White Privilege Test
I kid you not. I did not add nor edit the wording below. This is not a satire. Quoted material is italicized.
From https://www.idrlabs.com/white-privilege/test.php
White privilege is the alleged social privilege that benefits white people over non-white people in some of the world’s societies. A sometimes doubted or disputed concept, author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie used the research of Peggy McIntosh to craft the present White Privilege Test. The test is endorsed by Black Lives Matter, The European University Institute, and the UK Royal Historical Society.
Could you be said to have white privilege? For each of the following statements, indicate how well it describes you below.
Here are the questions. There are five allowed answers: strongly disagree, disagree, no comment, agree, strongly agree.
- I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
- I can turn on the television, open a newspaper and see people of my race widely represented.
- I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my skin color will not work against me.
- I can go into a shop and easily find the food, music, or clothes that represent my race or fit with my cultural traditions.
- I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of my financial reliability.
- If a police officer stops me, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.
- I can go shopping alone and be sure I won’t be followed or harassed.
- I can go to a museum or art gallery and will see people of my race widely represented in the objects and artworks.
- I can be sure that my children will be taught a curriculum that testifies to the existence of their race.
- I can be sure that when told about our national heritage or civilization, I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
- If I wish to, I can arrange to be in the company of people of my own race most of the time.
- I can go to a hairdresser and be sure they know how to cut my hair. [sic “he knows”]
- I can do well professionally without being called credit for my race. [sic read “a credit to”]
- I can be sure that no matter where I move to, my neighbors in that location will be pleasant or neutral to me.
- At school and university, I could be sure that most of my teachers were of the same color or race as me. [sic read “I”]
- I am never asked to speak for my entire racial group.
- I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
- I can be sure that the gatekeepers in my life, such as my boss, my local MP, or my landlord, are of the same color or race as me. [sic read “I”]
- I can swear, dress scruffily or not answer letters without people having to attribute these choices to the bad morals, poverty, or illiteracy of my race.
- I can choose makeup or bandages in colors that more or less match my skin.
- I can easily buy books, children’s toys, posters, greeting cards, or magazines featuring people of my race.
- As a child, I had access to books where the heroes and protagonists were of the same race or color as me. [sic read “I”]
- I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race.
- I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having co-workers suspect I got it because of race.
- I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
- I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color without feeling in my own culture any penalty for such oblivion.
Some comments before I take the test:
First, what is privilege?
The test does not say.
It is droll and dishonest, if not insane, to test for a quality or property that is nowhere defined, which questions as gassy and empty as Rorschach blots.
In the first sentence of the opening paragraph the link under “social privilege” does not lead to a definition of the term, but to a similar quiz labeled “the Intersectionality test.”
Intersectionality is also undefined, but described as a “theoretical framework” holding that “various systems of power combine to oppress the most marginalized in society” — and this theoretical framework, to its supporters, “represents a powerful and unified framework for understanding oppression and conflict.”
Note the complete if not perfect vacuum of meaning produced by this gas.
It does not say there truly is oppression and conflict, nor that the theory so saying is true, nor that the theory is a theory, rather than a framework. It says the framework is a framework, one which represents (not is) a powerful and unified framework.
For the record, this is pure orthodox Marxism, which does not hold theories are or are not true, but holds instead that “narratives” (here called frameworks) prompt activists to violent action in the ongoing violent evolution of society toward utopia. Frameworks hence are either useful or not useful, regardless of truth. Presumably, being “powerful” and “unified” is useful.
Second, not a single one of these questions, not one, was related to any privilege. Presumably that word was chose by the Marxists for its emotional influence, not its clarity.
In real life, privilege means a grant of permission excusing duties imposed on others, or a grant of superior right, real or symbolic.
In real life, affirmative action laws is a grant of privilege to minorities expressly denied to Whites.
Culturally, news will not report the race of minority criminals, and cops are reluctant to stop or arrest. Statistically, one’s chance of being shot by police, if one is White, is higher than if one is not, despite that Blacks commit 85% of violent crimes, while being 15% of the population. One is judged on a more lenient scale.
Affirmative action is a real and legal racial privilege. Whether cultural bias in one’s favor regarding police brutality and newspaper flattery is a “privilege” is a matter of how strict a definition one uses. It is an informal privilege.
My father was in the service when I was young. I was raised on post. Officers have privileges enlisted men do not. It influences every area of life during every hour: The Commissary and PX ha reserved parking was by on rank. The officer’s club was apart from the mess hall. The BOQ was segregated from enlisted. Housing was ranked: my father was a Lt Colonel but who was housed in Admiral’s quarters for a year, due to overcrowding. Who saluted whom was set by the stripes on one’s sleeve.
Parking, seating, mess, housing, dress, conduct, was based on rank. As the saying goes, rank hath its privileges.
Enlisted men did not set foot in “officer’s country” except when ordered fore, nor eat in the officer’s mess. That is privilege.
The claim that there is “White Privilege” in this nation is the claim that housing, shopping, food, and so on are granted to Whites and denied by law to Blacks, so that if a colored man enters a “Whites Only” restaurant, he is breaking protocol, and be reprimanded, given extra PT in full kit.
The absurdity of the claim is its camouflage. No one actually believes Jim Crow laws are still in force in any jurisdiction, any more than Blue Laws still forbid sabbath-breaking in New England.
The fact that in any nation, a minority group suffers disadvantage if it provokes the majority, could, perhaps, be regarded as an advantage. It is good fortune to be in the dominant group in your land. On the other hand, unless deliberate policy is restricting minority growth numbers (such as, say, over-representation of Planned Parenthood death mills in minority neighborhoods), this good fortune is not a privilege, unless we wish to say that blind nature or high heaven plays favorites, and showers happy luck on right and pious men alone. See the Book of Job for details.
Privilege, properly so called, is a grant or grace bestowed by a power, be it single monarch or democratic consensus, singling out a favored man or group. Legal privileges are enforced at law, as in old days when only nobles could bear arms; and customary privileges are upheld by custom, as in old days when it was expected for a gent to yield his seat on a bus to a lady. Being born Italian in an Italian neighborhood is neither.
For the record, if your ancestors were illiterate savage tribesmen, whose descendants have lived among heirs to a four thousand year old civilization for less than two hundred years, entering an art history museum expecting to find statues carved by Greeks that look like Eskimos or Irishmen or Indochinese is madness. The fact that Cleopatra was not a negress is not racism, nor will painting her statues black cure racism. Who your ancestors are or what they did is not a privilege, because no law nor custom decides who is born to whom.
Nothing in this list of questions is a privilege. Not one thing.
However, Marxists do not hold human beings responsible for human institutions. For Marx, these things are produced by mystical evolutionary forces working through human history, an eternal “dialectic” as oppressor and oppressed wrestle for supremacy.
When history made it clear, at the end of the Victorian Age, that the growth of free markets created widespread prosperity and liberty, Neomarxists, inspired by Gramsci, changed tactics to propose that sexual dimorphism and inequities between nations, cultures, and races defined the oppressor and oppressed classes, rather than economic category. Hence, folk singer Oliver Anthony is privileged, since he is a ginger, whereas Barak Obama is oppressed, since, as a well-connected billionaire living in a mansion, able to murder servants without any legal inquiry.
Since this was absurd on its face, Intersectional Feminism, inspired by lesbian witches, sodomites and pedophiles, held forth the proposal that several different forms of oppression, each along its own axis, operate simultaneously: one to prevent Negroes from standing for public office, one to prevent males from giving birth, one to prevent fat people from being sexy, one which makes it Islamophobic to criticize Jihadists murdering Jewish children, but makes it Antisemitic to oppose child sex trafficking, yet Transphobic genocide to oppose castrating young boys.
Again, since this is not merely absurd, but wildly, blatantly, insolently so, an additional layer of explanation is needed to explain these absurd contradictions. How one can persuade millionaire athletes, actresses, politicians that America oppresses them is merely by redefining the oppression to be as invisible as a glass ceiling, as inaudible as a dog whistle, and as impalpable as a microaggression.
The oppression is “systemic” meaning no one and nothing is aware of it or enforces it. Muggles unwittingly, by a thousand tiny unnoticed steps prevents Obama from political power or Oprah from fame, in the same way an invisible anti-Semitism prevents George Soros from gaining wealth.
However, the enlightened elite of the wizarding world can see the invisible, inaudible, hidden reality we sleepwalkers cannot — for they alone are Woke.
Of course, if you hear voices in your head telling you to hate, to maim, to burn, to kill, it is possible that this is because you are a prophet. They hear voices no one can hear. More likely, you are a psycho. As it happens, they also hear voices no one can hear.
Hence the test given here: the questions either ask about subjective self-deception, or ask about a contrast between reality and utopia, or ask about things nature, or society, or reality itself makes inevitable, as if these are privileges and penalties granted and withheld by an unjust conspiracy of oppressors secretly manipulating society. Not one question is honest.
Atop that, the utter lack of self-awareness, the foolishnessness of the bigotry behind the question, is awe inspiring.
Let us compare and contrast. Here is a young man, LFR Jojo who attempted honestly to take the test. I have to admit I find his demeanor charming and candid. His description of his YouTube channels reads only, “Honor the LORD with your wealth and with the best part of everything you produce.”
I wonder whether being Christian helped him stay (as you young whippersnappers say in your slang) “based” — which I believe is a term meaning not easily deceived by confidence tricksters.
Here, for the record, are my answers. .
- I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
Strongly no. Criticizing the government has subjected me to mockery, censorship, ostracization, public denunciation, blacklisting, loss of awards in my field of work, loss of revenue.
2. I can turn on the television, open a newspaper and see people of my race widely represented.
No or strongly no. Depends on who “people of my race” mean.
If my race is “Roman Catholic” no honest portrayal will represent me in television or newspaper portrayals. If it is “Pennsylvania Dutch” I can honestly think of not one single portrayal from TV or newspaper. If “German” these are generally the bad guys on old films. If “White” these are generally portrayed a dunces and villains.
The answer can only be “yes” if the question refers to the number but not the quality of portrayals, and, even then, Whites are underrepresented when compared to our numbers in American society, and grossly underrepresented when it comes to numbers of heroes and geniuses. There is no television commercial I can bring to mind which portrays a White family consisting of White husband and wife and children.
3. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my skin color will not work against me.
No. Being White, I will receive no special privilege moving me to the front of the line. Hence while my skin color might not work against me, as a matter of logic, I cannot be sure it will not. For the record, no one of any race can be sure of this: what if you meet the one lawyer or doctor left on Earth who hates your race?
4. I can go into a shop and easily find the food, music, or clothes that represent my race or fit with my cultural traditions.
No. I am a Roman Catholic. To find the food, music, or clothing that is traditional to my culture requires effort, sometimes extraordinary effort. My culture says women dress modestly and wear veils to church.
On the other hand, if one is claiming my cultural traditions should be counted as European Culture generally, then yes. I can get comfort food, bacon and grits, watermelon, and fried chicken as easily as any Southerner.
The question is misleading, perhaps absurd. Blacks in America simply do not have food, music, or cultural traditions of their own. For better or worse, tribal traditions of Africa were wiped out by the slave trade, and did not take root here. Northern Blacks, mulattos, and suchlike wear coat and tie or overalls like anyone else; Southern Blacks have the same clothing and food as Southerners. It is as American as the banjo.
Hip-hop and Rap are often called Black music, but these have been part of the mainstream music industry for decades, and hardly form a separate culture, any more than the Blues, or Big Band music.
If the question is whether or not, as a White Man, I am allowed to eat the same Big Mac and Taco Bell burrito as a Black Man, the answer would be yes, rather than no. We can both eat kosher deli sushi as anyone else, and these foods are as true-blue American as chop-suey and spaghetti.
5. I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of my financial reliability.
N/A. If the question is whether or not Negroes statistically form a greater credit risk than Orientals, that answer is yes, depending on the years and sample size. I assume Southern Hillbillies would share similar credit risks. Avoiding birth into a demographic famed for its imprudence is not a privilege. But since the law prevents refusing loans to Negroes, even those who are bad credit risks, one’s appearance of financial reliability is moot. See the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 for details.
6. If a police officer stops me, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.
No. Again, while I doubt I have ever been singled out by police due to my race, on the two occasions I have been stopped by police, as a matter of logic, I cannot be sure this was not a factor, since no one can be sure. Indeed, since police enforcement is deliberately lax toward Blacks (as Whites, by and large, pose less of a threat to police who stop us) if anything, it is likely that some officers prefer to stop Whites.
7. I can go shopping alone and be sure I won’t be followed or harassed.
No. Again, no one of any race can be sure of this. On the other hand, I never go out shopping, and would not notice nor care if I were followed.
8. I can go to a museum or art gallery and will see people of my race widely represented in the objects and artworks.
No. I have never seen a Pennsylvanian Dutch museum nor art gallery. Such things must exist, as tourist stops if nothing else, places to sell Apple Butter and show off Hex Signs, but I have never seen them.
Again, if the question is whether I will see Roman Catholic people depicted, that depends on the art museum and the period. Our art is better than Protestant art, by and large, so I suppose my people will be over represented: but then again, modern art is disturbingly, grindingly, horrifically unable to represent human beings of any race in recognizable way consonant with Euclidian proportions, so I am not sure the question is meaningful.
I have never seen, not even once, an Eastern Island statue hand-carved by an island tribe of White Men. Stonehenge is a complete failure compared that, if the neolithic Picts meant to portray ancestral totem masks. Nor have I seen a single Japanese rice-screen calligraphy painting done correctly in the Floating World style painted by any of my Seuvi or Visigoth ancestors.
If my ancestors had no produced any art worth putting in a display of Old Dutch Masters, this is not a privilege awarded to those who did. The fact that Rembrandt existed, and his people had children, is not an example of Dutch Privilege.
9. I can be sure that my children will be taught a curriculum that testifies to the existence of their race.
No. Until I homeschooled them, my children were in grave danger of being taught that race is a social construct, which testifies that their race does not actually exist, nor any other.
I have heard many a debate over the meaning of the word “race”, and what role is played by nature versus culture is defining or dividing races, but I have honestly never heard any rumor of a school curriculum teaching that Black Men do not exist, but White, Yellow, and Red Men do.
10. I can be sure that when told about our national heritage or civilization, I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
Strongly no. Never once in my hearing, not in any school nor any museum, was I told that White people made my civilization and nation what it was.
No one calls Western Civilization “White Civilization” and no one calls the Roman Empire “the White Empire” and no one calls the classical world, or the Bronze Age world, or Egypt, Babylon, Sumer “The White World.”
That would be odd indeed.
Where and when would I hear such a thing? During Black History Month?
Each individual listed in history books recounting what made my civilization what it was are of my color, but not of my race, unless one wishes to say I am Greek like Socrates, Jewish like Peter and Paul, Roman like Caesar, or Spanish like Cervantes. Even claiming kinship with King Arthur is doubtful, if he were Welsh, and my ancestors were Goths.
If anything, men of my race, the Huns, include such figures as Hegel, Marx, and Hitler, and have done more to degrade and destroy civilization than any other, provoking both World War One and World War Two, and, if Russia and Red China are counted as Marxist, the Cold War and all the ills after, including the Culture War, which is a Cold Civil War against Neomarxists.
On the other hand, the men of the land where I live, Virginia, Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Siouan, were defeated and replaced by colonists from Kent, Devon and Warwickshire, who established a great republic here, after leading other, less important, colonies to rebel against the British crown, once that crown dared overstep the legal limits of our founding charters. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are Virginians, albeit some men of lesser races, Marylanders and Carolingians, claim kinship.
Naturally, the men now living here are either descendants of the founders who established the nation, or were emigrants of later generations, or were enslaved and brought here unwillingly. So if I am told about my Virginia heritage, Red savages and Black slaves are certain to be mentioned, and, I would venture, given a larger role in the telling than the real history merits.
Pocahontas is mentioned far more frequently than Virginia Dare.
11. If I wish to, I can arrange to be in the company of people of my own race most of the time.
No. My daughter is Chinese, as our most of her friends, and my in-laws are Jewish, so I cannot arrange to be in the company of people of my own race unless I go somewhere alone.
Not sure why this would count as a privilege in any way. The question implies that segregation by race is a desirable state granted to the high and mighty, whereas integration is a sign of humiliation and oppression. By that logic, a White Man living in Chinatown is oppressed.
12. I can go to a hairdresser and be sure they know how to cut my hair. [sic “he knows”]
No. I am bald. No one knows how to cut my hair.
I trust the sheer absurdity of this line of questioning, and the unspoken assumptions behind it, need no comment from me. As if a Chinaman walked into Spanish Harlem, or a Spaniard into Chinatown, and one expected the other to know the peculiarities of his food and hairstyle. This is a matter of convenience, not of legal or cultural privilege.
Indeed, all these are questions about demographics, not privilege. In effect, they are questions about whether you are uncomfortable in neighborhoods where your race is a minority, because you imagine you are hated and feared by other races.
This is a condition of human nature (all men are sinners) or of logic (minorities are not in the majority).
13. I can do well professionally without being called credit for my race. [sic read “a credit to”]
No. No one would ever give credit to the White Race, or any of its members, regardless of accomplishments, nor say any professional accomplishment of mine was an historic breakthrough for my race. Only minorities have this privilege. Why it is here called a disprivilege is anybody’s guess.
The only time I ever heard the phrase “you are a credit to your race” was as a sly joke in a time travel show where the characters were visiting the 1950s, and it was meant to hold 1950s America up to scorn.
Leftists routinely, if not inevitably, give credit to the race of successful professional for any accomplishment. For example, Karine Jean-Pierre, in her first press conference, trumpeted her dark skin, her lack of native birth, and her sexual disorders, in order to make her accomplishment (of being appointed to this post based on quota rather than merit) due to her race. It was clearly done in hopes of dignifying the race, to tell negresses that they too one day could be unconvincing liars and lickspittles to racist old creepy white men who sniff girls and molest women.
Now, I assume KJP assumes everyone assumes Black women cannot be successful due to systemic racism, so her success is a blow against that racism. Whereas, in fact, considering that she is not competent to do her job, she is an embarrassment to her race.
Why being called a credit to your race is a sign of oppression, whereas being called an embarrassment is a sign of privilege, I cannot fathom.
In any case, no one has ever attributed my professional successes or lack thereof to my race, or though my accomplishments increased the honor and glory due to the Visigoths.
Indeed, I am hard pressed to think of any Visigoth accomplishments are all. We enter the history books as looters and destroyers. Unless moving to Pennsylvania civilized us.
14. I can be sure that no matter where I move to, my neighbors in that location will be pleasant or neutral to me.
Does anyone answer this question in the affirmative? No matter were you move, from Peking to Bombay, Easter Island to the Ross Ice Shelf, and no matter how you act, your neighbors will not be unpleasant?
Or limit the question to the Continental United States: If I move to the southside of Chicago, or to an Amish farming village outside Lancaster, or to Anaheim, or to Seattle, my neighbor could be Bad Leroy Brown, or Rachel Lapp, or Mickey Mouse or the anarchist arsonists of CHOP.
Who, praytell, has the sure certainty that none of these neighbors can ever be unpleasant to him?
This is not a serious question.
If we want to assume that all races are racist, and will make life unpleasant if you move out of the neighborhood where you are a majority and into one where you are outnumbered, then, by mere statistical logic, being a member of the race who is 15% of the demographic population is more likely to encounter unpleasantness than someone with more same-race skin colors.
But the question does not mention race. It merely asks what your expectation of having nice neighbors is.
I will try to answer it seriously, but I doubt I can do so. Step back.
YES!!! I assume, that since I am a world-famous science fiction star with no controversial opinions, comely to look upon, and more well-loved than the Michael Jackson and Mighty Mouse multiplied by Elvis, all my neighbors will bow and serve me, no matter where I park my dark airborne citadel. I have the Infinity Star and will compel Princess Peach to marry me, and my power will be the greatest in Oz!
Surely munchkins and mushroom people are pleasant neighbors, or at least neutral.
15. At school and university, I could be sure that most of my teachers were of the same color or race as me. [sic read “I”]
Again, this is a question about demographics, not privilege, and it depends on the university hiring practices, which are artificially skewed toward minorities.
I went to two universities and to one law school. Most of the teachers were of the same color, but only one was of my race. However, I had no way to be sure that this would be the case, unless the question is whether I went to school in a part of the country where Whites outnumbers minorities?
16. I am never asked to speak for my entire racial group.
No one is ever asked to speak for his entire racial group. There are crackpots who claim to speak for their whole race, but they have no warrant or mandate to do so. No Black Man ever voted for Al Sharpton to be his envoy.
So, no. No one has ever come to me and asked me what all Pennsylvania Dutch think on such and such an issue, or all Visigoths, or all White Guys, or all Christians.
Again, being asked to represent one’s race would seem to be a privilege and an honor, an astonishing honor. If this is in fact a dishonor, then so is an actor or actress being added to a film cast to represent his race.
17. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
No. If the organizations of whom I am a member do not fear me, and hold me at a distance, trembling, as I tower above them, needing no minions nor aid, able to domineer myriads just with the majestic power of my darkling gaze, I would consider that meeting a failure.
On the other hand, the only organizations I belong to are Dungeons and Dragons role playing clubs. They fear me because the Dungeon Master is likely to kill their hobbits with an orc raid should they smirk at me. Perhaps this does not count.
This is the stupid pleasant neighborhood question again. If your organization hates you so much, quit. When SFWA, my writing guild, made it clear Conservatives were not welcome among them, I quit in a fine fettle and with no delay, taking my dues money with me.
18. I can be sure that the gatekeepers in my life, such as my boss, my local MP, or my landlord, are of the same color or race as me. [sic read “I”]
No. My current boss is a Chinaman. I have worked for men of all races. Usually, my bosses are faceless corporations who race and color is unknown to me.
19. I can swear, dress scruffily or not answer letters without people having to attribute these choices to the bad morals, poverty, or illiteracy of my race.
No. No matter how well I dress nor politely I speak, I am called a Nazi White Supremacist, a creature of pure evil and limited intellect, and this is explicitly, emphatically, and unambiguously attributed to my race and nothing else. Only Whites can be racist. All White are racist. Every evil in the world, including those things that cannot possibly be otherwise, in this or any world, are explicitly attributed to the bad morals of one and only one race: my own.
However, even the White folk who are poor and illiterate are considered to be privileged, so in that regard yes, no one attributes my dress or speech to racial poverty or illiteracy, because no one remembers the poverty and illiteracy rates among Whites.
20. I can choose makeup or bandages in colors that more or less match my skin.
No. I do not wear makeup, and when I am wounded, I hold the edges of the gash shut with my teeth. I am too manly and brutal to ask for a bandage. Pouring whiskey into the wound is good enough for me, and then drinking the whiskey from a broken bottle to kill the pain as I cauterize the wound with a white-hot metal filling I rip from my jaw with my bare fingers.
21. I can easily buy books, children’s toys, posters, greeting cards, or magazines featuring people of my race.
No. The only books featuring people of my race are Star Trek novels and GULLIVER’S TRAVELS by Swift.
22. As a child, I had access to books where the heroes and protagonists were of the same race or color as me. [sic read “I”]
Let me think. The heroes and protagonists of the ILIAD were Achaean or Trojan. PARADISE LOST, archangels. Not sure what race Adam was: All of them? INFERNO, ghosts. MACHINE MAN, a robot. SUPERMAN, Kryptonian, DOCTOR STRANGE, Tibetans (Ancient One, Wang) outnumbered the Whites (even Strange himself started as an Oriental, in the first issue. Later he was retconned to be a Westerner). The heroine, Clea, is exodimensional, a native of the Dark Dimension.
SLAN: hero was a slan. WORLD OF NULL-A: hero was a posthuman. MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS: hero was a cyborg of Spanish decent. FOUNDATION: heroes were Romans in Space, and who knows what race they were.
Aslan was a lion. Ozma was a fairy. There were English school children and Kansas farmgirls appearing in some of the books.
The TEEN TITANS consisted of a circus acrobat turned ninja-detective crimefighter, a cyborg, a green kid, an orange skinned babe, and a goth babe from an alien demon dimension. So, White Guy was in the minority, but he was leader. I suppose the exodimensional demoness babe was pale of hue. Does that count?
THUNDERCATS. Ho! I think there was one person of my skin color on Third Earth somewhere, but she may have been an Amazon or a robot bear. The heroes were cats and the villain was a mummy, as well as a frog, a jackal, a monkey, and a vulture.
TRANSFORMERS. ‘Nuff said.
Ah! The characters from MAHABHARATA were of my race, as I am an Aryan. The only problem is that the Aryan race, Indo-Germanic Teutons, is a make believe race, and I have been taught by a school curriculum that that race does not exist.
The characters from 1001 ARABIAN NIGHT’S TALES look like me, I suppose. Does that count?
I suppose I “had access” to books where the heroes and protagonists were the same race and color as am I. Who does not? How is this a sign of privilege, rather than a sign of the demographics of marketing?
And in any case, to find a book now which does not contain the politically correct mix of token diversity-hires is nigh impossible. If this had been a privilege at one time — which I doubt — it is not now.
23. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race.
No.
24. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having co-workers suspect I got it because of race.
If you take a job with an affirmative action employer, and you are of the affirmative action target group, you did get the job because of your race, because that was is what affirmative action is. Perhaps in a nearby parallel universe without affirmative action, you might have won the selfsame position through merit, but we will never know, will we?
It is hardly unfair for coworkers to be aware that men hired by quota rather than by merit lack merit.
This question makes no sense on any level. Is the lack of hiring privileges for the White Race a privilege somehow?
If so, it is the privilege of being treated unfairly, so your coworkers know you actually earned your position despite that treatment.
25. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
Again, a nonsense question. When has any race been put on trial? If this is a metaphor for suffering race prejudice, no race is immune from suffering race prejudice.
As a side question, how does one determine the power of powerful male groups? How often in public does one speak to such groups? I can bring to mind no powerful male group aside from the council of American Bishops, who are exclusively male, but I am not aware of when they hold public meetings and put races on trial. If so, I am awaiting the outcome of the hearing on Pacific Islanders.
26. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color without feeling in my own culture any penalty for such oblivion.
Finally, a yes answer. Being oblivious to the language of the Chinese has never provoked any penalty for me for being oblivious. This is because I am not Chinese, and no one expects me to know the language.
But if the question regards any or all colored persons, it include those with whom one shares a culture, and with whom one does not. No one expects a stranger to a given culture to be familiar with it — indeed, if one uses ideas, fashions, or cooking recipes from another nation or continent, this is condemned as cultural appropriation. So it is not clear what is the idea behind the question.
If the idea is that Negroes in America have their own language or culture rather than a slang or patois is absurd.
But, on the other hand, being not merely oblivious to, but actively oblivious and and actively hostile to my culture, my traditions, my language, and my religion, provokes no penalty, but endless praise and lauds.
So out of the 26 or so indicators of race privilege, neither I nor any White in modern American can honestly answer more than one or two in the affirmative.
*** *** ***
My score is 28.85.
Your white privilege is insignificant according to the criteria set forth…
Please note Mr. Jojo’s test says he enjoys the shameful White Privilege, whereas mine says I do not.
As best I can tell, this “test” is measuring one’s level of self-righteousness, self-absorption, and shallowness.
It is not a test of privilege, and most of the questions have nothing to do with privilege, or power or oppression.
Who ever, in the history of the Earth, put on a band-aid that did not match his skin color, and found himself oppressed by this. Ripping off the band-aid would therefore restore equality and dignity, n’est-ce-pas?
Indeed, one of the highest privileges modern society can award, that is, to listen patiently and praise the psychotic whining of self-absorbed narcissists spinning paranoid martyrdom fantasies in a world where they have unparalleled unearned privilege, is one with which the Left and their minority mascots are abundantly and lavishly drenched.
Unless you are very privileged indeed, no one is going to listen patiently to your childish whimpering about band-aid colors.
This test proves that those who compile and take such things do not suffer from any racial disprivilege. Real people who are really oppressed do not have the free time to indulge in such nonsense.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
