i was watching 20/20 with my parents last night and it was all about privilege in america. i was definitely disheartened.

this article is a bit lengthy, but if you read the first 5 or so paragraphs.. youll get the jist... (it was printed through dallas news, but is the same story that aired on 20/20)

http://www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/042306dnmettwomen.2e5ca5a.html

it's just really unfortunate that things like this still happen.
where is equality?
where is the dream of our founding fathers... martin luther king jr...
when i think about that, it physically makes my stomach hurt.

what do you guys think about white privilege in america?
does it still exist? is it still a big problem? is there a way to fix it?[/url]

I see two issues of power here: race and sexuality. Mr. Brown is black and the judge handed down the harsher sentence on him while Mr. Wood was convicted of murdering a male prostitute that he hired. Such unfair and biased decisions are some reasons why I dislike Texas.

Texans pride themselves on independence -- I worked with one who was very proud of her state -- but Texan judges keep handing down these unfair and biased decisions. Maybe I should not lump all Texans together like this but these cases sound so familiar to Lawrence v. Texas, the case of two homosexual men charged with sodomy under Texan law. Lawrence and his partner had to appeal the U.S. Supreme Court before receiving a fair and impartial verdict. Again, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor came to the rescue, in my opinion, because of her balanced opinion; essentially she said that Texas cannot have a law on the books yet discriminantly enforce that law (aka. if a state's legislature outlaws sodomy, then all its citizens -- hetero and homo or whomever -- are bound by that law; police can't "go after" only gay citizens). I think even North Carolina has similar laws on our books, like a certain amount of women in one house being labelled a "brothel", and these could be discriminantly abused to pick on one type of citizen, like lesbian Carolinians, but such cases aren't popping up in this state.

Instead of merely criticizing states, there is an obvious solution: vote Judge Dean out of office. In today's election, we had our chance to elect fair and impartial judges to our state's district, appellate and supreme court. Of course there was one snitch for our district: only one candidate ran for the local judge. Another candidate should have run so that we would have a choice but maybe there's a shortage of judges in North Carolina ...

Anyway, I see how judges influence the power of race and sexuality. Some of this power is cultural. Take prostitutes. Do we think of the women and men standing on street corners as citizens? or are they filthy perverts? Given what I see on MSNBC and shows like COPS, our culture treats prostitutes as subhuman -- more like animals to parade around on television -- than people who have rights too. Two of my friends support extending self-employed or private business laws to prostitutes because sex is that citizen's job. MANY Americans oppose this interpretation of our law.

Would Mr. Wood have recieved a stricter sentence if American culture viewed his male prostitute as a equal citizen? a businessman who could legally charge Mr. Wood for sexual service? ... Food for thought.

This makes me think of something I watched the other night on 60 minutes I think it was. It was about college admissions and how often student's are atuomatically admitted based on things such as race and privledge. It was all about money. I knew this was the case but it was incredible for me to see the old president of Duke University admitting that there were students who were automattically admitted regardless of acheivement, while students who had worked really hard to go there were not even considered. I hadn't really thought about it as white privledge until now. Granted this is not strictly the case but at the same time the bottom line is that it basically is. I would agree that all too often in today's world success is not based on work ethic but rather the color of your skin and your last name. A big difference here though is that only a few "whites" actually fall into the priveledged range.