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Why and How Big Money Promotes "White Privilege" Rhetoric

by John Spritzler

April 17, 2013

"White privilege" is a relatively new phrase that liberals, progressives and Leftists use instead of the "old fashioned" phrases such as "racial discrimination against non-whites" or "racial inequality." It didn't used to be this way. The phrase was not current during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s against the racist Jim Crow laws. But now the phrase "white privilege" (it gets 960,000 results with Google) is quite prevalent in liberal/Left circles. How come?

The answer is that Big Money wants people to stop referring to "racial discrimination" and refer instead to "white privilege" and so Big Money promotes the use of "white privilege." To demonstrate this I need to do two things: 1) explain why Big Money would have an interest in doing this and 2) show that Big Money is actually promoting the "white privilege" phrase. I'll start with the second, if only because the evidence for it is more obvious.

The Evidence that Big Money Promotes the "White Privilege" Phrase

The Ford Foundation promotes the use of "white privilege" by funding ("partnering with" to use the NGO jargon) an organization called "The White Privilege Conference." If one looks at the organizations that The White Privilege Conference partners with by going to its web page here, one sees the Ford Foundation listed as a partner. The Ford Foundation has the best public relations money can buy--literally. But underneath the pretty talk about helping to make a better world for everybody, there is the fact that the Ford Foundation is run by a small number of Trustees, named on their web page here.

The short biographical sketches of the trustees don't seem to show any obvious connection to Big Money. But looks can be deceiving. Let's take a close look at Chair of the Board of Trustees--Irene Hirano Inouye. Her bio-sketch says that she is the President of the U.S.-Japan Council. Let's see what the U.S.-Japan Council is all about. Its web page here says, in the top "Overview" section,

"The U.S.-Japan Council is a 501(c) 3 non-profit educational organization that contributes to strengthening U.S.-Japan relations by bringing together diverse leadership, engaging stakeholders and exploring issues that benefit communities, businesses and government entities on both sides of the Pacific."

More "pretty talk." So let's look a bit closer. In the third paragraph of the Overview section we read,

"The Council was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Washington, DC with a regional office in Los Angeles, CA. In 2012, the U.S.-Japan Council (Japan) was created to support the administration of the TOMODACHI Initiative."

What exactly is the TOMODACHI Initiative that the US-Japan Council was created to support? Going to its web page here, it seems that TOMODACHI is about making young people happy--lots of photos of young smiling faces doing fun activities. What's to object to? But let's keep looking more closely. On the same page under "What's new?" we see (at the time of writing this article) "Secretary Kerry dialog with TOMODACHI youth" and "Clinton Global Initiative University Fellows to the U.S." Does the involvement of these top U.S. politicians--who wage unjust wars involving mass murder of innocent people--mean that the TOMODACHI Initiative might be about something other than fun and games for youth? Of course it does! The TOMODACHI Advisory Board consists of Big Money players par excellence.

On the Advisory Board are Richard Armitage, President, Armitage International, L.L.C.; Takashi Kawamura, Chairman, Hitachi, L.L.D.; Yorihiko Kojima, Chairman and CEO, Mitsubishi Corporation. Also on the board are the Chairman or CEO of other corporations with less well-known (to me) names such as Salesforce.com, Takeda Pharmaceutical, Mitsui & Co. L.T.D., Rakuten, Inc.. These are the people who, as the TOMODACHI web page explains, "provide advice, assistance, and support to help the TOMODACHI Initiative achieve its mission."

The missions that this kind of people support are missions that make the world safer and more secure for their capitalist Big Money class. Big Money needs, more than anything else, to make sure that the billions of people in the world who want a more equal and democratic world don't develop the solidarity with each other that would enable them to mount a serious threat to the power of Big Money and its enjoyment, at the expense of everybody else, of billion dollar fortunes and privileges and power beyond the dreams of ordinary people.

This kind of people select, as president of organizations they control, individuals whom they trust. They selected Irene Hirano Inouye as president of the organization set up to support the administration of the TOMODACHI Initiative--the U.S.-Japan Council. And the Ford Foundation in turn selected Ms. Inouye to be the Chair of its Board of Trustees. According to the Ford Foundation's web page here, Ms. Inouye "also serves as chair of the board's Executive and Nominating committees and as a member of the Management and Governance; Proxy; Investment; and Education, Creativity and Free Expression committees." In turn, under the leadership and direction of people such as Ms. Inouye, the Ford Foundation decides to "partner" with The White Privilege Conference.

In case there is any doubt as to what kind of person sits on the Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation, the Ford Foundations web page here describes one of its Trustees, Robert S. Kaplan this way:

"Robert Kaplan, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School and a senior director of The Goldman Sachs Group, serves on the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees. He is a member of the board's Economic Opportunity and Assets; Investment; and Finance committees.

"Kaplan served as interim CEO of the Harvard Management Company, the group responsible for managing Harvard's endowment, from November 2007 until June of this year. Prior to joining Harvard Business School in 2005, he served as vice chairman of The Goldman Sachs Group, with oversight responsibility for the Investment Banking and Investment Management divisions. He also served in various other capacities for the firm, including head of the Corporate Finance department."

The Goldman Sachs Group (known popularly as Goldman Sachs) reported (pdf, pg. 107) making in excess of seven billion dollars profit in 2012, and it did not do this by pursuing the official mission of the Ford Foundation to "strengthen democratic values" and "reduce poverty and injustice." Goldman Sachs is perhaps the most notoriously selfish and destructively anti-social organization on the planet, as discussed here and here for starters.

 

This is just one example of how Big Money promotes "white privilege" as a substitute for "racial discrimination against non-whites" and similar "old fashioned" phrases. The Rockefeller Foundation and others like it do the same thing. One of many illustrations of this is the case of Peggy McIntosh, Ph.D., the Associate Director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women whose "informational packet" is online here and in which we read:

'She is best known for authoring the groundbreaking article "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies" (1988). This analysis and its shorter form, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" (1989), have been instrumental in putting the dimension of privilege into discussions of gender, race and sexuality. The essay set forth the concept of white privilege [italic in the original], a theoretical construct that has since significantly influenced anti-racist theory and practice as well as other activist movements.'

When one scrolls further down in this informational packet one sees that in 1993 Dr. McIntosh had a Rockefeller Foundation Writing Fellowship, and that her "Major Grants and Contracts" include financial backing from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Hewlett-Packard Company, the James D. Wolfensohn [former President of the World Bank appointed by mass murderer Bill Clinton] Charitable Trust and others.

Clearly Big Money loves "white privilege" rhetoric. The question now is, how come?

Why Does Big Money Promote the "White Privilege" Phrase?

To see why Big Money wants to get people to stop using the phrase "racial discrimination" and start using "white privilege" instead, one needs to do something a bit unpleasant, namely try to look at things from the point of view of the privileged ruling elite. Here's what it looks like:

"I fear being removed from power by a mass movement of ordinary people who are angry at me because I make them suffer in order so that I can enjoy great wealth and privilege. I need these angry people to stop being angry at me and be angry at each other instead. Even better, I want as many of them as possible to like how I run society.

"I know that racist discrimination is a great divide and rule strategy; it makes those discriminated against angry at those not discriminated against, thus destroying solidarity, which is the only thing these people have that can challenge my power over them. But there are risks in using racial discrimination. The people might realize that an injury to one is an injury to all (as discussed here) and unite in solidarity and anger against me. Not good! What to do?

"How about this? Tell the ones not discriminated against (the whites) that that old "injury to one is an injury to all" line is false. Tell them that, actually, an injury to blacks and Hispanics is a benefit--a 'privilege'--for the whites. Perfect! Some whites will say, 'Hey, if discrimination against blacks benefits me, then why should I object to it?' Other whites will say, 'Oh, I feel so guilty benefitting from my white skin privilege.'

"Either way, it's wonderful! The whites who feel guilty will never be a threat to me because guilt never causes people to build a strong movement. Moreover, the whites who feel guilty, because they foolishly think they benefit from racial discrimination, will use their influence with the other whites to persuade them that they too actually benefit from racial discrimination and have no reason to oppose it. And the more people (white and non-white both) who think that whites benefit from racist discrimination, the more that non-whites will direct their anger at white working class people, and not against me.

"Problem solved: I'll replace 'racial discrimination' with 'white privilege.' I never liked that old 'racial discrimination' phrase to begin with; it pointed the finger at the person doing the discriminating--me! 'White privilege' is much better--it points the finger at white people instead, people who have nothing to do with implementing the racial discrimination.

"I think I'll have my friends at the Ford Foundation help set up a new organization. What should I call it? I know, 'The White Privilege Conference'--that's the ticket."

 

What about Tim ("white privilege") Wise?

The article by Tim Wise about the Boston Marathon bombing, "Terrorism and Privilege: Understanding the Power of Whiteness," is a recent example of the use of "white privilege" rhetoric.

Tim Wise is profoundly wrong. Wise writes, "White privilege is knowing that even if the bomber turns out to be white, no one will call for whites to be profiled as terrorists as a result, subjected to special screening, or threatened with deportation." The lie is in the first five words of this sentence, not in the remaining words.

Whites and others may indeed know that when a heinous crime is committed by a white person the rulers of the U.S. and their mass media will not vilify all whites as they would, say, a Muslim. But calling this a "white privilege" is false. The correct term for this is "racist (or ethnic or religious) discrimination," not "white privilege." 

It is not a "privilege" to not be the specific object of racist discrimination. The purpose of racist discrimination--the reason the ruling elite carry it out--is to divide-and-conquer ordinary people of all races, to undermine their cross-racial solidarity, so that they may all (white as well as non-white) be more easily controlled and dominated by the ruling elite. Ordinary white people are HARMED, not benefited, by racist discrimination in this way.

To describe racist discrimination as a "white privilege" amounts to telling whites that they benefit from racist discrimination against non-whites; this is exactly the lie that the ruling class wants white people to believe. This lie aims to refute the profound truth that the labor movement learned many years ago: An injury to one is an injury to all. The more this "white privilege" lie is believed (by whites and non-whites) the more the divide-and-conquer strategy succeeds in creating mutual resentment between whites and non-whites. This is why the ruling class, with its Rockefeller and Ford Foundations (and others) funds the promotion of "white privilege" rhetoric.

The word "privilege," in our English language, can either be used in the sense of a deserved privilege (such as the privilege of a qualified pilot to fly a jet plane or a licensed automobile driver to drive an automobile) or an undeserved (unfair) privilege (for example,  people of "royal blood" enjoying special privileges such as enormous wealth and exemption from some laws that apply only to ordinary people.) We all understand that an undeserved privilege is something that should be abolished. So-called "royal" people should not have the privileges of royalty; they should be like everybody else. How does this connect to "white privilege"?

Tim Wise is certainly not saying that "white privilege" is a deserved privilege, is he? So what then is he saying--that "white privilege" should be abolished, that whites should be treated the same as non-whites, that when a white person commits a heinous crime then all whites should be vilified? Tim Wise cannot come right out and say this because it would be too obviously stupid. It would expose the absurdity of his use of the word "privilege" and his substitution of "white privilege" for the correct term, "racial discrimination."

But Tim Wise does in fact want ordinary whites to feel guilty for, and be perceived by non-whites as being guilty of, the racial discrimination that the ruling elite implement. Thus he writes (using "our" to refer to whites) that "white privilege" is "the source of our unearned innocence and the cause of others' unjustified oppression."

The ruling class lie--that whites and non-whites have opposing interests, that whites benefit from (are "privileged" by) the oppression of non-whites, that whites' claim of innocence is "unearned" (i.e. that whites are guilty of the oppression of non-whites)--this lie serves the ruling class equally well whether the people spreading it do so in the name of racism or anti-racism. In fact, the lie is made far more credible (and hence more useful to the ruling class) when it is spread by an "anti-racist" like Tim Wise than by a KKK racist. No matter who says it, it is a racist lie, intended to pit people against each other along race lines. People who promote this lie are thus promoting racism. This includes Tim Wise.