The small, affluent town of Westport, located in Connecticut, recently hosted a controversial essay contest for the town’s students: they wanted kids to write about how their “white privilege” had affected their lives.

The notion of “white privilege” is largely a Leftist construct; it’s actually surprising that this kind of thing hasn’t taken place sooner in a town where Clinton garnered votes at a ratio of 2-to-1.  The contest’s organizers claim that they were quite surprised by the negative responses their idea had garnered from the community. (RELATED: See Twisted.news for more examples of bizarre but true news from our twisted world.)

Some say that the question wrongly suggests that race is a determining factor in whether or not one can live in Westport. As 72-year-old resident Bari Reiner commented, “It’s an open town. There are no barricades here. Nobody says if you’re black or whatever, you can’t move here.”

The implication is not just on the town, however. The concept of “white privilege” also assumes that the people in the town of Westport (or elsewhere) got to where they are in life purely because of the color of their skin; this is a myth. “White privilege” promotes the idea that because of the color of your skin, you couldn’t possibly have earned what you have, or that your parents haven’t earned what they have provided for you.

The chairman of the diversity council, Harold Bailey Jr., claims that the controversy their little contest caused was entirely unexpected, and maintains that the idea behind it was not to promote “white guilt” but rather to “encourage discussion.”

Bailey, a retired IBM vice president who is black, said, “Just the fact it says ‘white’ and ‘privilege,’ for some people that’s all they need to see, and all of a sudden we’re race-baiting or trying to get people to feel guilty. That’s not at all what it’s about.”

Surely he would be singing a different tune had the words “black” and “privilege” been used.

One might question what the desired end-goal of such a discussion even looks like to these people. Outside of trying to convince children that they don’t deserve the lives their parents worked hard to give them — what else is there? “Acknowledging” your so-called “privilege” is simply a pacifistic way for the Left to say that, yes, they want you to feel guilty for being a white person in America.

There are far too many variables that influence personal success in this country for anyone, of any color, to ascribe race as the sole determining factor in the outcome of a person’s life.

Bailey himself is a perfect picture of that: a successful black man who chose to move into an affluent, predominantly white town. If he had simply sat back and said, “Well I’m black, so I’m not going to succeed in life thanks to white privilege,” do you think he’d have become a vice president of IBM?

The Left likes to perpetuate this myth of “privilege” as a political tool to advance their own beliefs and keep their political party afloat. Without the minority vote, the Left has nothing. “White privilege” is merely their latest term to ensure that racism continues to be alive and well in America. If nothing else, the thought police can declare you irrelevant thanks to your “white privilege.”

Sources:

CTPost.com

NationalReview.com