudly exhibited all the way back to the days when he was demanding the death penalty for five innocent young Black men accused of a Central Park rape, a demand he continues to make today, long after they were all exonerated and the man who actually committed the crime was arrested and successfully prosecuted:
Right. Go after the Black guy to raise money and get out the vote in the last weeks of your primary campaign. Nothing racist about that, right?
Trump then features three headlines citing his destruction of President Obama’s legacy:
Trump wrapped up yesterday’s pitch to his racist base with this:
While that email presumably went to millions of Americans, I think it’s safe to say that it won’t be called out by the media. There won’t be a story about it in today’s newspaper or this morning‘s television. Just like most media refused to call him a racist when he told four Black congresswomen to “go back … [to the] places from which they came.”
Politico quoted a few Democrats calling Trump’s “go back” comment racist, but didn’t identify the statement or Trump himself as racist. Ditto for NBC News , CBS News , and USA Today . The New York Times at least identified the phrase itself, but did so by way of correcting an error of Trump’s:
Last night on Fox News, one of their hosts did a segment asking if DEI was responsible for the door blowing off a Boeing plane. Because, you know, Black people are stupid and if you hire a bunch of them to build airplanes you’re gonna have substandard airplanes.
Nothing racist about Fox “News,” right?
If America is ever to become a pluralistic, multiracial democratic republic we must come to terms with this endemic racism and white privilege.
Our media must stop being terrified of the paling fence Republicans have erected around themselves and their racist rhetoric. So what if these “conservatives” (the modern-day euphemism for “racists”: William F. Buckley Jr., the godfather of modern conservatism, wrote about whites as the “advanced race”) are such snowflakes that they’ll yell, scream, and play victim?
It’s way past time to call racists what they are, teach the actual history of America, and — as a society and culture — make unacceptable the kinds of semi-coded racist rhetoric and racially-targeted Red state anti-voter legislation that’s so common today across the GOP.
And that begins with white people: we must understand our own sordid history, acknowledge our privilege, and strive to remake America into a nation that works for all its citizens.
As President Kennedy said of world peace but also more generally argued when it came to racial reconciliation, “We are not helpless before that task.”
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Has any reporter or interviewer ever asked Trump why he calls Letitia James "peekaboo" ? It would seem to be a relevant question.
The left's embrace of systematic racial discrimination sure leads it down bizarre paths. Now it taunts victims of racial discrimination as snowflakes and attacks them for being bothered by being discriminated against.
I don't know if their ideological forebear George Wallace even stooped to that.
" William F. Buckley Jr., the godfather of modern conservatism, wrote about whites as the “advanced race"
Have you ever come to terms with that?
What does that have to do with the left attacking victims of systematic racial discrimination?
Nothing really, but it's something to throw out there.
[Flag without commenting]
y for five innocent young Black men accused of a Central Park rape,
Had to laugh at this. They were guilty as hell.
[Deleted]
Why does Trump call Letitia James "Peekaboo" ?
Why has no one in the media asked him?
You dont think it is curious that Trump came up with THAT nickname? What does it even mean?
I use to play peekaboo with my daughter when she was little.
What is tiring is all the pointless comments the right makes on these topics.
Haven't given it a thought at all. Donald makes up weird names all the time and I don't hang on every word he says.
It could mean something or it could mean nothing or it could mean anything you want it to in order to promote the Trump is the antichrist theory.
I would say all the pointless articles are tiring but they are semi entertaining and there is nothing better on TV.
Maybe Dr. Jack Brown analyzed Trump’s body language when he said peekaboo and JR saw Brown’s article.
When I heard this was a "racist" term, I had to search for it. Dictionary.com doesn't have any reference to show this is or was a racist term. Deeper searching, about all I could find is that "they" say Trump actually used "jigaboo" which is a racist term and spellcheck changed it to peekaboo. Or that peekaboo rhymes with the 'J' word. I don't know, seems like a big reach to me.
Clothing .
decorated with openwork.
made of a sheer and revealing material, as some blouses for women.
appearing briefly and then vanishing, or promising to appear but failing to do so: the fluctuating response of the stock market to a peekaboo economic recovery.
PEEKABOO Definition & Usage Examples | Dictionary.com
I'll take number 2 for $1000 Snuffy............
No one will truly know what Trump means until he answers a question about it. Its rather astounding that no one in the media has asked him. Oh wait, almost all of his interviews take place on right wing media.
My guess would be it is a way to call James a racial insult without using the actual word, but something along the same phonetic lines. But maybe he has another explanation, lets hear it.
Formal interviews yes, but he doesn't know when to shut his mouth (some might say he is incapable of shutting his mouth) and media shout questions at him all the time that he does answer. Don't know why that hasn't yet been done for this.
In the scheme of things, this is not a big deal to me. Who follows him on his TruthSocial other than his rabid followers anyway?
No it’s the other one that the poker player called out. Dr Jack was an ophthalmologist that discovered he could make more money and not have to work by becoming a body language interpreter.
See the seed here, “Neck of Fear: Body Language Expert Breaks Down Meaning of Trump’s Facial Expressions”,
It’s a hoot.
This uncertainty makes me feel bad for playing peekaboo with my little girl.
Yes, Trump has changed the political landscape and phony progressive guilt trippers, like Thom Hartman, are scared out of their socks. White guilt has been very lucrative for a number of white authors, journalists, entertainers, and politicians. These phony white progressives seem to rely upon keeping racist epithets alive even when no one has actually said one. Now they're twisting autocorrection into an excuse for reviving a racist epithet that few remember and no one has used. It would be a safe bet that these bright white phony progressives are Democrats steeped in the history of racism and using that history for their own benefit.
White privilege does not explain the number of prominent Black public officials and public figures landing in the news cycle with a thud. It seems that white guilt does not explain the self-made controversies of these prominent public figures. And being Black can't be twisted into an excuse any longer. Yes, indeed, the political landscape has changed. And establishment Democrats appear to be stuck in the racist past created by their own party.
Trump is 77 years old and he and a lot of his supporters are old enough to remember racial epithets.
So, you are admitting that racial epithets no longer exist?
No I'm not.
Joe Biden is 81 and was a Democrat when Democrats still defended segregation. You do know that Delaware was a slave state until the 14th amendment abolished slavery? You know Joe Biden was 26 years old when George Wallace ran for President to challenge the Democrat Party on segregation?
As a politician, Joe Biden has used racial epithets far longer than most politicians. Listen to Joe Biden's eulogy for Robert Byrd.
Joe Biden even delivered a eulogy for Strom Thurmond. Here it is in Biden's own words; it's not some sort of right wing conspiracy.
Has Trump explained what he meant by peekaboo?
I can’t explain media decisions.