Tagg Romney: Mr. White Privilege by David Sirota

Mitt Romney's son embodies the assumption that white people can say whatever they like about a black man

BY DAVID SIROTA

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One of the hallmarks of White Privilege is the unquestioned and largely unchallenged assumption that white people can say heinous things about people of color without blowback or even mild criticism – things that people of color rarely dare to say about white people, for fear of serious retribution. Tagg – aka Mr. White Privilege – proves the point perfectly. He feels totally comfortable fantasizing about committing physical violence against an African American man. And remember, he’s not just any white guy pondering such grotesque dreams. On the contrary, he’s one of the public faces of a national presidential campaign appearing in a public media interview, meaning White Privilege has made him feel so comfortable airing such notions, that he didn’t hesitate to whimsically broadcast them to thousands of voters.

To know that’s a reflection of the new intensity of White Privilege is to witness the relatively muted reaction to the episode from a media that otherwise treats every microscopic nuance of the presidential race as a “breaking news” event. What’s more, this is a country where, whether in an election season or not, any threat of violence against any president of either party is a potential federal crime and thus covered as a major news story. That is, of course, before Obama, a black man, became president, and representatives of his white opponent started joking about physically harming him.

If that’s not enough proof that this episode is a profound example of the pervasiveness of White Privilege, then simply go through the mental exercise of switching the races. Ask yourself: Would the media reaction be similarly muted if a young black male relative of Obama appeared on a radio show and publicly fantasized about violently bludgeoning Mitt Romney? No, it would be the opposite. It would be a multi-day, above-the-fold, 100-point-typeface story initially fueled by Drudge, Fox News and right-wing radio hosts, and then pervading the network news shows. We’d soon see headlines about security beefing up around Romney and his entourage, as staid Face the Nation and Meet the Press panels – populated by mostly white faces, of course – paternalistically lamented the “race issue” in America.

Now sure, Tagg maybe wouldn’t actually bludgeon Obama to a bloody pulp if given the chance. Most likely, he’d refrain from doing so out of aristocratic respect for what he calls “the nature of the process” – and even more likely, he’d respond to criticism of his remark by simply saying he wasn’t being “serious.” But what Tagg would do in the secret confines of his fictional Obama beat-down chamber is not important, and using the “not serious” defense only underscores the White Privilege at work, for that defense wouldn’t be accepted if the races were reversed.

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more:
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/18/tagg_romney_mr_white_privilege/