WHITE MALE PRIVILEGE? by Hugh Murray

     This week in Milwaukee the Milw. Public Schools is sponsoring a class on white male privilege.  If one completes it, he will receive college credit for the course.  The class will be held at the Unitarian Church on the East Side.  I went to one of the services at that same church over a decade ago, but believed that, because I am not a liberal, I would soon be in constant conflict if I joined.  I had been quite active in the Unitarian Church in New Orleans in the 1950s and 60s, even teaching in the Sunday School.
     Although the theme of the class is white male privilege, and although I wrote an article "White Male Privilege: A Social Construct for Political Oppression," and although I reside in Milwaukee, no one attempted to contact me.  My article was published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies in 1999, and has been on google's p 1 of p 2 of the subject ever since.  If you read my article, you will soon discover why I am not invited to this class, or to the many university conferences meant to prove that white men have a privilege based on their sex and race.
     Below is part of my article.  The full article may be read on line simply by googling "white male privilege." As education departments and the general academedia complex assumes that white male privilege exists, and  white men should be penalized as a consequence, I urge everyone to read the article in full.  Here it is in part:
      WHITE MALE PRIVILEGE? A SOCIAL

CONSTRUCT FOR POLITICAL OPPRESSION

Hugh Murray

     Each day in America, white males face government-sponsored discrimination. If in high school, the white male may be denied a chance to apply for special programs because he is not a preferred minority, or in some cases, a female. There are scholarships available, but many cannot be awarded to white males. In applying for university, admissions will admit “basically qualified” minorities, but reject better qualified whites. When applying for a job, the same type of discrimination occurs. If the teen finally succeeds in finding employment, special on-the-job training may be denied him in order to guarantee slots for minorities, even if they be lesser qualified, even if they have been on the job for a shorter time. At the firm, he may be subjected to the racial and sexual harassment rituals called “diversity training,” whereby he is supposed to confess guilt to crimes committed before his birth. Yet, at the same time, he must deny his own experience; he must utter not a word about the discrimination he has encountered because he is a white male. His is the discrimination that dare not speak its name; were he to mention it, he would immediately be labeled “racist,” disruptive, and a possible threat to the firm’s good graces with the federal government’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and its commissars in his employer’s personnel office. If he tires of such oppression, or if he is fired, or wins a lottery, or somehow scrapes together enough money to begin his own firm, he will be denied even the opportunity to bid on many government contracts simply because he is a white male—those contracts are set-aside for minority or female companies.

     And how is this discrimination justified by our courts, our media, our academia? First, it is ignored. When occasionally the issue surfaces, it is dismissed as an aberration. But on another level, liberals proclaim that in the name of “equal opportunity,” equal opportunity must be denied white males. Before her appointment as Chair of the Civil Rights Commission during President Clinton’s first term, Mary Francis Berry, a black woman, had announced that civil rights do not apply to whites.

     The way liberals interpret and enforce the law, equal opportunity and civil rights are granted to some but denied to others.  Moreover, discrimination against white men is to be encouraged because it is the discrimination to end discrimination; government takes race into account so in future we will not have to take race into account. Such is the sophistry of liberal Supreme Court Justices and Civil Rights bureaucrats! To our governmental, corporate, and academedic elite, the white man deserves to be discriminated against because he is privileged. How did this system come to prevail throughout America?

     It is clear that the answer cannot readily be found in the media, with its liberal bias on race. Just ponder how what I described above has been purposely avoided on the nightly TV news.

Sociological journals have so neglected white male victims of affirmative action that Frederick R. Lynch titled his book on the subject Invisible Victims: White Males and the Crisis of Affirmative Action.1   Historians have distorted the history of the civil rights movement so as to pretend that this racial discrimination IS civil rights.

     In monster movies of the 1950s, scientists combed the countryside with Geiger counters measuring radioactivity; today “civil rights” proponents investigate every institution in America with their “proportional” counters. If blacks, or women, or Asians, or “Native Americans,” or Hispanics do not have their proportional share of jobs, promotions, managers, scholarships, etc., there is an immediate outcry in the media of “racism”; the EEOC, Justice Department, and other agencies swoop in to punish culprits and set quotas under the euphemism “establishing goals and timetables.”

     To understand the incredible injustice of affirmative action, and the cover up of this injustice by the liberal elite, we must look more closely at this policy and the arguments presented to justify it.  How do liberals justify such discrimination? Their theory is based on a number of assumptions. First, all peoples are equally talented in all fields. Liberals modify the Jeffersonian “all men are created equal,” acknowledging differences in intelligence, athletic ability, character, between and among individuals.

     However, they assume that all large groups of people are equally talented in all fields. Women are just as intelligent, and given a chance to prove themselves, just as strong as men (though to maintain this some liberals will redefine strength to emphasize endurance or areas where women may outperform men.) Blacks have already proven themselves on the athletic fields, but given a fair chance, they can be seen as just as intelligent as whites (again, some liberals redefine intelligence to include emotional intelligence or artistic ability to emphasize areas wherein blacks may outperform whites). And so the assumption is made for all large groups—Hispanics, Asians, Amerindians, etc. If all groups are equally talented, then why are white men so dominant in business as CEOs, in government, and in academia? The reason is prejudice, past and present. Because blacks were enslaved, and then denied equal educational and other opportunities during the era of segregation, they could not rise to their proper place in government, medicine, business. Women, too, were oppressed, even being denied the right to vote for President until 1920, and denied equal rights in other areas until quite recently.

     And so with other groups. They lag behind in America today because of their history of oppression—racism, sexism, ethnocentrism. The beneficiaries of this oppression were and are white men. Today, the imperative of justice is to break the historic chain of injustice by ending the historic advantage inherited by white men.  Since all peoples are equal, it follows that in a just society, all peoples, equally talented in all fields, will each have their proportional share of lawyers, doctors, fire chiefs, criminals. But as this is clearly not the case in America today, the aim of justice is to strive for such in society. Thus, it is necessary, and fair, to give preferences to groups that have been excluded or underrepresented in various fields. So if a white teen has a higher score than a black teen from the same high school on an SAT for a scholarship, it is not really discrimination to deny the white that award and give it to the black. It only seems like discrimination; in reality, it is fair and just. 

     After all, why is the black teenager not performing as well as the white on the test? His father may be in jail; his mother on drugs; he may not have been encouraged enough toward academic pursuits. His cultural milieu is the heritage of slavery and segregation. The SAT test, far from measuring the intelligence or academic abilities of the two teens, merely measures the privileges inherited by the white. And so the SAT, the LSAT, the medical exams, nursing exams, teachers exams, and all other objective exams are objective only in highlighting the degree of prejudice experienced by blacks, women, and other minorities.

     Such “objective” exams are thus objectively racist and sexist.  Similarly, police and firefighters exams, even if minorities help construct the tests. Even drug exams are racist because it is natural that more oppressed minorities might be more prone to use illegal substances. Clearly then, seemingly color-blind objective exams are racist; sex-blind objective exams are sexist. The only test, the only exam that should be used is proportionality. Only when the same proportion of women and blacks and Hispanics do as well as whites on an exam is that examination truly free of immediate bias and the effects of past bias. The proportionality exam thus provides the test for discovering bias, the measure of discovering the degree of bias, and the method of overcoming such bias. The proportionality test is the test that tests all other tests. Thus, the white teen and his successor should be denied the scholarship until the black teen, and his successor, have a proportional number attending college, teaching in college, and as CEOs.

     This is the theory that underlies affirmative action (hereafter AA). For example, Barbara Bergmann, an economist, in her widely-publicized,  In Defense of Affirmative Action, presents her case. To her, AA is a matter of conscience, “planning and acting to end the absence of certain kinds of people . . . from certain jobs and schools.” The purposes of AA are to end discrimination, promote integration, and reduce poverty of minority groups. “The heart of an AA plan is its numerical hiring goals, based on an assessment of the availability of qualified minority people and women for each kind of job.” Bergmann acknowledges that AA programs “ do have quota-like aspects,” but she contends that this is the only method to get qualified women and minorities into jobs, for without AA they would be rejected.

     One of her points is that not only is AA necessary to redress the wrongs of slavery and segregation in the past, but that in today’s job market there is considerable racist and sexist discrimination proved by her charts showing continued racial and sexual segregation in employment. Furthermore, the wage gap continues to exist between white men and black men, white men and women.  Because “a majority of Americans desire to live in a country that is fair,”  the only method to overcome such discrimination is by continuing and intensifying affirmative action. Bergmann does consider alternatives to AA, such as a program based on economic need rather than race, but as most of the poor are whites, they might overwhelm such programs unless there were quotas and set-asides established for poor blacks. So Bergmann concludes, the present system is the best.

     Bergmann opens her book by commending President Clinton for his desire to choose a Cabinet “that looks like America,” shortly after his first election. But, which group was most overrepresented in the Cabinet by the end of Clinton’s first term? Is it the privileged white males, villains of Bergmann’s book and liberal ideology? Of the 14 members of his Cabinet in the summer and fall of 1996, eight were white men. As whites are about 76% of the national population, those eight white men and two white women compose approximately the “fair share” Bergmann would allot to whites. But white men are 57% of the Cabinet, far more than their 38% of the population. Again, just looking at the Cabinet, one can encounter white male privilege! Bergmann seems correct. But look closer. Four of those white males are Jewish. So white male gentiles, who compose about 37% of the population, form only 28% of the Cabinet—they are underrepresented. Yet, Jewish males, some 1% of the population, compose another 28% of the cabinet. And, because Jews are so vastly overrepresented, the underrepresented white male gentiles are branded by liberal Jews as the “privileged” group!

     Bergmann and the other liberals distort the picture of America through their misuse of statistics. Thus, gentile white males are called “overrepresented” and deemed worthy of being discriminated against, when they may indeed be underrepresented and, by the liberals’ own standards, “deserving of affirmative action.” But white male gentiles are denied any aid because liberals consciously ignore them in their statistics by including with them the overwhelming overrepresentation of Jews! Liberals seek to camouflage the overrepresentation of Jews by pointing the finger at alleged “white male privilege.” But what is true in Clinton’s Cabinet is true in medical schools and law schools and other elite areas. No wonder, Bergmann can declare, “we no longer have a ‘Jewish seat’ on the Supreme Court because it is no longer needed.”  Of course not! The reason: of the nine justices, two are now Jews. So representatives of 2% of the population compose 22% of the highest court of the land. Bergmann does not complain about this “unfair” proportion. (Since this article was published, Jews now have yet another seat on the Supreme Court, so that 2% of the population has 33% of the High Court.)  Similarly, when Mrs. Bergmann complains about so few women and minorities in the United States Senate as an illustration of discrimination, she neglects to mention Wisconsin, where both Senators are Jewish men. Thus, less than 1% of the state’s population provides 100% of its Senators. True, Bergmann might complain, but only because it is an all-male delegation. Then, consider California’s Senators—two female Jews. No complaint from Mrs. Bergmann. She is from the most privileged, the most over-represented group in America. Yet, she diverts attention by decrying the overrepresentation of white males, even declaring white male waiters in restaurants privileged, though they serve her!

     Mrs. Bergmann’s statistics are aimed at obfuscating and distorting. She seeks to portray all white men as privileged because some are overrepresented in profitable enterprises. And because of this “privilege,” preferences must be granted to all those who are not white men. But the group most overrepresented is NOT white men, it is Jews. Even economically, the gap between whites and blacks is NOT as great as that between Jews and gentiles.

     So, if Bergmann is accurate that the purpose of AA is to narrow the economic gap between blacks and whites, how much greater the necessity for AA on behalf of gentiles to narrow the ever wider economic gap between Jews and gentiles? If Bergmann were to reply that this is beyond the scope of the Civil Rights Act, she is wrong. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination based on religion as well as any based on race, sex, or ethnic origin. Bergmann, the EEOC, and the civil rights lobby all stress that the individual is less important than the statistical aggregate in exposing “discrimination”; that statistics are the method of revealing what is wrong in the work place, and, with, AA (quotas) goals, and timetables, providing the best means of overcoming the discrimination proved by the numbers. Then, by her own system of determining discrimination, it is clear that Jews are the most overrepresented group in the most lucrative positions in the nation. Furthermore, the average income of Jews is sufficiently higher than gentiles to exhibit a massive economic gap. Why does not Mrs. Bergmann include this among her statistics? After all, she is an economist.

     Bluntly, the proportional test, the liberals’ test of all tests, when applied to the religious clause of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, shows Jews to be the most privileged and oppressive people in America. The favorite test of liberals reveals white men to be less privileged than Jews. Why does not the New York Times, the EEOC, the television networks, report that statistic? The media is silent on Jewish privilege. But if the media began to expose “Jewish privilege” and demanded preferences for gentiles until they had received their “fair share” of important posts, there would be immediate denunciations of the media’s bigotry.

     However, the media and government are even more bigoted when they denounce white male privilege and demand preferences for women and minorities. Yet, few denounce this bigotry. 

     Either the liberals’ proportionality test is valid, in which case Jews are the most privileged and oppressive people in America, or the proportionality test is flawed, providing bizarre results, and should not be used to allege white male privilege. Nor should that test be used to undermine the SAT, the LSAT, the medical tests, the police exams.

     Concisely, here is the liberals’ dilemma—either white male privilege is a myth and AA, erected upon the myth, should be demolished; or, if white men are privileged, then Jews are even more so. And if, because of white male privilege, AA is essential to aid underrepresented minorities and women (the majority) until they have achieved their “fair share” (quota) of lucrative rewards in society, then because of Jewish privilege, all the more reason to institute AA to aid underrepresented gentiles (again, the majority) until they have achieved their “fair share” of lucrative rewards in society.

For the full article and the footnotes, you can read it on line by googling my name and “white male privilege.