by Colin Hyde

White privilege got a big boost in the world with the election of Donald Trump, a boost which it certainly didn’t need. Some believe it doesn’t exist, but all white supremacists know that it does. They see it as a right. They believe that they deserve every advantage they get, because, in their view, they, white people, they alone are responsible for the material gains in this world.

Sincere white people who deny the existence of white privilege are naïve. Non-white people who dispute the fact of white privilege, well, they have a ring in their nose, and we know wherefrom they got it. The former enjoy the privilege without accepting it; the latter find contentment and prosperity being subservient to an injustice that chews up their brothers and sisters.

My gudnis, naïve whites and subservient non-whites are cheering President Trump’s statement in his inaugural address, “We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based”, words which mean we will restore/preserve the status quo. Ah, in some instances ignorance and complicity can be let alone, but when the wages are no different from the sick wages of racism, yu haffu call it out.

In the piece, “The cruel jest of telling a bootless man to lift himself by his bootstraps”, celebrated Chicago journalist, Clarence Page said that Ronald Reagan labeled affirmative action, which was “designed to open opportunities for women and minorities”, as “preferential treatment.” Page said that in his last sermon MLK pointed out that “the first people to benefit from preferential treatment were not black…they were the people who settled the West and the Midwest in the years after the Civil War under an act of Congress that gave away millions of acres of land to encourage expansion and settlement of the Western frontier.”

Page said that MLK said Congress did this “to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor”, and they also “built land-grant colleges to teach them how to farm…provided low interest rates so that they could mechanize their farms…”; yet, MLK said, “these are so often the people who tell Negroes that they must lift themselves by their own bootstraps.”  

Page said MLK said “the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves without so much as a pot to put their porridge in”, and that “It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”

I say, you really must be naïve if you sincerely do not accept the realness of white privilege. They had the guns, they took the wealth of the Americas and Africa, and they became mighty rich. If you watch the movies Young Tom Edison and Edison, the Man, you see how many times he failed, and how costly his failures were. Non-white people wouldn’t even have had the money to start.

There are many kinds of brilliance in this world, and there’s brilliance in every tribe. Opportunities, now that’s a different story. I am not about making excuses for anyone black or brown if they slack off. I am not about diminishing anyone’s success; I am just stating a fact. Whichever tribe you belong to, you will have opportunities in this world, and if you are of white stock, the opportunities will be far more and far greater.  

In the story about the prodigal son, Jesus said that the fellow went away and fell on hard times, and he had a home with perks to return to. If we bring that story to earth today, that fellow was white, and we know that, because he had a home with resources. When a non-white person leaves home, there’s nothing to return to, there’s nothing there. There are achievers who like to boast that they did it themselves. They don’t see the many people who gave them a push along the way. Such is the case with white privilege. It’s there, you will see it if you look. You shouldn’t have to look hard.

Bah to bland butter

I’d heard one of my sisters talking about a butter she found weh mi di kohn, and hot bread or bun being a to-die-for when it has a plaster of rich butter as thick as the fat on a lard hog, I thought I’d pamper myself for Krismos. I’m no food addict, but there are a few treats that get me salivating. My sister couldn’t recall the name of the prize she had found, except that it might be a Belize-made product. Bah, I didn’t see any made by us when I did my rounds, so I splurged on a common one on the shelf in the shops.

That common one wasn’t the once goddess of butters, WD, which has been around since Blue Band margarine was a staple. Years ago, you didn’t have to belong to a family that owns a shop or one that was really, really rich to eat WD, sometimes. I think I told you that WD butter has a special place in my heart because it forms part of my only memory of my great grandmother, Tilli Meighan. One evening she and two of her daughters, my granny Eunice Locke Hyde and her half-sister, my grandaunt Lena McKoy, were in a little ground floor room cooking something over a fire hearth, and lucky me who was passing by got invited in for a slice of toast plastered with rich WD butter.

The inflation started hitting WD, maybe after the manufacturers realized their product was the best, and gradually the price increases took the butter beyond the pocket of regular folk. WD was a special treat when you had a little cash for a luxury. It was the best, and then it wasn’t. For some time WD hasn’t been so tasty, and I’m not alone in the disappointment. Last month a social media critic said the same, that it wasn’t as nice as it was before. 

WD not in the running, to treat myself for Krismos I decided on A, the one con sal, because butter no es nada without that. What a disappointment! I couldn’t be called cynical for thinking there was a butter merger, that A in the foil package came from the same barrel they dipped in to fill the WD tin.

So, how did I end up writing about butter? It’s this Daily Mail story by Ethan Ennals: “Lives ‘put at risk’ by surge in demand for butter, top researcher says.” The story here is that people are dumping margarine and racing after butter, because of the margarine’s negative press. We are no strangers to negative stories about vegetable fats. Sometime back, our coconut got damned, and consumption of the prized oil dropped until Dr. Bulwer’s intervention.

Ennals said incoming US health secretary, Robert Kennedy, Jr. has smeared seed oils (margarine) as poison, and social media influencer, Joe Rogan, who has nearly 15 million listeners, said “Not only is it [vegetable oil] terrible for you, there are no nutrients in it, so your body gets hungrier.” But, Ennals said, “King’s College London researcher Professor Sarah Berry…says studies show spreads are far healthier than traditional butter.” Professor Berry said, “The scare stories about spreads are based on a belief that anything that is processed is bad, yet we know that’s not true. All the evidence shows that swapping butter for a typical spread which contains vegetable or seed oil lowers your risk of cardiovascular disease.”

My friends, I’m with the professor. Sour milk could never be a healthier food than oil extracted from seeds. Foreign butter, WD and A, had the edge when they tasted great, but those days are long gone. Hn, I bet if we researched the names of the people who hype butter, we’d find they are from the same stables that condemned glorious coconut oil.

(AMANDALA Ed. Note:  Indeed, many who once “condemned glorious coconut oil” have changed their tune; it is the only “seed” oil comparable to mother’s milk in its content of the anti-bacterial/anti-viral lauric acid, and thus does not need to be treated with questionable chemicals to preserve its shelf life like the other seed oils. Those other seed oils may be fine initially, but, while sour milk can naturally be turned into butter or your “Dutch” cheese, those seed oils soon get rancid unless treated. Professor Berry’s statement is very vague. Perhaps another professor will weigh in.)