THE DEBATE - Tagg Romney, grandson of George Romney, son of Mitt Romney, is the latest flesh-and-blood embodiment of White Privilege on the national presidential stage. Though that stage has historically been a catwalk for the whitest and most privileged in the world, Tagg is in a class few achieve. With his lineage and his inherited wealth he equals George W. Bush when it comes to getting advantages by virtue of nothing more than whose crotch he popped out of in the hospital delivery room.
Now, thanks to his comments yesterday, he has surpassed even Bush, becoming not just an image of White Privilege – but an example of how that privilege quietly operates in too much of America.
In a post-debate interview with a North Carolina radio station, Tagg was asked about his visceral reaction to President Obama, and he said his first thought was that he wanted to “jump out of your seat and you want to rush down to the stage and take a swing at him.”
He then laughed and added, “But you know you can’t do that because, well, first because there’s a lot of Secret Service between you and him.”
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.
(The rest of David Sirota’s Salon.com perspective … including more on White Privilege.)
-cw
Tags: David Sirota, politics, white privilege, Tagg Romney, Mitt’s son, President Obama
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 84
Pub: Oct 16, 2012
