How White Privilege Theory Encourages The Destruction of Property

With privilege theory quickly taking over the American discourse on race, sympathy for looters and vandals is on the rise and not slowing down.

Minneapolis is burning, but more shocking than the sudden plunge into chaos are the ideologues who excuse and defend the pillaging of American businesses. The frequently uttered retort, “It’s just property,” isn’t just thoughtless, it’s the expression of a doctrine that undermines property rights, one of the founding tenets of our republic.

The property damage serves to “emphasize the upside-down values of the usual order of things,” where property is a greater concern than people, writes Steven W. Thrasher in Slate. “Property destruction for social change is as American as the Boston Tea Party.”

Leave aside that these riots have led directly to more deaths, including black deaths, and the absurd idea that fighting police brutality requires burning down a Target or a family home. The false dichotomy of lives or property has far more to do with how the pillage apologists view property rights in general than any coherent calculation for how property theft and damage are saving black lives.

Thanks to privilege theory quickly taking over American discourse on race, sympathy for looters and vandals, and antipathy for cops who protect property, has nowhere to go but up. Thought leaders who buy into the rhetoric of privilege and oppression as if white privilege theory is merely an eye-opening teaching tool will only have themselves to blame when extensive property crime becomes the new normal in their cities.

As the national conversation induced by the protests rocketed from police brutality to “white privilege” and “structural oppression,” the theory that vandalism and looting can strictly be attributed to opportunism and bids for attention is increasingly implausible. A constant stream of rhetoric paints white people as oppressors of black people, pressuring observers to excuse, justify, or keep quiet about property crime for fear of showing their “privilege.”

Read the rest from Georgi Boorman HERE.

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