White skin privilege is not something that white people necessarily do, because white people don't know a lot about privilege of color. White people just go about their work and play and never realize that the only reason they find success is the white color of their skin. White privilege is everywhere, just look around through history.
It seems possible that White People create or enjoy on purpose as the Negro claims foul because they're not white. The white trappings of wealth, prosperity and authority and their compliance to laws and common sense also hold back the black man even though black men and women go to prestigious universities for free. Blacks seem very sensitive to status as they want to live and prosper on the top of the pile because their black.
Unlike the more overt individual and institutional manifestations of racism described above, white skin privilege is a transparent preference for whiteness that saturates our society. You can see where white people had everything, throughout history.
White skin privilege serves several functions. First, it provides white people with “perks” that we do not earn and that people of color do not enjoy. I guess you get extra coffee at Starbucks if you're white or maybe a heads up on blue light specials at K-Mart.
Second, it creates real advantages for us. White people are immune to a lot of challenges. Finally, white privilege shapes the world in which we live — the way that we navigate and interact with one another and with the world.
Black Lives Matter-influenced activist Jonathan
Butler became radicalized at the University of Missouri, despite his family’s
reported multi-generational success and affluence. Even though his
well-educated family is the epitome of the American Dream, Butler was drawn
towards communist heroes like terrorist Assata Shakur and Franz Fanon in
college.
The University of Missouri activist grabbed
headlines when he became the public face of the movement that successfully
forced out two top administrators on Monday. However, Jonathan Butler’s own family
story directly contradicts his radical narrative and shows that black Americans
can succeed and prosper in the United States, particularly if they apply hard
work and a base of traditional religious values.
Butler’s father is Eric Butler, an Executive Vice
President with Union Pacific Railroad, according to the Omaha World-Herald. The
St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports Mr. Butler made $8.4 million in 2014.
His company bio lists his considerable
achievements:
Eric Butler was named executive vice
president-Marketing and Sales in March 2012. In this position, he is
responsible for Union Pacific’s six major business units: agriculture,
automobiles, chemicals, energy, industrial products and intermodal. Collectively,
the business units account for nearly $20 billion in annual revenue. He also
oversees the railroad’s National Customer Service Center.
Previously, Butler had been vice president and
general manager-Industrial Products, a position he had held since April 2005,
after serving two years as vice president and general manager-Automotive. Since
joining the railroad in 1986, Butler has held a number of positions including
vice president-Supply, vice president-Planning and Analysis, and
director-Corporate Compensation.
Butler graduated with a bachelor’s degree in
Mechanical Engineering in 1981 and an MSIA in 1986, both from Carnegie Mellon
University in Pittsburgh.
However, the hard work and success of Jonathan
Butler’s father doesn’t end there; he has also made the time to focus on the
spiritual life of his community. Eric Butler is also a pastor with a church he
founded in Omaha, the Joy of Life Ministries. He wife, Cynthia Ellis, is
co-pastor:
Professionally, Evangelist Butler is an educator.
She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Education; a Master’s Degree in Elementary
Education and a Master’s Degree in Education Administration. She is currently
Executive Director of the Purpose Driven Advocacy Center, which provides
tutoring, advocacy, and life-advancement services to the community.
Affluent radical Jonathan Butler’s grandparents are
“the late Attorney/Pastor John and Dr. Fay Ellis Butler of Brooklyn, New York.
Superintendent John Butler was the founding pastor of Salvation and Restoration
COGIC of Brooklyn, New York.
Butler’s grandmother, Fay Ellis Baker, also has a
distinguished resume. Her biography on her Christian book Rejection: The Ruling
says Mrs Baker states:
Was raised in the Church of God in Christ, a
daughter of a pastor, Rev. R.N. Ellis, Sr. After completing her secondary
education in the public schools of New York City, she attended Bellevue/New
York University School of Nursing and became a Registered Nurse. Later,
graduating from Queens College (City University of New York) with honors, she
received two Masters and a PH.D. in Medical Anthropology from Columbia
University.
The successes of this American black family extend
to other relatives as well. Jonathan’s aunt, Fay Maureen Butler, is “a graduate
of William Smith College, she has also received two Masters Degrees and a
Doctorate, all from Columbia University.”
Butler Was Radicalized At University
How did Jonathan Butler, a child of wealth who grew
up around hard work and capitalist success, become a radical?
Like rich kid turned Students for a Democratic
Society bomber Bill Ayers and the well coifed revolutionaries of the Occupy
Wall Street movement, the radicalization can be traced to the ivory tower of
education.
This isn’t conjecture. A recent article in the
Missourian paper written by UM’s journalism students lays it all out in an
uncritical fashion. The Missourian article attempts to paint the picture of a
“deepening divide between white students and students of color” at his Nebraska
high School, but a quote from the article by Butler doesn’t paint that grim of
a picture:
“It was that phenomenon — that’s where we felt
safe, that’s where we felt at home,” Butler said. “People would bring their
speakers, their CD players. We would play music. It was always this great
time.”
Butler began at the University of Missouri as a
business major but began “reading the radical authors” in his senior year like
Stokely Carmichael and Frantz Fanon.
The article on Butler says, “These authors, among
others, are why Butler considers himself a radical. This isn’t to say he’s a
political extremist, but he thinks about radicalism as ‘grabbing things by the
root.'”
It’s unclear why the article says Butler isn’t a
“political extremist,” although when an avowed socialist like Sen. Bernie
Sanders (I-VT)16%
is running
for president, it may be an accurate assessment of our political age.
Franz Fanon was a Marxist revolutionary
philosopher, who was also an inspiration to the 1960s Black Panther Party and
also to the 1968 student strike at San Francisco State that served as a
template in many ways for what happened in Missouri in 2015.
A section of the article entitled “Activism”
explains more about Butler’s radicalization.
The more Butler read, the more radical he became.
For him, that meant making people aware of institutional systems that dole out
power to a lucky few while taking it away from others.
“The Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” a book by Paulo
Freire, made Butler rethink these systems and reach for freedom — “freedom of
mind, physical freedom, freedom from systems,” he said.
Apparently, Butler’s family was among “the lucky
few.”
Paulo Freire was a socialist writer known for the
belief that education should serve a social purpose of allowing oppressed
people to regain their sense of humanity. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire
wrote:
No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain
distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting
for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be
their own example in the struggle for their redemption.
The article about Butler concludes:
Many strings remain loose, including whether real
race relations reform will come to MU or whether the president’s successor will
be different than Wolfe in the eyes of the movement community.
From Butler’s perspective, though, he took the
important step from reading about radicalism to making it his own. He spun the
wheels of change at MU.
Doubtlessly, the Mizzou Effect will be felt at
college campuses in the coming months as more socialist-inspired radical
elitists force the agendas of their leftist faculties.
.
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