Trump's Grand Display Proves that White Male Privilege is Alive and Well

Wapo writer Robin Givhan wrote a powerful piece on the white privilege behind Trump's stubborn refusal to concede and the GOP's acceptance of his ridiculous behavior:

"Few images capture the position of privilege from which the president operates better than the ones that depict him at his golf club in Virginia. In several of the pictures, he isn’t playing the game — or even holding a club — but rather simply tooling around the course like a feudal lord in a golf cart with his personalized campaign baseball cap pulled low.

Trump is the unmasked duffer clutching the wheel of a golf cart, zipping over knolls while his caddie — also unmasked — hangs off the back.

The picture of a well-fed White man in a golf cart at a private club is a familiar trope in film and literature that has long been used to telegraph a narrative about fat-cat economics, stifling social hierarchies and inherited advantages.

It’s a classic metaphor for privilege and disregard — and sometimes establishment ineptness — and one that is also terribly apt for Trump.  While a pandemic rages across the country, the president works on his swing.

In truth, Trump doesn’t even look like he’s having a particularly good time golfing. He simply appears to be avoiding the dreadfulness of his responsibilities.  Such is his privilege.

In these long days since Joe Biden became president-elect, Trump’s refusal to concede or at least stop obstructing a peaceful transition of power can be described as many things — delusional, childish, unpatriotic, dangerous — but above all else it has been a tremendous display of the deference afforded to this man. As a man, who also happens to be White and wealthy, he has been able to muster the breathless support of both men and women  because he lays claim to the benefit of the doubt even where there isn’t even a shadow of it.

Supporters have asserted that the president should be allowed to exhaust all of his legal options; he should be allowed to get used to the idea of loss; he should be given a chance to collect himself. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell  in formal remarks spoke about the president like an indulgent parent blaming everyone else for his child’s bad behavior.

White male privilege is powerful.  It overrides facts.  It excuses horrendous behavior.  It exalts the unqualified.

Others who might well have liked to choose fantasy over fact didn’t have that privilege. Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote but lost the electoral [college] to Trump in 2016, was barely given 24 hours to nurse her wounds before much of the country was tapping its toes anxious for her concession.

In Georgia, Stacey Abrams lost her 2018 gubernatorial race to Republican Brian Kemp, a man who was  overseeing the election in which he was a candidate.  Abrams spoke up about voter suppression [and] took her concerns to court.  She took her time.  But then, 10 days after voters had gone to the polls, she accepted the reality of her circumstances.

It has been two weeks since Election Day. Trump has neither conceded nor formally and finally acknowledged Biden’s victory.  He simply golfs.

Michelle Obama posted a long missive on her Instagram in which she recalled how difficult it was for her to welcome the Trumps into the White House, but that she did so because she felt compelled to put country before personal animus.  Trump’s 73 million voters  have no intention of letting the pleas of a Black woman rise up to drown out the drumbeat of White male privilege because that hierarchy has always been essential to Trump’s appeal.

The only voices that can silence that privilege come from those who also have it.  Perhaps they will listen.  Perhaps they will pull the president aside and broker a deal with a bit of straight talk and an elbow bump.  Perhaps they will do so.  Just a couple of lucky White guys on the golf course."