They should have arranged to have their meeting next door in Des Moines, Iowa, to coincide with the Iowa State Fair in August. They could've saved the cost of the substitute teachers, gotten better hotel rates, met some presidential wannabes, enjoyed porkchops on a stick, and taken in the annual "Beat Whitey Night."

Last year's "Beat Whitey Night" was only moderately successful, achieving a number of injuries but no fatalities. The Des Moines police are trying to figure out whether the attacks were racially motivated, according to Des Moines' WHO-TV. (Google it.)

My white privilege:
I was born to a poor, white, unremarkably unpleasant childhood. No one told me how white privilege works. So I experienced the shame of being a welfare and food stamp consumer, the shame of having one parent irresponsible and the other unknown, the shame of wearing the same dirty clothes because that’s all I had, the insecurity of not knowing how long the current roof would be over my head or where the next one would be, the being grateful for handouts but ashamed that I needed them.

I didn’t know that all I had to do was whip out my white privilege card and make all that shame go away. I thought I’d have to work for it. Maybe that was my real white privilege; the knowing that no one was going to lower any bars for me, and that I’d better expect to earn my way rather than feeling entitled to it.

At age 18, my sole assets were my brains, my body, and a large account of white privilege which bought me an enlistment (the US military is notorious for favoring white privilege). Of course I was awarded the excellent ratings and promotions to which my white privilege entitled me; my supervisors would have been afraid to stop praising and promoting me lest I accuse them of not respecting my white privilege.

My white privilege was so powerful that it got me awarded a college degree and an advanced degree both while I was on active duty; and of course my GPA was stellar on account of professors’ being loath to downgrade one so imbued with white privilege as I. Then, midcareer, the powers that be were clamoring for more white officers so they tracked me down, had someone help me through the application process and sent off to become an officer.

White privilege didn’t let me down in that status either; it got me awards, excellent ratings, and promotions. When I served in combat it was with units that were overwhelmingly white. In Iraq the unit I was with had such a concentration of white privilege, that we daily engaged in arguably the most important combat operations going on at the time (sarcasm aside, that was a privilege).

After over two decades’ of sitting back collecting what was due to me as a privileged white guy in the military, I retired from that and found my white privilege in great demand in the job market. Employers want my white privilege so much that they hire me rather than waiting to fill the position with someone whose darker skin color makes them more qualified for winning government contracts.

Last year I had the white privilege of paying taxes about equal to what the median income is in my neighborhood. At the grocery store I have the privilege of paying with money I earned. But since I don’t live in wealthy area, I regularly see people in line at the grocery store who have to put up with the shame of paying with other peoples’ money, the food stamp card. These people are disproportionately lacking in white privilege although plenty do have white privilege but apparently don’t know how to use it. Oddly enough, most of them look able bodied and don’t have any mental handicaps that show (unless you count neck tattoos and the like).

Yea, White Privilege Conferences for public school teachers… one of many reasons why my not-entirely white children are home-schooled.