GM 23 October, response to Francesca’s 10/30 Adorno

Your blanket statement concerning “white privilege” concerns me. More particularly your statement, “The myth of success is an ideal that minorities are conditioned to see as attractive in that it validates their labor in seeking to attain the successes white’s find with less struggle.” I would agree with this if you substituted “minorities” with anyone not included in the top ten percent of the wealthiest people in the United States, white, black, males, female, gay, straight, etc.
Granted, there are biases and prejudices in this country, both north and south. As an independent, white-male businessman who routinely does business with other business people throughout the country, I’ve witnessed it and have experienced it from others myself. I’ve been subjected to prejudices from whites, blacks, northerners, southerners and foreigners, males and female because I’m white, from the south, from Florida, because of my accent, and because of my looks.
But what I find interesting is that you have fallen into the ideological trap which keeps us all down, mired in the mud. You list the impeding factors to minorities not getting ahead as sex, sexual orientation, and race. Of course, racism remains an issue, as I’ve said; I’ve been a victim of prejudices, by whites and blacks. But the fact remains that the major impediments are government regulations and an unfair and burdensome tax system; which, only benefits the top ten percent of the countries wealthiest people. What ever their color happens to be.
Oh, we’re all free. We can jump into our automobiles and ride from one end of the country to another, we can fly anywhere in the world and we can pretty much say what we want. We can even have this conversation, but start bucking the system; or, in a postmodern way, start criticizing the totalizing-centered tax structure which benefits the elite, then you’ve become a subversive and may very well end becoming a martyr.