"Privilege" again

A major obsession on the Left at the moment -- particularly in the universities --  is "white privilege"  It is alleged that  just being born white gives you privileges not available to others.  And whites are supposed to feel shamed and humbled about that and -- ideally -- give all their money to non-whites.  It is part of the general and quite deranged  attack on mainstream people that caused many Americans to become totally disgusted with the Obama/Clinton Left.  They were ready to vote for ANYBODY who would stop the rot.  So Donald Trump got the job, despite his hair and many other faults.

I pointed out recently that the "white privilege" concept is racist -- very similar to Hitler's  thinking about Jews.  In both cases we see hostility to people purely on the basis of their race.

So let me relate a true story about a privileged person I know.  L. is an elderly Jewish man who recently had a bad turn.  An ambulance was called to take him to hospital. When they were loading him on board, they asked him which hospital he wanted to go to. Brisbane has some big centrally located government hospitals plus a lot of excellent private hospitals scattered about. L. said to take him to WXY, a highly regarded private hospital with about 500 beds.

But after about 15 minutes the ambulance had still not driven off.  The ambulancemen said that it was a very busy time with a lot of hospitals "on bypass" (full up) -- and WXY was one of those on bypass.  So the ambulancemen had been ringing around to find a hospital with an available bed.  L. said not to bother with that.  Just ring hospital WXY and tell them whom you have got on board.  The ambulancemen did that and L. was promptly whisked to his preferred hospital.  He was taken in where others were not.

So was that Jewish privilege?  Many people would leap to that conclusion.  And Jews are often generous donors to all sorts of charitable causes. So that could have been it.  It might have reflected gratitude to a donor.  But that was not it at all.

Even though he is in his '80s and has had a stroke, L. has that restless energy we so often see in Ashkenazi (Western) Jews.  After his stroke he could have just stayed at home all day and watched TV.  He likes watching football on TV so that would have had some appeal.

But that was just alien to him.  He wanted to be active and to contribute something to others.  So he became a hospital visitor.  With his own recent experience of stroke he felt sympathy for people lying in bed all day waiting to get better.  So, by arrangement with the WXY hospital, he would spend days just walking around the wards and looking for people who felt like a chat.  He is himself a cheery, flexible, positive person who is a good listener so he brightened the days of many.

So you see why everybody at the WXY hospital knew him, appreciated him and leapt to help him when he needed it.  The "privilege" he had is the privilege of being a good man.  He EARNED his privilege.  He is just a good natured conservative man who likes to contribute to the society in which he lives.

And so it is with most privilege.  What you do to earn privilege can vary greatly. You can even inherit it. But privilege is not random and is not assigned just by something as incidental as the color of your skin.  There are many trailer park denizens -- poor people -- who just get by from week to week even though they are white.  Where is their privilege?  It doesn't exist because they have done nothing to earn it.  Just being white earns you nothing