White Privilege and Censorship

I just watched the co-founder of Reddit justify their apparent move to start filtering content by saying that because we (white folk) didn't have the same struggles, we deserve to experience a little pain right now. He used the analogy of breaking down muscles so that they come back stronger. 

I've shared this before, but it is once again appropriate. 

I was born in a small, Indiana town to a family that did not know God. That changed before I was a year old. The earliest memories of my dad are of him not having a job, and not having luck finding another one. I remember him working in a fruit stand, selling local produce for someone we knew. The only time I have ever ridden on a tractor was when he was helping that same man in the fields. I rode on his lap. We lived in government housing, projects. 

Eventually my Pawpaw found Daddy a job in Alabama, and we loaded up our belongings and headed south. No home, just relatives to depend on. I remember arriving in Tuscumbia at Pawpaw's house, where we lived for a while.

Over the years we lived in houses with no toilet or tub, used an outhouse, bathed in the yard in a steel tub, stood in line for cheese and peanut butter, used food stamps, spent weeks without electricity because we couldn't pay the bill, carried drinking water in old milk jugs from Mawmaw's house or running off a bluff, wore secondhand clothes, wore whatever shoes the Dollar Store sold, often relied on charity for food, spent weeks eating potatoes and bread, learned to play for hours with sticks and anything else I could find, often found our best Christmas gifts waiting on the porch after a trip to the grocery store on a Saturday evening, watching and later helping my dad keep old rust buckets running so we had transportation, and again spent various periods of time in government housing.

I was ridiculed at every school I attended, after about third grade, for the second-hand clothes, no-name shoes, and the hairstyle I wore. I spent relentless hours with school jerks making fun of my parents' old cars. A story my brother loves to tell is about how thrilled we were when a former, black coworker of my dad's showed up with a giant can of potatoes he got from his new job at a canned produce warehouse. We were just about to eat government commodity peanut butter sandwiches on bread from the day-old bread store. Instead, we had buttered potatoes.

My wife had a similar upbringing on the poor side of Kansas City, MO, with added times of foster care and violent schools. 

The reason why I am so terrible with money is because I grew up dirt poor and never had an opportunity to learn how to spend better. We are getting better, but it is a real struggle.

I say none of this to gain anyone's sympathy. I am blessed beyond measure. But when I hear these namby-pamby white punks talk about privilege, it makes want to drag them out to Spring Valley and leave them in a two room shack, sleeping on blankets piled up in the living room while rats and roaches run across the floor, and having to walk 100 yards to an outhouse just to use the bathroom.

I know there are plenty of white people who do not share my story, but I also know the majority of people I saw while mama and us kids waited for commodity cheese and food stamps were white people. That fact still holds true today. I also went to school with plenty of black kids whose parents worked at TVA or Champion paper mill, earning every week what my dad made in a month.

Poverty is an existence shared by all races. I'm sick of seeing "POC" claim they had it worse than me. I'm even sicker of seeing guilt-ridden white people try and make the case that their own upbringing is representative of mine.

I owe you nothing, regardless of your race, ethnicity, or level of "social justice" expertise.

By the Grace of God, I have earned every single "privilege" I now enjoy. I have no privilege that is not also available to every other human in America. I love every person on earth, not just because God commands it, but because I happen to have felt enough hate to not want to be the one dishing it out. You have to really earn the rarity of me disliking you. Even then, I will lump coals on your head by being as hospitable as I know how to be to you.

You will never censor the hate from people's hearts. Shutting down speech you dislike is the best way to fertilize it. They take it into hiding and when it boils over, people die. Let them spread their message where we can all see it. I learned of the racism of members of the alt-right due to their posts. I've seen nearly every friend of mine walk away from their leaders and influencers after I posted their hatred and racist associations. That's good that would not have been possible if they had been censored. They have actually since been censored. Do you know what they are up to? No, you don't. They still have their own avenues to spread their hate, but the general public cannot track them as easily.

Our founding fathers knew that the best way was for speech to be unhindered. Does free speech sometimes hurt? Yes, but it is the foundation of our rights, and it's existence is important, regardless of its content.

I will never feel guilty for being born white. Being white has never benefited me. Hard work and God's Grace are my only privilege.