Fact Check

Sarah Palin: It's Black Privilege, Not White Privilege

Rumor: Sarah Palin complained about white privilege on her website, saying the U.S. should be more concerned with 'black privilege.'

Published Jan. 6, 2015

Claim:

Claim:   Sarah Palin wrote on her website affirmative action, athletic scholarships, and food stamps result in "black privilege."


FALSE


Example:   [Collected via e-mail, January 2015]


Did Sarah Palin really say this: "White Privilege? With affirmative action, welfare, food stamps, and all those thugs getting athletic scholarships over more deserving white kids, I'd call it black privilege."

 

Origins:   On 1 January 2015, the Facebook group "Stop the World, The Teabaggers Want to Get Off" posted an image of Sarah Palin along with a fictitious quotation ostensibly uttered by her about white privilege:

The Facebook group alleged the quote attributed to Palin came from her website SarahPalinChannel.com, but a search of that site yielded no results. Palin's purported comments about black privilege were also missing from major news publications and political blogs.

While the Facebook group "Stop the Teabaggers" did not admit fabricating the above-displayed item, the page has published dubious diatribes in the past. On 27 November 2014, its Facebook group posted a made-up quote attributed to Congresswoman Michele Bachmann about the "red indian" and Thanksgiving, and on 28 November 2014 it claimed Palin had compared Native Alaskans to illegal aliens.

Of course, arguably the group's most outrageous fabrication occurred on 5 December 2014, when the following image was posted on Facebook:

A thorough search of our records indicates the above-quoted line was never written, spoken, or even thought by anyone on the snopes staff.

Last updated:   5 January 2015

David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.