Miscellany of Macabre: Volume 16

I do not claim ownership of any of the following images; I collect them purely out of interest.

Miscellany of Macabre: Volume 15

I claim ownership of none of the following images, I collect them purely out of interest.

White privilege and the lunacy of the "social justice" movement

I was born a white, upper middle class male in South Africa, just before the fall of apartheid. This means that I've never had to worry about having a place to sleep, where my next meal would come from or whether my school fees would be paid. So in a very real way, my race and economic status have afforded me benefits denied to many others.

However, in the eyes of a growing number of people who claim affiliation to a movement which supposedly stands for equality, the unchosen circumstances of my birth render my opinions (and in the most radical circles, my very existence) less valuable than someone of another race. The phrase "white privilege" denotes all the advantages I've listed above; unfortunately, it has also become weaponised for the purpose of silencing anyone who would challenge the current societal leaning toward extreme political correctness. Don't believe me? Take a gander at this meme which happened to pop up in my Facebook newsfeed just a few hours ago.

 
You see, it's becoming increasingly popular - trendy even - to lump white people into a great amorphous hive-mind and then lay the blame for all the world's problems squarely at our feet. In the social justice hierarchy of oppression, my race and gender make me the greatest participant in and beneficiary of oppression.

The notion of privilege is frequently discussed in conspiratorial tones, expressed as an unseen and unfalsifiable network of bigoted white men who help each other out, to the willful and deliberate exclusion of all others. If this is indeed the case, I've never had the pleasure of experiencing it.

Perhaps the reason for this is that I'm the wrong kind of white man (or shitlord, if you prefer) because I am also a cerebral palsied quadriplegic. Adherents of social justice like to classify the disabled as marginalised victims of oppression and following this logic means that I am simultaneously an oppressor and one of the oppressed. Funny old world we live in, isn't it?