American Outliers: The Myth of White Privilege
- Jul 18, 2017
- 4 min read
Recently, the online media outlet The Red Elephants attended a “White Privilege” seminar in Los Angeles. Red Elephant contributor David Feiner live-streamed the event, in which the topic of “white privilege” was discussed, and an open floor Q&A was held. Ironically, the people holding the event were white, upper middle class white people who espouse Judaism, mostly; not a group like Black Lives Matter, or the New Black Panthers, or any other minority group. No, the hosts of this event were white people, who seem to have become grossly out of touch with current reality.
We can talk about the “myth of white privilege” all we’d like, but people don’t listen to facts. Growing up in the foothills of Appalachia, I got to see first-hand where “privilege” got us—a majority white community. Living in New Orleans and seeing the Mississippi Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, I saw how much privilege got poor whites living in FEMA trailers. Have rich, white liberals become so distant from the rest of the country that they cannot see the truth about large portions of the American population? The answer is a resounding “yes”.
In 2014, Kevin D. Williamson published an article titled “The White Ghetto”, discussing the Appalachian Mountains, which is arguably one of the poorest parts of the country. In his article, he discusses the shorter life expectancies, a rampant drug and alcohol problem, and disappearing jobs. Beattyville, Kentucky, is one of the poorest towns in the country, with the average household income at $14,871 a year. Lee County, Kentucky, where Beattyville is located, also boasts the lowest life expectancy in the country. Harlan County, Kentucky, has seen an extensive economic downturn with the closure of coal mines in the county. In truth, Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” really only hindered the coal and rust belts, far more than it helped.
To visit Appalachia is to very nearly visit another country. In Lauderdale County, Alabama, where I grew up, the median household income was less than $30,000 a year. As the coal mines, the paper mills, and the steam plants closed up, towns soon became scars of the Appalachian landscape. Homes fell into disrepair, families left the areas, and soon businesses closed. Many of my peers turned to opiates or methamphetamine to quell the disparity. The suicide rate in Appalachia has greatly increased. Soon, people could no longer afford to repair their homes. Some families, particularly in West Virginia and Kentucky, have rolling electrical blackouts. To those in New York or Los Angeles, we would be living in squalor.
What would the proponents of “white privilege” say to those of us who have seen the poverty first hand? What would they say about the men, many of whom retired from the coal mines, who are plagued with black lung, lung cancer, arthritis, or other chronic conditions? What would they say about the children, who have one of the largest high school drop-out rates and one of the largest illiteracy rates in the country? What would they say about those who can’t afford health care, who don’t have access to medical specialists, and who live too far from the nearest hospitals? What would they say about the failing educational systems, the long hours for minimum wages, and the fact that many men working in the mines worked 12 hours a day in a 3 foot high tunnel?
There seems to be silence where all of that is concerned.
The liberals, the SJWs, and the college professors are so out of touch with the rest of the country that they don’t even realize that there are some of us who are starving to death; but of course, it doesn’t matter, because we’re white, and therefore, our suffering doesn’t matter.
Where is the “white privilege” for those who can’t even afford groceries? Where is the privilege for those who haven’t seen a doctor or dentist in years, because health insurance doesn’t even register on their radar? When I was fifteen, my grandfather suffered a heart attack, and wound up nearly suffocating because the hospital in the town wasn’t equipped to deal with a heart patient. The one-level hospital in the town called Red Bay, which my great grandfather helped to build and then later worked as an orderly in, didn’t even have an emergency room. My grandfather was taken by ambulance to the closest hospital with an ICU, which was an hour away. Even then, they were hardly equipped to deal with a critically ill patient. That is the reality of living in a rural area. That is our struggle.
The data doesn’t lie. The Southern states, except for clusters like New Orleans, Birmingham, and Memphis, are still predominantly white, and still predominantly impoverished. The situation hasn’t really improved, either. What the left has failed to realize, time and time again, is that these issues, and the promise for a better future, is what helped to elect Donald Trump in the first place. They mistake our poverty for privilege. They use our skin color to absolve our hardships. They use our heritage to pretend that we aren’t starving and destitute. They mock our language and our customs. They try to erase our history and lineage. They try to tell us that our lives aren’t worth as much as theirs, because we appear to be ignorant and poor. It’s true, we do live in poverty, but you’ll find that most Appalachian people are far from ignorant.
Perhaps the most troubling to me about the “White Privilege” seminar was the fact that the speakers had such a delusion of grandeur that they were no longer based in reality. They feigned politeness and social responsibility, but their words dripped of venom and seething hatred. Their demeanors scream of intolerance and loathing. Their rhetoric is caustic, causing division where there should be none.
Below are some further reading materials and statistics on Appalachia. Also, there is a link to The Red Elephants video of the live stream. As always, I hope you subscribe and tune in next time.
Thank you for reading!
-AM
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/367903/white-ghetto-kevin-d-williamson
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/12/beattyville-kentucky-and-americas-poorest-towns
http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/indicator/2014/01/war-poverty.aspx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cu5Eu14AESc&t=70s
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