Here’s a question for the wokesters: If white privilege is actually real, why are white people claiming minority status to advance their careers?
It’s not just Senator Elizabeth Warren, either. Just consider the case of a National Organization for Women board member who, as the NAACP’s Rachel Dolezal did, is using the Fauxcahontas ladder-climbing method. As the Daily Beast reports:
NOW members told The Daily Beast they were shocked when BJ Star, a current board member, identified herself as Asian-American in campaign materials. Star, born Barbara Bencsik, had never identified herself as such in previous campaigns, and lists herself as white in voter registrations dating back to 1984. Multiple members said Star had not identified herself as a woman of color in past conversations about race or attended special meetings designed for women of color in NOW.
Despite this, Star’s bio on the candidates’ website now states that she intends to build NOW’s diversity membership “as Asian-American.” (Downloaded versions of the page show this line was added sometime between July 23 and Aug. 7.) According to emails obtained by The Daily Beast, Star personally told at least one woman that she intended to run as a woman of color.
State chapter leaders are furious over the situation, claiming Star is manipulating her identity to benefit herself in the upcoming election. Several have called for her to step down.
“You can’t wear race like lipstick — one day you want to be red, one day you want to be black, one day you want to be brown,” said Triana Arnold-James, a Black woman and NOW member who is also running for the board. “I don’t appreciate her trying to use that to really keep true women of color out of leadership roles.”
Well, maybe Star doesn’t appreciate whites being kept out of leadership roles by affirmative action. As for how you can’t wear race like lipstick, why not? We supposedly can wear “gender” that way, as we’re told everything is relative, a matter of one’s perception, and that “we’re not to judge.”
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Commenting on the case, pundit Monica Showalter made an interesting point:
The photos of her [Star] don’t ring anyone’s bell for the word “Asian-American.”
Asia’s a big place of course, and she has a Slavic-looking last name, which might mean some of her ancestors came from Siberia — unlikely, but possible. Any Russian land east of the Urals is in Asia.
Or maybe she took a genetics test and came up with some of the Genghis Khan genes — most of us with ancestors from Ukraine, Russia, or any place the Mongol hordes blew through do. We’ve all got a little bit of Genghis. Uhhhh, right.
Or perhaps she can claim some Jewish descent — Israel after all, is in Asia, which therefore makes everyone who’s Jewish perfectly Asian-American, too.
But this is “not what people think when we speak of Asian or Asian outreach,” Showalter continues. “What we have here is a wretched new case of ethnic appropriation for political advantage, something ambitious whites are doing in increasing numbers, claiming to be vaunted victims.”
True, of course, but can we really blame them? After all, they’re just following a long-established precedent.
It’s not just that Barack Obama was our first “black” president even though he had a white mother, or that Kamala Harris is billed as a “black woman on the ticket” even though her mother was Indian (and thus “Caucasian.” Yes, really). It’s that it has long been de rigueur to accept the old “one drop” rule —which was supposed to be “racist” — and not question the notion that a person 80 percent white and 20 percent black and who looks white is, in fact, black.
I know of a young man from a wealthy home who roughly fits this profile and who considers himself black, and thus classifying himself brings affirmative action benefits. But if someone 20 percent “non-white” can thus proceed, why not someone 19 percent so? Then, why not 18 percent, and 17, and, well, follow it out and you not only get into Liz Warren 1/1,024th territory but have to ask: Where can you draw a line?
Answer: before you start with racial bean counting in the first place. If we’re going to create preferred, advantaged racial groups, we shouldn’t be surprised when people jockey to become part of them.
This also puts the lie to “white privilege” dogma. If being white were so advantageous, people wouldn’t be scrambling to be considered anything but.
This non-white-privilege phenomenon isn’t anything new, either. In fact, it was spoofed in a 1998 episode of the sitcom Seinfeld (short video below).
Yet this problem is only poised to become worse, with California Democrats actually seeking to legalize discrimination so they can use it against whites (and maybe Asians, too). For this reason, we should expect more Rachel Dolezals and BJ Stars.
There’s an irony here, too: Many leftists have claimed race is a “social construct” — yet it’s not one they plan to deconstruct anytime soon.
Image: monkeybusinessimages/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
