Ranger Rick: Black ex-officer talks about privilege

After all the demonstrations, protests, and looting, it is refreshing to see a point of view that is realistic and pertinent in these times of tumult.  This is so well thought out and written I changed my mind about my original rant and will present his.  Please read it with an open mind and with the respect it deserves.

Mr. Brandon Tatum is a former Tucson Police Officer and served as the Director of Urban Outreach at Turning Point USA.  He is the founder and CEO of The Officer Tatum, LLC.

He writes:

“Woke” white people, I’d like to ask you for a favor:

Please stop asking for forgiveness for your “white privilege.”

You’re not fooling anybody.  You’re not helping black people — or any other minority.  And your public confessions don’t make you look virtuous.  They make you look disingenuous, which is a nice way of saying fake, phony and fraudulent.

For starters, what is “white privilege” anyway?  Because you were born with white skin, you have all these advantages that I don’t have?

Like you can get a mortgage loan that I can’t get?

Hmm, I got a loan — at a great rate, by the way — and I got the house.  Why would a banker not give a loan to someone who met the loan requirements?  He doesn’t want to make money?  I’ve never heard of such a banker.

Or how about this:  You can enter a store and not be looked upon with suspicion, but I, a black person, cannot.  Except…. that has never happened to me.

But if I was a young dude with my pants hanging down to my butt, I would understand why a store owner would be concerned.  I used to be a cop.  Believe me, I understand.  If I owned the store, I’d be tracking that kid too, whether he was black, white or anything else.

Or what if I had a store that had a history of being shoplifted by young black women, and a young black woman with a bad attitude walked in. Would I be suspicious?  Yeah, I would.  Who wouldn’t?

I call that common sense, not bigotry.

But there’s another way of looking at this:  In many ways, in today’s America, blacks have more privilege that whites.  It’s been my experience that whites bend over backward to give blacks every possible advantage.

If two people are equally qualified for a job, the black person will usually get it.  Big companies and prestigious universities fall all over one another trying to sing up talented black people.

If you deny this, you are denying reality.

Which is the person who dreamed up this whole thing did – a professor of women’s studies at Wellesley College by the name of Peggy McIntosh.  She wrote an article in 1988 about all the “white privilege” she thought she had.  She listed 46, including this one:  “I can choose… bandages in “flesh” color, and have them more or less match my skin.”  Wow, that’s some kind of privilege!

Soon others took up the cause.

Today, these so-called progressives dominate our colleges and universities, imposing this absurd notion of white privilege on their students.  That’s too bad.  Because it does nothing good for white students.  And it does nothing good for black students.  But of the two, ironically, the white students get the better deal.

Let me explain:

To acknowledge your white privilege is supposed to make you feel bad.  Only it doesn’t.  It makes you feel good because by acknowledging your white privilege, you’re declaring yourself to be enlightened.  And as a virture-bonus, it also makes you a better person than those whites who don’t acknowledge their privilege.

White privilege, which is supposed to make you feel bad, ends up making you feel good.  Meanwhile, the real damage is to blacks.  What makes whites feel good makes blacks angry.

Now I wouldn’t deny for a second that there are privileges in life.  They’re all over the place.  There’s two-parent  family privilege (that’s huge); there’s being lucky to be born in America privilege; there’s good gene privilege.  But white privilege?  Because he’s white?

Come on now.

And here’s the kicker:  Even if it were true, all those claims about white privilege, so what?  Would it change a single thing I did?  If white people apologize for being white, is that supposed to help me?  In what way?

So let’s be real:  White privilege is a attempt by the left to divide Americans by race.

It’s all theory and all nonsense.  If you want to fall for it, go ahead — it’s a free country.  But don’t try to sell it to me.

I’m an American who deals with my fellow Americans one-on-one.

Try it.  It works.

Thank you Mr. Tatum for these words of wisdom — well said and true.  All the crap you see in the media and spoken by “leaders,” police chiefs, mayors, governors and politicians is just that: crap and hot air.  Defunding police: what nonsense!  Who you going to call in the middle of the night when you’re being invaded by burglars or looters and you hear a recording “the police department is closed due to insufficient funds.”

I was in Grand Rapids last week and passed a small gun store that usually has plenty of parking space.  The parking lot was full and people were waiting outside in line for a chance to buy a weapon and/or ammunition.  The scenes on the media every night are giving law-abiding citizens cause for alarm to arm themselves.  Irrational behavior you say. tell that to the dead store owners only defending their life dream of owning a business and not wanting to see it ransacked and up in smoke.

We better get a grip on what is happening to this country because of the “blue state” governors, mayors, and police chiefs not responding to the out of control looting and burning of stores in many of our cities  — most run by out of control liberals.  Mayor Bill DeBlasio and the city of Minneapolis come to mind.

Last weekend  in Chicago:  85 shot, 24 fatally, the most violent weekend of 2020.  Where is Black Lives Matter?  It only cares about police killings.  Black on black crime isn’t on their agenda.

All Lives Matter.

The rotting of America from within continues…