Privilege

The word “privilege” has several meanings.  It can mean a perceived honor as when a speaker tells his audience it is a privilege to be appearing before them. It can mean  an advantageous circumstance as when one says his childhood in a happy and prosperous two-parent  family was a privileged one.  It can refer to a relationship, as between a lawyer and client, the communications in which are to be respected as private. In the context of politics, however, it has only one meaning.  There privilege means the practice of a government’s granting  favored people benefits,  exemptions, or prerogatives  not available to its other citizens.

In the United States at present there are two main sorts of political privilege – one formal and one informal. The informal one is the privilege of exemption from consequences of illegal behavior enjoyed by those with the right sort of political power and connections. The cases of Hillary Clinton,   James Comey,  and Jon Corzine are well known examples of this.

 The formal one is based on race. For almost fifty years black people (and more recently some Hispanics) have enjoyed explicit, mandated privilege in the form of affirmative action quotas, minority set asides, lower standards of admission to public universities,  and various other government programs or activities.   Contrary to what  has been  going around on campuses  about  white Americans enjoying a “white privilege”, there is and  for decades has been a government enforced black privilege in this country.   (This does not mean there are no people in the country who are prejudiced or even bigoted against black people. Clearly there are some, but that fact has nothing to do with privilege.)  The political claims of leftists on white privilege  not only miss the truth but are the opposite of it.  That is not unusual.