Politics: Oregon school thinks students need a 'white privilege survey'

By Herman Cain —— Bio and Archives October 4, 2016

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So I see that a high school in Oregon thinks it's a good idea to make students take a survey about "white privilege." It asks them if they would agree to statements like "I can be in the company of people of my race most of the time," or, "If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of hassle-free renting or purchasing in an area in which I would want to live." These are designed to make white students believe they are extraordinarily and unfairly privileged if they can say yes to any of these statements, as they enjoy these things only because they are white. What the survey really does is the worst possible thing you can do if you want to diffuse racial tensions in our society: It keeps race front and center in everyone's minds. It makes race more important than character or performance. It keeps everyone focused on the very thing that's causing all the tension in the first place. For some reason, our self-styled elites seem to think the rest of us have an extraordinarily difficult time dealing with people who don't look like us. They look at society and they see constant and incessant race-based tension, and they think they have to force us all to get past it by giving us surveys to take while lecturing us about how we're supposed to be more inclusive, non-discriminatory or whatever else.

In real life, where real people operate, I say very little evidence that it actually works like this. In fact, relations between people are best when people are not obsessed with race. When I walk into my studio/office in the morning, I don't look at my associate producer and executive assistant and say, "Hello, white associate producer and executive assistant!" I don't see a white person at all. I just see Lisa Lisa, a person I know and have worked with for many years. The same is true with Shane and Ashley who produce the show from the studio downtown, or with Jared who provides the research, or with Dan and Rob who do much of the writing here on the web site. They're not white people. They're individuals I know. And they don't see me as a black person. They see me as Herman, an individual they know well. They know my accomplishments and failures. They know my likes and dislikes. They know my quirks. They know about my wife, my children and my grandchildren. They know about my faith. None of us view each other in the context of race. We're just people that each other know and work with. The reason racial harmony works in our office is that it's not racial harmony. It's just harmony.

I learned this a long time ago when I was a civilian employee of the Navy. This was back in the early 1970s, when antiquated racial attitudes were much more real - and much more common - in people's minds than they are today. When I worked there I was assigned to a project involving rockets, which made me laugh years later when I was running for president and my critics claimed I was "no rocket scientist." Actually, I am! Anyway, when I left that job for another opportunity, my boss sat me down to talk about my experience there and my reasons for moving on. He wanted to know that I wasn't leaving for any negative reason, and I assured him I was not. But also, he thanked me, because he explained that before I worked there, he'd never had any experience working with a black man and he wasn't sure what it would be like. It had been a very good experience for him, he said, because my emphasis there was all about my performance. I convinced him that a black man could do well there, not because I made a big deal about being black, but because I did well at my job - and no one could deny that. No one gave this man a survey about "white privilege." His challenge was much more direct: Work with a black man when you're not sure how you feel about it. He did. And I won him over with my performance.