A video is making the rounds and it supposedly explains white privilege in the most basic of ways. A foot race for $100 is about to take place. People are given two steps forward based on things like education and two parent homes. This is possibly the most racist video that I have ever seen. The fact that black folks are sharing it and proud of it frightens me.

Here is the video. Watch it and be utterly appalled:

Are you okay? I know. Give you a minute. I should have warned people to wait thirty minutes after eating before watching the video. Oops, my bad.

The first thing that strikes me is that this is some college professor’s idea of being educational. Sledgehammer much? The second thing that strikes me is most college students wouldn’t get out of bed these days for $100.00. Third, the questions that aren’t outright racist are such Upper West Side of Manhattan or college campus assumption types.

That the speaker is a college professor and only identifies with the white kids is laugh out loud funny or pathetic. His use of “we” is appalling. And, where on God’s green earth except maybe an Ivy League school are there that many people in one place who had access to a private education and a private tutor? Except, on Ivy League Campuses there are also many Asian, Indian and Hispanic students. Do they have privilege? What kind of privilege? Is there Asian privilege and is it only invoked in two parent homes? Are only black people in danger of having their cell phones turned off? Talk about a racist idea. And, at least one of the white girls in the video is wearing a privilege t-shirt.

This kind of re-education camp type propaganda really winds me up. This is the perfect dictionary definition of propaganda:

1. information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.
2. the deliberate spreading of such information, rumors, etc.
3. the particular doctrines or principles propagated by an organization or movement.

Whenever anyone wants to have a conversation about race, why is it only back and white people involved? Is it because of the “original sin” of slavery under which this nation was founded. If so, a lot of nations that still enslave people are still sinning. And, since slavery was pretty much world wide until a couple hundred years ago, wouldn’t pretty much every nation, not just this beautiful one, have been conceived in original sin? We have been having this particular conversation about race since at least 1775. Please stop.

Please, please, I am begging you all. Understand that the life of most people sucked a lot until very recently. A privileged few didn’t have to empty their own chamber pot, but most people of every color did. And, in the United States the poor of every race, color and creed still exist.

I know that I have quoted Thomas Hobbes “Leviathan” before, but this was life for everyone but a very few until recently and in much of the rest of the world, this is how it still is:

“No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

Finally, I do recognize that I have privilege. The Constitution of the United States of America guarantees each and every one of us our God given rights will not be infringed upon. It is a privilege that is above the price of gold to be born in this country at this particular time. I am grateful every day. If you don’t believe in this, if you think only white people have privilege, then please leave. White, black, red or yellow, leave. You are free to go. You are free to move to a better country.