Source: Andrew Harnik / Getty
At 12 years old, I received a five-year supply of white privilege.
It all began when my fifth-grade teacher informed me that I needed to meet my mother in the principal’s office. I was homeschooled until I was 11, but I heard rumors about this notorious place where the worst students were sent to be punished for their crimes. Had an elementary school snitch ratted out my black-market candy cartel? Did a teacher overhear me when I called Susie Lemons a “skeezer?” I assumed it was a derogatory term for someone who cheated at dodgeball, but it wasn’t listed under profane language in the student handbook! And why did they have to call my mother? The fact that she had to miss work was bad enough, but now I had broken one of the cardinal rules of Black mothers:
Acting up in front of white folks.
Fortunately, the woman who brought me into this world was not forced to take me out of it. As I sat there as nervous as Joe Biden at the top of a spiral staircase, my guidance counselor informed my mother that my newly returned standardized test scores indicated that I should skip the sixth grade and enter the “Honors Plus” program. Although the meeting could have easily been an email, entering the program required an in-person consultation with the student’s parents. (Email did not exist yet, but inventing an electronic messaging system from scratch was still preferable to asking a single mother to miss half a day’s pay.)
“Honors Plus” was an exclusive district-wide curriculum that placed students on the most academically rigorous track for the rest of their K-12 education. While “Honors Plus” students did not choose their classes, they were entitled to free tutoring, complimentary SAT prep courses, free Advanced Placement resources and practice tests, college tours and even admissions consultations. The program was not listed in the district’s curriculum guide or parent handbook, but “HP Kids” were almost guaranteed admission to a good college after graduating.
Most of the people who were in the program were the sons and daughters of doctors, lawyers and the white elite professionals in my hometown. This was before the phrase “white privilege” existed, but the program was so white that my non-HP friends often joked that “HP stands for ‘Honkey Plus.’” My mom didn’t care. To her, the administrators were offering her son a rare opportunity. In any case, I left my elementary school friends behind and became the youngest, smallest and only Black HP Kid at Hartsville Junior High School (That’s what we called middle school back in the 1900s).
As far as my mom was concerned, I was proof that her homeschooling strategy had produced a high-achieving student. And because the Honors Plus program produced my graduating class’s valedictorian, a National Merit Scholar and a 100% college acceptance rate, the teachers, administrators and college admissions departments view HP kids as the best and brightest.
But what if everyone was wrong?
After years of receiving the same opportunities as this hand-selected cohort of white kids, I realized they were not anymore intelligent, harder working or more ambitious than my Black friends. It’s not like the HP Kids were the only kids from my high school accepted to good universities. Children of college graduates are more likely to get accepted and graduate from college. What if my HP alums were just beneficiaries of a system that provided extra resources to kids who needed them the least? What if everyone believed the HP kids were brilliant and then constructed a system that reinforced their belief? What if Honors Plus was just a way to perpetuate wealth and white privilege?
This story is about the Donald Trump Administration.
On Jan. 20, America celebrated the second inauguration of the least educated, least experienced, most privileged president in the history of the country.
Even though most new billionaires inherited their wealth, Trump’s uneducated MAGA base sees his wealth and success as proof of his superior intelligence and ability to make America great again. The fact that America’s wealthiest president attended an elite high school, attended a mid-college and still needed a hook-up to transfer to Wharton doesn’t matter to Trump’s MAGA base. His six bankruptcies are inconsequential. They are willing to overlook the fact that he led the largest economic downturn since the Great Depression and bungled a global pandemic. Yet, despite his lack of experience in politics, governing and telling the truth, people are still willing to believe Trump is smart; he is kind, he is important.
More importantly, while Trump vowed to hire “the best people,” the cohort he hand-selected to lead his upcoming administration are perfect examples of the white mediocrity that America’s perpetual wealth machine produces. A president can only be as good as the people around him, and never before has a president been surrounded by the level of ineptitude, corruption and incompetence as the Trump 2.0 operating system. Many media outlets have pointed out the most scandalous parts of his nominees’ backgrounds, but few journalists have pointed out the most disturbing part of the MAGA Kids Class of 2024:
The new Trump administration is incompetent.
While intelligence is relative, competence is binary. According to an obscure book called “a dictionary,” someone who is competent has the “requisite or adequate ability or qualities” or someone who is “legally qualified adequate.” Trump’s crew is the opposite of that. They are more synonymous with a word describing someone “lacking the qualities needed for effective action” or “inadequate or unsuitable for a particular purpose.”
To be clear, this is not an opinion. Even if one agrees with Robert F. Kennedy’s views on vaccines, staying swole or eating dogs, the fact that America’s greatest living nepo baby has never studied or worked in a Health or human service-related field makes Kennedy unsuitable for the particular purpose of serving as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Yet Trump nominated him. Fellow Quack Dr. Mehmet Oz was nominated to lead Medicare and Medicaid even though two separate groups of actual medical doctors determined that Trump’s grand Wizard of Oz did not possess the adequate ability to lead anything.
Source: Eric Thayer / Getty
Other members of Trump’s Confederacy of Dunces include:
- Tulsi Gabbard: Aside from accusations that she is an opp and an op, the Director of National Intelligence prospect wasn’t intelligent enough to fill out her paperwork correctly.
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- Lee Zeldin: The candidate for the Environmental Protection Agency is perhaps the most experienced of Trump’s nominees. Unfortunately, most of his experience is trying to stop people who protect the environment.
- Linda McMahon: The proposed Secretary of Education doesn’t have a degree in education. She has never worked in education. Actual educators don’t want her involved with education.
- Kash Patel: Some are concerned about his vow to retaliate against his political opponents. Few mention that, if appointed, Patel would be the least-experienced FBI director in the agency’s 100-year history.
- Kelly Loeffler: While Loeffler holds an MBA and has worked for Toyota, Citibank and other firms, Trump’s choice to lead the Small Business Administration has never started, worked for, led, or actually worked at a small business. Plus, she is a scammer.
- Herschel Walker: The Ambassador to the Bahamas and college dropout has yet to prove he can find the Bahamas on a map.
- Kristi Noem: Trump wants to put South Dakota’s governor in charge of Homeland Security despite her rocky history with homes, land and security in her own state. It’s possible that Trump was confused about which Dakota is on the U.S. border.
- Elon Musk: The nominee for the Department of Government Efficiency is often criticized for his political views and his activity on X, formerly Twitter. People rarely mention that Tesla makes most of its profit by selling government credits to the least efficient car automakers, not selling cars. But Musk wants to stop people from selling food stamp cards.
- Vivek Ramaswamy: Made his fortune scamming. Now wants to make the government efficient.
To be fair, it’s quite possible that Trump isn’t aware of the ineptitude that permeates his picks. After all–and I wish this was not true–he didn’t even bother to learn about his nominees’ backgrounds. Apparently, he just put a bunch of resumes in one of those hoppers they use for the NBA draft lottery, and whatever he pulls out is what America gets. And it’s not just the high-level nominees. The Senate confirmation hearings for the VA secretary and the Department of Defense have been delayed because of “paperwork” issues.” “Paperwork” isn’t even a real thing. It’s like “traffic” or “computer problems” or the dog eating your homework. It’s just something incompetent people use when they run out of time. Asking to delay your job interview so you can fill out the job application might be the whitest thing I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard this.
But Trump’s white privilege White House is not just an upscaled, federal version of “Honkey Plus.” The proposed MAGA administration is a real-world, government-sanctioned model of the dreaded diversity, equity and inclusion that lives in white people’s heads.
In the Caucasian cinematic universe, DEI programs take opportunities away from God-fearing Christians who believe in Jesus, Santa Claus and the Founding Fathers who earned them and give them to “illegals,” barely literate negroes, and woke critical race theorists convincing straight white men to change their sex so they can dunk on innocent, white, middle school girls, and basketball players. Not only do they genuinely believe the white men who make up the overwhelming majority of Fortune 500 CEOs, governors, legislators, judges, business owners and every lucrative segment of society earned their positions through “merit,” but any nonwhite person who achieved anything must be a “diversity hire.”
Thankfully, the convicted felon set to reoccupy the White House is definitive proof that whiteness is the biggest affirmative action program that ever existed. But senators will look at his staff’s incomplete resume and confirm them anyway–not because they are Republican or pro-Trump or white supremacists–but because they are also incompetent. Just as the teachers, administrators and my fellow HP Kids did not create the Honors Plus program, the MAGA politicians are not competent enough to construct the machine that catapults whiteness to the front of the line.
They are the machine.
I thought I was, too.
While every highschooler knows that most colleges use the Scholastic Aptitude Test for admissions, I took advantage of the free test prep offered to HP kids when I learned that many universities use PSAT scores to offer students academic scholarships, including the granddaddy of them all – the National Merit Scholarship. If you look in my high school yearbook, you’ll find that I was one of three National Merit Scholarship semifinalists, along with Suzie, and a really friendly, well-meaning and smart girl named May.
When we took the picture, Suzie, one of the other semifinalists, said I must be “the affirmative action scholarship.” At the time, I had no idea what “affirmative action” was but I could tell it was an insult. On the way back to class, May apologized for Jenn’s “affirmative action” comment. I shrugged it off and told her I didn’t even know what affirmative action was. I figured it was one of those white insults like “wiseguy,” “bozo,” or “lib.” But May stopped and summed up everything she had learned about affirmative action:
“It’s when Black people get extra credit for being Black.”
I stopped.
I knew Susie hadn’t been homeschooled for 11 years. I knew her mom didn’t have to miss a half-day’s pay when the principal summoned her to the school. I knew she didn’t have to skip a grade and be surrounded by older, more mature people for her entire education. But after spending six years in the same classes, I also knew Suzie wasn’t really smart. She was the epitome of a mediocre person who thrived because of the peculiar benefits, advantages and favors she received. Everyone knew it. Her friends even joked about it behind her back.
“I don’t even know how she got in HP with us,” I whispered to May. “She must have cheated on the HP entrance test.” Now, May stopped in the hallway
“What entrance test?” May replied with a puzzled look on her face. “My parents just came up to the school and told them to put me in HP.”
This story is about America.
Michael Harriot is a journalist, economist and author of the New York Times Bestseller Black AF History: The Unwhitewashed Story of America. He currently serves as founder of ContrabandCamp, a Black writers collective.
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Surviving Trump: The Tough Conversations Black America Need To Have
Surviving Trump: Can Black And White Women Still Be Friends In The Era Of Trump?
