Tag: White Privilege

Bilingual commentary — “White Privilege” and Latinos

Last week I wrote about the obvious impact of white privilege on the African American community.  There has been an uptick in dialogue in this country regarding white privilege. Lynching of blacks in different forms continues to this day.  Last year the college admissions scandal, in which affluent white parents gamed the system to their children’s advantage, came to light.  And then this year, incidents of murderous police aggression against the black community were caught on video and widely circulated on social media.  The good behavior of most police officers is completely eclipsed by these outrageous occurrences.

 Lost in the conversation is the discussion about the repercussions of white privilege in the Latino/Hispanic, Native American and Asian communities as well as a myriad of others.  In this article, I want to focus on the Latino—and specifically Mexican—community, since locally we are very much a majority-minority in some parts of Ventura County. 

Bilingual commentary — The Pervasiveness of “White Privilege”

At this time, once again, we find ourselves discussing the unfortunate reality of “white privilege” in our unspoken, pernicious societal rules.  “White privilege” is that social construct that makes it easier for whites to work within the grand system, to manipulate it in their favor if they choose to do so, to benefit from the blessings of a social order without even trying, simply by virtue of the color of their skin. Whites often are not even conscious of the privileges extended to them at the expense of non-whites. Whites can almost be forgiven for being unaware—indeed, clueless—of the generational suffering of those who do not participate in the grace that flows from the fountain of privilege.