04 December 2016 "Tomi Lahren and White Privilege"

“White does not mean racist.” No, certainly it doesn’t.

“That’s what makes America great…but we will never get there by setting cities on fire in the name of justice and black lives.” You’re right, violence is certainly not the answer to a movement with values based on furthering equality.

“When we say ‘Make America Great Again’, we mean enough with this victimhood BS and excuse after excuse after excuse.” Excuses?

“Crookedness knows no color.” Fair enough.

“Oh, and Barack Obama? I don’t trust his white half or his black half.” Nice.

“Hillary isn’t going to change that. She’s Obama, just whiter, older, and more controlling.” Interesting.

“The only thing that should be set on fire is Hillary’s pantsuit.” That’s kind of pushing it, isn’t it?

“Last week, Obama did…his favorite things…thanked illegal immigrants and validated their illegalness.” I don’t think that’s right…

“It’s just ‘hey, I’m black, you’re black, vote for Hillary’.” Well that certainly is simplifying things.

I could go on and on picking out these ridiculous quotes from Tomi Lahren, but in all fairness, I don’t completely disagree with everything she says. Her anger against things like the Black Lives Matter movement does show an intense level of immaturity and ignorance, but I (painfully) must admit that she is right sometimes. She’s not off base when she claims that burning down the city of Charlotte and attacking via hashtags and cruel comments on social media solves absolutely nothing. The kind of actions taken by members of movements with such emotional triggers has often been found to be rash and irrational. And in this case, they have really only caused more problems for the movement as a whole.

Now, I don’t have any idea what Tomi’s history has been like. In all reality she could have come from a family that has struggled for generations. She could have been forced to work against adversity that placed her against almost insurmountable odds. She may very well have been judged by the color of her skin, her beliefs and the beliefs of her family, her sexuality, or her socioeconomic status. I’m a firm believer in the idea that everyone on Earth has had his/her unique struggle. And no one person’s struggle invalidates another’s.

But, I somehow have to wonder what about her experience has made Tomi Lahren so angry and so unwilling to try to understand the experience of others so different than herself. And the one thing I absolutely cannot allow Tomi to get away with is her ignorance. It’s the kind of dangerous ignorance practiced by only the ultra-fortunate in society. Not necessarily the ones who have had a lot of money or a lot of success, I mean those who are born in the majority. The ones who have never had to understand what it’s like to face adversity about something they cannot and do not seek to change. And, honestly, it pains me to place Tomi in this category, because I would hope that as a woman she has had enough experience with discrimination to understand that it comes in all forms and from all sides. But this is all in vain. Tomi has no interest in understanding those who are different than her. It’s a shame, but it’s the truth.

The thing about ignorance is that it hardens people. It pits them against each other. I hate to generalize, but I’ve found that those who have never felt true inequality on a basis of anything other than their own merit have no empathy at all, and a dangerously low offering of sympathy. It is people like Tomi Lahren, people of privilege and ignorance, who firmly believe that “Black Lives Matter” could mean anything close to “All Other Lives Don’t Matter”.

As I write this, I find myself desiring to return to my own racial experience. And, sadly enough, I find myself apologizing to my hypothetic audience for “always returning to my race” (I actually typed out these words before thinking better of it). But this is what it is all about. To be white means to never have to consider your race. And the reason I’m not angrier, the reason I think I have an easier time finding space to forgive Tomi Lahren is because often people assume me to be white, and therefore let me forget about my own race for a while.

I think ignorance is an extremely poisonous thing. We have made some great strides in combatting racism, that’s for certain. But at the same time, racism still exists. And it’s better hidden than ever; I would argue that it has found a new place to hide within white privilege. There are many people, some of my friends included, who will swear up and down that they aren’t racist. And yet I still find them saying things that are insensitive and ignorant. I still find them using words to describe people that have obvious racial connotations. I still find them unable to bring themselves to the level of others’ (in this case, racially-based) suffering. White privilege allows people to see themselves as unattached from the world. In the universe of someone blinded by white privilege, everyone has equal opportunity to succeed, and those who do not succeed have no one to fault but themselves. Systematic inequality is at its end, and those who see the world as anything less than a land of opportunity is simply not working hard enough.

The reason that I so am bothered by a woman like Tomi and her final thoughts is because I do get asked almost daily where I’m from. I may be able to exist under the radar in certain situations, but, like any other non-white person, it’s simply not plausible for me to live there.

Not every non-white person exists in the same strange middle ground that I do. There are people (like some of the members of my own family) who must walk every day with the labels and the stereotypes and the unfair assumptions of their race visible on their skin like tattoos. They have had to learn to accept that there will never be a day in their lives that race will not be a prevalent issue. And it’s people like Tomi Lahren, people who invalidate this entire experience, that make me feel angry.

Like I said, every person on Earth has faced some kind of suffering. It’s a fact of human nature and living on Earth that one’s existence won’t be perfect, it can’t be. Tomi has undoubtedly had her struggles, and as a successful news personality, I respect her for continuing to work in an industry that has undoubtedly shown her some resistance. I don’t agree with the messages she puts into the media, but I, as a member of the America she so passionately declares as great, believe it is her right to express her opinion. I applaud her for continuing in the face of so much disagreement with her views.

But I implore her, and all those like her, to take a lesson in sympathetic understanding. To reach into the suffering she so heartily assigns to veterans and to Republicans and to allow a bit of it out into the rest of the world. White privilege is poison, and enough of it will break people apart. And isn’t the goal, isn’t the ideal chased by Trump supporters who wish to “make America great again” to bring people together, united under one nation? We will only arrive at this if we are willing to work not only on others but also on ourselves.