Sep 15 2008
Tim Wise: This is Your Nation on White Privilege
The nomination of Senator Barack Obama was sure to bring in a slew of racial politics to the forefront in this year’s Presidential elections. But the nomination of Governor Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket has added a surprise twist to the dynamics – one that involves both race and gender. A poll released by Washington Post and ABC News just after John McCain picked Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate suggested that the Republican strategy of drawing white women voters away from Democrat Barack Obama had worked. According to that poll McCain was ahead of Obama by 12 points among white women. Whereas last month, Obama had been leading McCain by 8 points among the same demographic. But a newer poll by CNN and Opinion Research Corporation shows that in fact Obama was losing white women before the conventions and that trend now continues. White women supporters of Senator Hillary Clinton were angry about their candidate losing to Obama before the conventions began. Many threatened to boycott the party entirely and vote for McCain instead.
GUEST: Tim Wise is an anti-racist writer and educator, author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, and his new book is called Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-racist Reflections From an Angry White Male
Read Tim Wise’s essay, “This is Your Nation on White Privilege” here: http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/this-your-nation-white-privilege.
For more information, visit www.timwise.org.
7 Responses to “Tim Wise: This is Your Nation on White Privilege”
A response to Tim Wise’s essay. Not so much about Obama, but about Tim Wise’s douche-y arguments and exploiting and stoking racism for his own personal gain.
This is Your Nation on Political Correctness


For those who still can’t grasp the concept of political correctness, or who are looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

Political correctness is when some white guy named Tim Wise (who has made his career based on writing and speaking about American racism) presumes to speak for black people and writes an article about “white privilege” at a historical time in our nation when, for the first time, a black man is a major party candidate for the office of President of the United States. Political correctness is when well-intentioned people send the article to all of their friends on the internet without questioning the facts and examining the claims made in the article.

Political correctness is when you can get away with verbally attacking a 17-year old white girl who is pregnant out of wedlock, and turn it into a divisive argument about race, instead of addressing how the system keeps the black community down by replacing fathers with welfare checks, giving economic advantages to households without fathers, and not providing good education and safe neighborhoods.

Political correctness is when you ridicule a republican woman’s education because she didn’t attend Ivy League schools, but ignore prominent democrats’ less than stellar performance in college (Al Gore, for example was a “C” student at Harvard, flunked out of divinity school, and dropped out of law school, yet was still the VP under Clinton).

Political correctness is when your successful, accomplished wife—who is the epitome of the American dream, who came from a middle class family and has two degrees (from Princeton and Harvard), whose family income is over a million dollars a year—says “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country” and you call her patriotic.
Political correctness is stoking racist sentiment about verbal attacks on community organizers, instead of doing something about the issues that make “community organizers” necessary such as substandard schools, poverty, high crime rates, etc.

Political correctness is being able to convince white people who don’t even know what you stand for beyond the vague concepts of “hope” and “change” to vote for you because suddenly your presence on the ticket has given them an opportunity to soothe their white guilt, or just to vote for a black man, any black man, because he’s black.

Political correctness is removing Muslim women wearing headscarves from sitting behind you in a rally, so that you can pander to those who erroneously think you’re a Muslim. Political correctness is when you say nothing when your running mate makes racist comments about Indians, saying “You cannot go to a 7-11 or Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian Accent”, or about blacks by describing you as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.†Political correctness is saying that you are for equality for all, yet hiring a running mate who voted in favor of the federal ban on same-sex marriage.

Political correctness is being able to have a mentor and pastor for 20 years who explained the loss of innocent men, women and children on 9/11 as “America’s chickens coming home to roost” and said that blacks should sing “God Damn America.” Political correctness is being able to get away with being friends with an admitted terrorist, to be involved in a shady real estate deal with a corrupt convicted criminal, and to be friends with a scholar/author who called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.” To quote Obama himself “If you remain friends with people up to no good, you are bound to become like them. If you think you’re above their influence, you are just fooling yourself. So, choose wisely.”
Political correctness is deriding Palin’s interjection of her religion into politics, but praising Pelosi when she states that Obama is “a leader that God has blessed us with at this time” or Obama when he tells an evangelical crowd that “we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth.”

Political correctness is when a black candidate is able to sail by throughout the nomination process with immunity from political attacks from fawning journalists who were either star-struck or too afraid of being called a racist, while the white candidates, particularly Hillary Clinton, was subjected to the most intense scrutiny by the media and given hard-hitting questions.
Political correctness is when a black millionaire senator and author who graduated from one of the most prestigious colleges in the world, who just held a $28,500 per plate dinner with friends Barbra Streisand and George Clooney during the worst financial crisis since the Depression, is presumed to be “just a regular guy” (he says “I’m a homeboy”) while Hillary Clinton, who similarly came from middle class roots, is considered to be an elitist Washington insider snob.

Political correctness is when a black candidate is given a pass by the media when he tells the nation on live tv that he is in St. Louis, when he is in fact in Kansas City. Or when he said his uncle helped liberate Auschwitz when no US troops were there at the time. Or when he stated that he had been to “57” states with “one more left to go.” Or when he stated that Hugo Chavez came into power in Venezuela as a result of Bush’s policies (Chavez came to power during Clinton’s term). Or when he stated that 10,000 people had died in the tornado in Kansas in May, when the death toll was 12. When a white candidate makes those same types of mistakes, they are shown over and over and turned into t-shirts and bumper stickers.

And finally, political correctness is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 40 percent of the time (including voting to fund the Iraq war, supporting Bush’s faith-based initiatives, voting with Bush to give the telecoms immunity from prosecution and continue wiretapping US citizens), when he’s been part of a do-nothing US Senate with the lowest approval rating ever for only four years (half of which he’s spent campaigning) when he can’t pin down exactly what that whole “change” thing means, which, ya know, is REALLY too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, political correctness, which seems to be here to say.

Political correctness is, in short, the problem.
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