Do we really know what is going on? Do we really understand what is happening? The answer I believe is no, we do not.
There is a lot of truth to the picture posted above. We really don't understand what white privilege is because we don't understand what white privilege is not. We look at white privilege as if all white kids grew up with silver spoons in their mouths. This is not the case. Middle class and below middle class Canadians have been in survival mode since the 1950s. The second world war was behind everyone for about five years and Canada like many other countries were in an economy that was growing because of the war. We were building a nation again, and we worked hard at doing so.
Canadians in the middle and lower classes were well aware of those who had it made. We wished we had their wealth, but reality soon brought us into place knowing that we would never be wealthy let alone live like the rich. We worked for everything we had and continued do work for everything we got, just to survive and enjoy life.
Today we are being told that we got to where we are because our skin is white. We are being told that we had it easy because our skin is white. Sociologists are attempting to make all white people, especially white males feel like they have been privileged just to be alive. They fail to realize and fail to look at what society really was like and about after World War Two.
I remember when Bob Rae was the premier of Ontario, there was a policy that white males need not apply for many government jobs. In fact the job postings actually said "white males need not apply". The idea of ethnic hiring for employment was created, based on the locality of the individual. What this meant was that employers were required to hire according to the ethnic percentage where the job was located. This created a problem in that many qualified people were being over looked just so a company could meet the quotas set before them.
Discrimination accusations went wild during this time, as everyone who felt they weren't given a chance filed complaints with the new Human Rights' Commission which was made up of human rights activists. These human rights violations were investigated and of course were biased towards the complainant. Some companies paid the fine and moved on while others were forced to hire the individual making the complaint and fire the newly hired person. This of course created a toxic work place and those who filed the complaints soon left the workplace.
The biggest problem today with white privilege is that we are looking back with binoculars that are tied to the present. We are holding people to a standard that just wasn't there. Judgements are being made of the past with today's understanding of issues. That is the rub.
The "cancel culture" which seeks to destroy the past by removing every reminder of the past from the present, fails to understand the history of the country and to what purpose these monuments are being made. The idea that if you destroy all references of the past, then people won't know about it and a new beginning can be created where everything is rosy and nice. This only opens the door to a people that have no idea who they are and are willing to accept anything that gives them some sort of identity.
This is not to say that there wasn't any racism in the past. It would be stupid to say such a thing. Society had bigger issues to worry about at the time, which for most families was where is the next meal coming from, and do we have enough money to pay the rent, pay the bills, and buy clothes and food for the family. Kids had paper routes, did odd jobs in the neighbourhood. I remember delivering papers and then returning to customers to cut their lawns. I remember being in tears delivering papers on a winter's morning because I was so cold. To be honest, I don't think anyone in the middle class or lower class had the time to consider racism because everyone was too busy trying to survive in a country where exploitation was often seen as the norm.
As well, how many communities in Canada had a coloured population? Most towns and villages in rural Canada didn't have people of colour and if they did, there were very few. Kids didn't consider racism like they are being told in today's society. Racism wasn't thought of, these were just people like us. It wasn't until the 1960's that we heard of racism the United States, and didn't realize that it was here in Canada as well but to a lesser degree.
The release of movies like "To Sir With Love, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? and TV shows like Archie Bunker, Samford and Sons'" did we come to understand that something was going on. We were safe in our part of Canada. We were too busy trying to survive, but at the same time we were being made aware that something was going on and we needed to understand it.
I believe that if we knew back in the 1950's what we know now, yes there have been a very different kind of society, But we didn't. To make people look back with today's understanding and knowledge doesn't serve any purpose of the reality going on today. What is happening today is the disenfranchising people from where they are, by race. We wonder at the backlash being served by many people. There is a need to understand that when a person is disenfranchised from their society, there is bound to be a reaction and often times that reaction is done because the person has no idea as to where they are in society. Their once felt safe, and are now being threatened, which can only bring about a reaction where the individual lashes out.
It seems, that BLM and their communist revolution agenda have been able to manipulate that disenfranchising to obtain the results that they want.
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