White privilege is an ingenious concept. It allows non-white Americans to dismiss white Americans as the undeserving possessors of an inherited privilege, a privilege unaltered by the circumstances of an individual’s life and indeed unalterable. Thus do billionaires like Lebron James and Oprah Winfrey lecture those raised in the hollows of West Virginia on the need to set aside their “privilege. “
The Democratic Party is heavily invested in the concept. The party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Joe Biden, is a white male, but no one, including Joe Biden, thinks that white males are the future of the Democratic Party.
That future belongs instead to Kamala Harris, the daughter of a Stanford economics professor and a medical researcher. In other words, a daughter of privilege. But Harris’s privileged background is not a political liability, because Harris isn’t white. And no one, including Harris, thinks that she would be the presumptive vice presidential nominee of the Democratic Party if she were.
Such are the ways of white privilege in America 2020.
