Enough is Enough, I am Tired……Being human, that is the Real Privilege.

We have become so complacent and lax in the freedoms that we take for granted, so much so that we forget the luxury that is our access to social media and internet platforms. We have thus, underused these luxuries, diminishing the value of our access to merely sharing trivialities, images and impressions that, if we are truthful, are as fleeting as the memories captured in still pictures in the photo albums of old. We have minimized and taken for granted the fact that we are where we are today, because of the death, sweat, tears, cruelties, abuses and oppression of those that came before us, no matter our ethnic origin.

My Jewish family, you know the pains of oppression and all the isms; my Irish brethren, you know the pangs of ethnocentrism, ethnic persecution, having been left to starve in your motherland while the produce grown by your own hands went to feed others who watched as your forefathers starved to death in your homeland, or risk life and limb to escape; my Italian family, you know the cruelties of discrimination, prejudices, wrongful arrests, prosecution and misperceptions of criminality; my Russian and Eastern European family, you know the cruelties of starvation, hunger, Marshall rule, denial of rights to education, basic human rights in your own homeland, where the masses have suffered denial of even a decent livelihood; my Welsh and Scottish family, you know the evils of colonial rule and an assault on self-determination, the devaluing of you, that led to your own self denial; my Middle Eastern and Arab brethren, you know the assault and cruel vestiges of stolen legacies and manipulated ‘history; my African and Asian family-north and south, you know all too well the pangs of the pain that is the cruelty of the cradle being robbed, the harsh realities of alternative truths masquerading as ‘his’tory, to cover the robbery and the resulting underdevelopment that has been your legacy.

It would seem that as people, as human beings, we share common pains, common histories, common experiences. So, why is it that we have not found the thread that weaves through all of our common narratives, as people, human beings, so that we can nurture more understanding, more appreciation, more bonds of trust, love, peace and thus, use our local lives to fuel our global voices?

I have asked myself this repeatedly. The only answer I keep coming up with repeatedly is, ignorance. The stupor that you, we, have been lulled into, that somehow continues to nurture that unfounded, unscientific, unnatural, inhuman propagation of ‘whiteness,’ birthed in the cruelty of xenophobia, naziism, isms, and false narratives. The socially constructed lies, and non-sciences, of phrenology, race science and the rest, that was used to undergird the social “movement” of eugenics and its progeny, still very much alive today, but which needs to be properly extricated from all society.

It is the legacy of eugenics that promotes today’s social dysfunctions, the False Evidence Appearing Real, the misinformation and misimpression that somehow simply being ‘white,’ is a social currency, a social privilege, used to manipulate, divide, create disharmony and oppress the masses of people so that only a few, less than a 1% few, can Lord over the rest of us.

White privilege is a mere mechanism of hate and divisiveness. A tool founded in ignorance and malintent, to promote ignorance that is then used to lull poor and economically disadvantaged people into thinking that as long as they are better than others, than former slaves, than the ‘darkies,’ than the ‘chinks,’ than the . . . , they are winning at life. It is such thinking that causes the descendants of a past social order to continue in the misperception that skin color is somehow symbolic of a higher social, economic, genetic, class of people whom are inexplicably better and different from their Browner skinned brothers and sisters.

Don’t you see folks? Such preoccupations have not made us greater as a society. In fact, there is no great or greater that can come from such thinking. It has served no other purpose than to make us, America, the global laughing stock.

Despite the narrative propagated by the media about Blacks to the protection of White privilege, the statistics say that Blacks and Whites in America commit crimes equally, Whites just aren’t policed as heavily, and are not arrested or jailed or criminalized as much; there are more Whites on pauper roles globally, or so called welfare systems, in spite of the fact that Black and Brown people makeup the majority of the global population. In reality, these myths of superiority and inferiority, are just that, myths that feed the idea of white privilege, and we, you, me, do ourselves an injustice, if we fail to debunk them.

I have taught Criminology and Policing to budding police officers, and the above stats are what is taught in US jurisdictions that require college credits to embark upon a career as a police officer. Of course, not all jurisdictions have this requirement. Contrary to common perceptions, the statistics show that police officers shoot their weapons rarely in their careers. This is why the killing of Blacks by police is so overwhelmingly glaring, because of the small percentage of times that the police actually discharge their guns, an inordinate amount of those injured or left dead in America, are Black People.

I am exhausted from scrolling through timelines and newsfeeds, reading the ignorance and downright trite, sometimes cruelties on the one hand and aloofness on the other. You do not have to be ‘friends’ with me on social media. I am not one for large friendship circles anyway, but I beg of you to use the access that is the internet, google, social media, to inform and cure the areas of your ignorance, intellectual and social deficiencies, that will allow you to then make informed choices about what to think, what to believe and what causes to support.

We are in the 21st century after all. Surely, we owe it to ourselves not to be spewing 15th and 16th century debunked, baseless, ignorance, simply because it makes us feel socially superior to others and comfortably insulated from the pains and travail that others have to endure in the same America that we live in. Indeed, if remaining ignorant, feeling superior and comfortable in this “shit-hole” of a country that is wreaking of the stench of ignorance, brutality, inequality and injustice is our reality in this day and age, then we are suffering from symptoms of low self esteem, psychopathology and perhaps our own “post-traumatic slave disorder”. Hence, the need, the compulsion, to hold on to this socially constructed, debunked and debunked again, lie of an idea as our currency. For surely, even our kinfolk and kinsmen know that currency, this is NOT.

Be informed, Think for yourself, decide for yourself, and let’s meet at the crossroads of enlightenment, empowerment, growth, peace equity, equality, unity and justice.