White privilege excuses [View all]

[Baitball Blogger]

You've heard them before:

Oh, it was a mistake.

Oh, it was just poor judgment.

Oh, it was ignorance.

Whether the infraction occurs in local government or in Home Owner's Associations these excuses are used routinely to explain away breaches as serious as fraud. What is incredible is that it works. It's an excuse that people accept without question IF the person who committed the infraction meets a certain profile.

Each time people program themselves to accept these excuses our communities degrade a little more. That is true even in the case of the Zimmerman trial where one of the jurors voted to acquit Zimmerman because "he just made a mistake." That's where prejudice is kicking in, showing more leniency or empathy for one group of society, than it does for another.

If you want to know why our society is degrading it is because common citizens in communities like Seminole County, aren't showing enough outrage to punish those who are negatively affecting other people's lives when they abuse their power. And that's odd coming from a demographic that insists on being tough on crime. The fact that they have trained themselves to be selective about which crimes they will be tough on suggests that prejudice is at play.

If they really wanted to prove that they were committed to being tough on crime they would be just as hard on themselves, as they are with everyone who doesn't look like them.