What's behind the Criminalization of Effort?
Privilege: (definition) a right, immunity or benefit or advantage enjoyed by a person or body of persons beyond the common advantages of other individuals; the enjoyment of a desirable right or an exemption from some evil or burden (Websters Universal Dictionary © 1936)
For the past several years one often hears aspiring politicians and community activists using the phrase “white privilege.” It’s a cleverly compiled term, somehow asserting that if one is white one has not earned one’s position or what one possesses. Worse still, these rabble rousers imply that one stole it from another; another who never had it in the first place.
I should begin by saying that I am white, a color that somehow implies something negative in today’s parlance. As a child I did have “privileges.” I was allowed to go out and play if I did my homework. If I ate my dinner, I might even get dessert on Sundays; if we had any at all. I also earned a $1 weekly allowance for cutting the lawn. I had to help shovel snow from the driveway, split wood for our wood stove, weed the flower beds and so on. I didn’t get paid for these. We were not a wealthy family, typically going through used cars every several years; why one even caught fire while my dad warmed it up on his way home from work.
To me, privilege is earned. It is not bestowed upon those that are born with one skin color over another. There is Black privilege, White privilege, Asian privilege, Latin American privilege. You name it. Privilege does however come with a cost, and that cost is not to another person. The individuals who earn their privilege pay for it through effort and “sacrifice.” While other children are playing video games, the privileged child is sacrificing his leisure time to study and getting good grades. The entrepreneurial child is spending less time adding pictures to Facebook and more time monetizing the affiliate marketing aspects of the new internet economy.
“Privilege" is a communist codeword. Privilege as I know it, is earned, it is not festooned upon an individual because of skin color or heritage. Privilege is the result of personal contemplation, the effort to achieve and then the result of those achievements. Doctor Ben Carson is a prime example of that. Antonyms of privilege are “handicap” or “disadvantage.” Is the implication by those spreading this "privilege" vitriol that they who are not privileged were somehow born handicapped? If so, perhaps they’d like to meet my genetically autistic daughter. A brief conversation with her might enlighten them as to the fact that they possess abilities that reach far beyond what she will ever achieve in a lifetime. By their own definition they would be privileged. Yet despite her true handicap, she is entrepreneurial. She sees that one can exchange labor or goods for cash. She knows that cash buys her things that she wants. Why can those who claim not to be privileged, see the same?
People of privilege are achievers, not idle dawdlers who would rather be “liked,” than get grime under their fingernails. Those who achieve don’t live by the mantra YOLO. The bottom line is, that each person, no matter what their family’s origin, has a shot at earning privilege.
How could this have become so convoluted? Who was it that started the idea that one should get something for nothing? Universal Basic Income? Work or starve, its that simple. What entitles a person to any form of compensation, for the mere fact that they exist! In the wild, these individuals would surely perish. This malignant thought process sucks the resources from people who really need it, like those who are handicapped or that require special needs.
You don’t hit 70 homeruns in the major leagues simply because you like baseball. You don’t become a star chef by just walking into a kitchen with a tall white hat. You don’t become a wealthy fashion designer by just sitting at a table with colored pencils and tracing paper. You don’t become an academy award winning actor or actress because you like the movies. All of these professions require years of effort and sacrifice.
Affluence is the byproduct of extraordinary effort and risk taking. It manifests itself in both material and time. It is why the elderly enjoy leisure time. They have worked and sacrificed all their lives to have something, a paid off home, and a retirement.
Americans are born into a land where they can do pretty much anything they want, if they want it bad enough. Colonel Sanders met with over 1008 people before he finally met the one that financed the first Kentucky Fried Chicken. In 1964 the Colonel had 600 locations selling KFC. How many times would you try before you quit? Would you quit at all even though so many kept saying no? Perseverance, sacrifice and effort are the key components of success and privilege. Effort is a virtue. Privilege is a choice not a birth right.
