‘White privilege’?

Is it true that even from the moment of birth, whites have an unfair advantage•

I pose the question after observing that a black newborn is three times more likely to enter the world out of wedlock than does a white infant. For whites, it's just short of 22 percent; for blacks it's nearly 70 percent, according to statistics compiled for 1998 by the National Center for Health Statistics.

Those rates were 2 percent and 22 percent, respectively, in 1960, five years before the feckless War on Poverty took the New Deal one giant leap forward. Is it possible that whites, too, do not necessarily thrive after successful seduction into the 'Great Society.'

''Conditions at birth often reflect the forces that will shape a young person's life,'' said ''The Right Start'' a report issued last month, a project that produces an annual survey of child well-being.

No kidding, Dick Tracy.

The effect, on average, of joining the human race in a one-parent family is well documented and little of it is wholesome. Author Larry Elder in 'The Ten Things You Can't Say in America' is straightforward as is his entire book:

'The nuclear family remains the best vehicle to inculcate values, goals and morals into the young. But the modern welfare state leads to the breakdown, or nonformation, of nuclear, intact families.'

Do whites, keeping these statistics in mind, start out life, on average, with a better social foundation• Yes. Is this an 'unfair advantage'•

NO APOLOGIES

White parents who bring their children into a proper home have nothing to apologize for, nor do children who are raised for and achieve success. Doing the right thing is not an occasion for shame.

However, the 'disadvantage' perpetrated on the innocent newborn whose father abandons the mother and child is 'unfair,' regardless of race.

Nonetheless, illegitimacy is epidemic among blacks.

We quote from Dinesh D'Souza's 'The End of Racism': 'These women, (urban anthropologist Elijah) Anderson argues, are the complicit agents of a highly reproductive culture of sexually rapacious black males.'

Elder points out that a downtrend in illegitimacy among blacks, especially among teen-age girls, is starting to show itself, not, coincidentally he argues, after 1996's welfare reform.

After the subsidy for irresponsible behavior is withdrawn, is it any wonder•

Therefore, we must ask, is the welfare state, and perhaps its philosophical footing - D'Souza indicts cultural relativism as the current fountainhead of underachievement in black underclass - evil•

Is it evil to impregnate a woman and abandon her• Is it evil to invite the impregnation, knowing that the outcome - to the reasonable mind - is fraught with suffering• Is it evil to rage against the white man, when neither father, nor mother, is white•

Is it really OK to behave like a jerk•

How can one answer these questions, when the posing, itself, presumes a Dantesque damnation of generations - 'All hope abandon, ye who enter here!' It is as though expulsion from the womb throws open the gates to hell.

Tearing our culture from the moral equivalent of human sacrifice performed to buttress a political opportunism uninterested in its moral consequences is, of course, paramount.

'How do we expose modern-day 'civil rights' advocates for what they have truly become: political partisans, exploiters, and intolerant and vindictive power brokers?' asks Ward Connerly, chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute.

Perhaps economist and author Thomas Sowell offers the apposite tag line:

'The blessings of individuals who have achieved in life have seldom taken the form of having others accept mediocre performances from them or make excuses for their counterproductive behavior.'

Questions answered.

Gery Steighner writes editorials for the Trib. Call him at 412-320-7831. E-mail him at: gsteighner@tribweb.com