White privilege denial from Bill O’Reily hinders progress for America

White privilege is a prevalent problem in American society that has been proven by myriads of data, yet some people still don’t believe it exists in our modern world.  

In Oct. 2014, Bill O’Reily, former host of The O’Reily Factor on Fox News Network, appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart to discuss white privilege in America. O’Reily was the voice dismissing the prevalence of the issue, while Jon Stewart argued in favor of its existence. 

O’Reily was asked simply to acknowledge that there is such a thing as white privilege, and what followed was an embarrassing defense. His first excuse was that “…if there is white privilege, then there has to be Asian privilege because Asians make more money than whites.” This argument has been brought up hundreds of times when fragile white people need to shift the blame somewhere else. 

Although Asian people in America may make more money than white people on average, America has treated Asian Americans far from privileged. Hate and discrimination against Asian Americans was rampant throughout American history, with hate crimes increasing now because of Covid-19 misinformation and blame. Discrimination against Asian Americans was so strong that the federal government funded and operated the notoriously cruel Japanese internment camps.  

Another one of O’Reily’s defenses was that white privilege did exist but doesn’t anymore. He states, “that was then, this is now…” continuing with “… there is no more slavery, no more Jim Crowe.” He even went as far as to say that “the most powerful man in the world is… a black American…” thinking that he represents every black American in this country.  

These petty defenses are greatly outnumbered by sheer mass of information that disproves his message, which was presented by Jon Stewart. 

For instance, most drug incarcerations are of black people, even though white people have higher rates of drug use, which was statistically proven by a study by the US National Library of Medicine. Why is this? It is because of institutionalized oppression by police in which black people are more likely to be stopped and frisked than white people because of their skin color. 

Another problem that leads to the mass incarceration of black people is redlining and real estate discrimination. Banks are less likely to give a loan to a black family to move out of a low-income neighborhood than a white family. This turns into a long cycle in which black communities are trapped in low income neighborhoods which are frequently searched by police, which connects to the mass incarcerations. 

There are even more examples of white privilege today seen in the system of job hiring and wage discrimination. Black people and women experience lower wages and a lower hiring rate than white men.  

All these facts together mean that on an individual level, it is harder for people of color to operate in American society, thus proving the existence of white privilege. 

 With all this information presented to O’Reily, he still insisted that “It (white privilege) doesn’t exist to any extent where individuals are kept back because of their color…” which is on par with the thousands of Americans who are willing to deny facts to protect themselves.