Rex Murphy: The contemptible concept of ‘white privilege’ is just ugly, angry racism
Maxime Bernier is right: Identity politics dissolves community, reduces a country to subsets of clans, and obscures the diversity of individual lives
There is much to choose from this week, including the infantile wailing and moronic ignorance of social-justice hooligans driven crazy mad (Pavlovian response) by Jordan Peterson giving a lecture, by invitation, at Queen’s University. (Three cheers for Queen’s president and the law faculty for inviting Dr. Peterson.)
Then there is Justin Trudeau inviting the fanatically anti-Alberta-oil Bill Nye to Ottawa for a public chat on science, the highlight of which was the signal revelation of the centrality of breastfeeding to the scientific method — delivered by our PM. When baby wails and the milk flows, can Planck’s constant be far behind?
As well: Jaspal Atwal, failed Sikh assassin, holding what he ludicrously called a press conference. The only takeaway: his lawyer is scarier, though not necessarily more competent.
More fertile than them all however was the brisk, chippy, and entitled Twitter blast levelled by Liberal MP and person of colour, Celina Caesar-Chavannes (Whitby, Ont.), at Conservative MP Maxime Bernier (Beauce, Que.).
Bernier had criticized an earlier tweet by Ahmed Hussen in which the Immigration Minister said the federal budget was historic for “racialized Canadians.”
Bernier said he deplored that tweet’s “awful jargon,” the pitch to “racialized” Canadians, and put out a plea for “colour blindness,” character over skin colour. His critics, Bernier said, implied (he was) a racist because “I want to live in a society where everyone is treated equally and not defined by their race.”
The parliamentary pigeons were duly agitated. Instanter, Caesar-Chavannes fired off her Twitter blast:
“… please tell this highly privileged man that the ultimate goal of fighting discrimination is equity & justice and not, as he states … to create a colour-blind society.”
That wasn’t going to boil the kettle, so there followed another, more imperious swipe: “@MaximeBernier … colour blindness as a defence actually contributes to racism. Please check your privilege and be quiet.”
Obviously the bird of peace, the white-winged dove, doesn’t nest in Whitby, for when questioned on whether she had the right to tell MPs to shut down, from Caesar-Chavannes’ Twitter HQ came the final salvo:
“Darn right! Especially when the intervention is steeped in ignorance, I absolutely will invite them to keep quiet. Does he have to listen? No. Can I ask? Yes!”
Charming. This is the kind of rational, mild, engaged conversation that emerges from identity politics and its dubious offspring, the twisted notion of white (almost always male) privilege: claims that only the “aggrieved” can speak, or can have knowledge on certain issues; hectoring “out-group” citizens to sit down and take it. It’s all barriers and walls and shouts over the ramparts, with more than a touch of attempted moral extortion: “Hey, you’re not one of our clan – so you have no authority even to talk about this.” It’s the tired grievance, oppression narrative.
White privilege is a contemptible construction. It explicitly invokes skin colour as the only vector of judgment. It insists on “whiteness” as a flaw, a failing, and, as it almost always is, when yoked with “male” is the verbal equivalent of a spit. It is pure stereotype, ugly and angry. It is seen as a necessary term in identity politics, the politics of faction — ethnic, racial and religious.
White privilege is a racist concept on its face, with skin colour as the main determinant of value and truth.
That’s the philosophy behind the member for Whitby’s hard voice and insistent claim of perfect authority.
She is, just as every other MP is, one of the most select and privileged members of Canadian society. There are 36 million plus Canadians, and only 338 at any one time are MPs. It’s an exclusive, privileged club. They make the laws for all the rest, for heaven’s sake.
And within that privileged club, even as a rookie MP, Caesar-Chavannes is one-up on her fellows. She’s been parliamentary secretary to the prime minister himself for nearly two years, and elected from a majority white district. White privilege (or lack of it, whatever it is), hasn’t held her back.
In other words, she is select even among the select. She’s not marginalized, has not been passed over or put down. She’s certainly not gutting cod in a fish plant in Grand Bank or unemployed in Fort Mac — as so many of the really marginalized (of all colours and races) are.
Now, more specifically, if you do buy the white, male privilege cant, here’s a question: What one white male best illustrates the concept, more thoroughly than anyone else ever could, in the whole of the country?
Well, her boss, the prime minister.
He has a patrician name, an inherited status, is the offspring of a prime minister, has family friendships that give access to the world’s great and glorious, from the Khans to the Castros, a trust-fund income, and a network of political connections unexampled in modern Canadian politics. On the white male privilege scale he’s the very distillation and essence, the Platonic ideal.
Justin Trudeau’s white privilege halo has collateral benefits. Under his privileged-plumed wing, a lot of candidates sailed to election victory, possibly even Caesar-Chavannes herself. Does she deplore its advantages when they play to her benefit? Does she chide the prime minister that he so represents what she so deplores? Hold your bets.
To wind things up, I think I’m with Bernier. Individuals are not robots, identical instances of the skin colour they are born with, the sexuality they practice, the religion they hold, or even — I admit this is stretching things when you consider the current Liberal caucus — the party they belong to.
Identity politics atomizes society, dissolves community, reduces a country to subsets of clans, one-dimensional interests, group thinking, and obscures the immense diversity of individual, specific lives and the people who live them.
An MP might have the right to tell another MP to keep quiet, but good manners alone should throttle the urge. Parliament originally was the word for a “bout” or “spell” of speaking. And its meaning now is as a place of speech — speech for all, representing all. Neither meaning, old or new, comports with telling a member to “keep quiet and check your privilege.”
It is never the place for one member to presume she has the full truth by virtue of identity, her truth and no other; and certainly never a place where one member has the “privilege” — of white or any other colour — of telling another when he can’t or shouldn’t speak.
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