Leave it to the social justice warriors to connect the death of Otto Warmbier to so called “white privilege”:

As shocked as I am by the sentence handed down to Warmbier, I am even more shocked that a grown man, an American citizen, would not only voluntarily enter North Korea but also commit what’s been described a “college-style prank.” That kind of reckless gall is an unfortunate side effect of being socialized first as a white boy, and then as a white man in this country. Every economic, academic, legal and social system in this country has for more than three centuries functioned with the implicit purpose of ensuring that white men are the primary benefactors of all privilege. The kind of arrogance bred by that kind of conditioning is pathogenic, causing its host to develop a subconscious yet no less obnoxious perception that the rules do not apply to him, or at least that their application is negotiable.  (…..)

As I’ve said, living 15 years performing manual labor in North Korea is unimaginable, but so is going to a place I know I’m unwelcome and violating their laws. I’m a black woman though. The hopeless fear Warmbier is now experiencing is my daily reality living in a country where white men like him are willfully oblivious to my suffering even as they are complicit in maintaining the power structures which ensure their supremacy at my expense. He is now an outsider at the mercy of a government unfazed by his cries for help. I get it.  [Huffington Post via reader tip]

What is interesting is that there have been far fewer white people detained in North Korea than other races which the author makes no mention of in her article.  There has been 16 American detainees in North Korea since 1996.   Five were white, eight were ethnic Koreans, one black and one hispanic.  I have long recommended against traveling to North Korea, but many Americans have traveled there with no issues.  The biggest reason Americans have been detained is because of religious reasons, or in the case of Euna Lee and Laura Ling sheer stupidity.

This actually makes Warmbier’s detention very different from all the others.  What we don’t know is was Warmbier told by someone in the hotel he could have the poster in order to have an excuse to arrest him?  It seems pretty insensitive to me to blame so called “white privilege” when all the facts of why he was detained and what happened to him are not known.