Are We Making Progress? Part II
Written by admin on May 29, 2009 – 5:15 pm -Editorial – Lonnie Ross Mississippi-Tribune 05-29-09
What is progress without privilege?
I am a Black man living in Pike County Mississippi. And I have a good life for a Black man. Happily married, healthy and talented children, my mother and father still alive and able, a job that helps me to pay my bills, a home to go to and a vehicle to drive in. Is this the American dream being fulfilled?
It is true, I am living better than millions, no, billions of people around the world in terms of my possessions. But there is more to life than possessions. There is privilege.
White people in America are born with it. Blacks in American are not. It’s just that simple.
President Obama doesn’t have it. Mayor Patterson doesn’t have it. Neither does Mayors Robinson or Harris. The richest Black person in Pike County doesn’t have it either. Indeed, the richest, smartest, prettiest Black person in the United States doesn’t have it.
Privilege? In this country, if you are white, you are born with it. I don’t care how poor you are, how uneducated you are as a white person, you still have something that I do not have. Privilege.
It explains why whites continue to rule and control so much in this county, this state and in this country. White privilege. They ought to teach about that subject in our schools so that our children will be able to understand why things are the way that they are.
Why people prefer to place their money in white owned and controlled banks. Why people are so quick to support white owned businesses and slow to support Black owned businesses. Why nearly all the major football and basketball coaches at major schools and at the professional level are white. Why this year McComb High School hired its first lack football coach ever! And where is the Black head coach at South Pike? And, why there is a Parklane Academy.
White privilege is why whites in general have better jobs, better opportunities (real ones, that is, not the token stuff or the good interview for the job, but never get the job).
White privilege is such a strong force and reality, that we must have programs like Affirmative Action just to give Black people a fighting chance. It’s true, we would not have a Black mayor, Black president, Black CEO, or Black anything in white America, if it were not for forced government intervention.
White privilege says I can hire, work with, live with and associate with whoever I want to. And, let’s be honest, for a white person, the choice will normally be another white person.
White privilege can say no to Black people having a equal place. Especially here in Pike county.
Just look at what is happening with the Mayor of McComb, Zach Patterson. No Mayor in the history of McComb has been treated the way he has been treated. NEVER! And all of those previous Mayors were White. All of them.
Some of those mayors were mean to people. Some of them argued and battled publicly and privately with selectmen, administrators and members of the community. But, none of them have ever been treated like this mayor.
Don’t believe me? Well, just look at what happened this past Tuesday when an apparently racist white selectman and an apparently sellout/uncle tom Black selectman introduced an amendment to the City Charter to take away nearly all of the current powers currently exercised by the first Black mayor of McComb.
What was the biggest thing that this mayor did wrong that would lead to such action against him? Apparently, the trouble started when he stood up to white privilege. The same white privilege that these two selectman are fighting so hard to keep in place.
Are we making progress?
…to be continued…
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