I read the quote from Helen Philpot in last Friday's Cheers and Jeers saying:
If you are born a white, male Christian in today’s world and life didn’t turn out the way you wanted, you probably have only yourself and the Rush Limbaugh Show to blame.
Below the jump, a white male in today's world who's life hasn't turned out the way that he wants has a few thoughts.
First, the full quote, re the Sotomayor kerfuffle:
If you are born a white, male Christian in today’s world and life didn’t turn out the way you wanted, you probably have only yourself and the Rush Limbaugh Show to blame. Some exceptions probably do exist, but if you’re a commentator on a cable news channel you’re probably the rule and not the exception.
Well, I guess I'm one of the exceptions. I was born with pink skin, a y-chromosome, and a family that would of course insist that I be baptized. And we were poor. My father was a truck driver and my mother stayed home in the rural hamlet where I grew up. And my life did not turn out the way I wanted.
I tried several drafts of summing up the high/lowpoints of my life but it's just too complex. What I can say in a reasonable amount of text is that the single most powerful influence in my life (often much more so that my own decisions or will) has been the economic structure of the country in which I was born.
I stuck with a career I grew to hate for 15 years because I felt I had no choice. I am willing to work hard and am intelligent, but most of my life my choices have been greatly constrained by the fact that no one in my family has had much money. Often I was presented with choice of doing something I hate and surviving or remaining true to myself and failing utterly. And not once did anyone ever give me anything because of the color of my skin.
"But you never had any opportunities taken away from you because of it, either," I hear you cry. Well, I'll grant that that's broadly true (but with some MAJOR and noteworthy exceptions. You try getting a college scholarship as a white male sometime and it will open your eyes.), but this is exactly the spot where a lot of people on the left have a huge blindspot:
The fact that "The Man" isn't keeping me down because of the color of my skin, doesn't mean that he's not holding me down.
"Oh, quit your whining, cracker." Hear me out, please: we're on the same side, here. The people in power - the people who (broadly) run the interlocking networks of money, obligation, and firepower that run the world - don't care about race. Some do, individually, sure, but on the whole? Power just wants to get more power and keep others from having it. Money wants to make more money and take it away from other people. The only color that matters to these people is green.
I have much more in common with a poor black man than I do with rich white man. I live in a state of constant fear: fear of getting really sick because I have no insurance, fear that that ache in my tooth is something I'm going to have to live with until it rots out the nerve, fear that I'll have to miss a paycheck and thus have to pick between feeding my car and feeding my belly. I think the poor black man and I would have a lot more to talk about and get along better than I would with some rich douchebag who's lived a life of privilege (and if you want to have some fun, look up the etymology of that word sometime).
I honestly don't know how much racial strife is due to human stupidity and how much is due to human ingenuity and design. But I'm sure neither percentage is equal to zero. And I'm also sure that the only people served by it have a lot more money and power than me.
I think if you want anything in this society to make sense, you need to prioritize different categories: instead of asking "What percentage of college students are asian|indian|white|black|hispanic|aleutian islanders?" and "What color and gender should the next supreme court justice be?", we should instead ask "What percentage of college students come from poor schools?" and "What qualities of personality, types of insight, and perception of the concept of 'Justice' do we want in our next high court judge?".
Right now, I am a white male who is living almost exactly the life he wants and spent a decade and a half living a life he hated. And the transition from one to the other had little to do with my choice: my grandma died, left some cash to my mom, and that plus some scholarships meant that I got to go to college (which was worth giving up insurance for). Yes, it's my choices and hard work that make me a successful academic, but I would have made the same choice 15 years-of-heartbreak earlier if 'my choice' was the relevant operator here. And I'm forced to admit, I partially agree with Helen: I do blame Rush Limbaugh. But I doubt it's in the way she meant.
According to that line of thought, (and Helen is just expressing a pretty commonly held worldview here. I'm not trying to pick on her, specifically, so much.) if you are a white guy, who's worked hard and never had much success you have only myself to blame, regardless of any outside factors that are actively inimical to your wellbeing. The unstated corollary of course being, if you're NOT white and male and are unsuccessful you can always blame someone else (people who look like me) for your problems, regardless of how much responsibility is actually yours. If you can't see that that is grossly wrongheaded and patently offensive, then the next time you see a white homeless man who should clearly be in mental care, ask yourself, is he the one who's to blame for his situation?
And because it's the relevant elephant in the room, no, I don't think Sotomayor is racist. I think the quote she made, taken out of context, is a racist statement. I think I can make decisions just as well as a hispanic woman with roughly the same IQ as me. I'll probably make different ones, if there's not a single right answer, but I think they'll be just as good. But no, I don't think it's likely that she's "a racist" anymore than any other person we'd accept as "not a racist"... that is, she's has the occasional racist thought because she's a human, and pretty much discounts them because she's a good human. That said, I think her selection for nomination was a racist and sexist act. And I can prove it in one simple statement:
It is wrong to make employment selections based on race and gender. Period.
No, I don't care if the supreme court has looked like a country club board for years: it looked that way BECAUSE people made a race and gender type a necessary prerequisite for holding the position. The mistake wasn't that they were all white, it was that "this race and this gender are the only ones we will accept in this position". Making exactly the same mistake in the other direction is NOT a path to a just society. NO! You ask "Who's the most qualified person to hold the job?". Or more realistically if you're Obama, "Make a short-list of judges who's positions seem consanguinous with my thoughts on justice.". And if it turns out to be two white guys and a black woman, and one of the white guys is the best choice, he should pick that blue-eyed, penis-having, WASP judge, because HE WAS THE BEST CHOICE. And if the black woman was the best, then pick her and marvel at how far we've come as a society in 150 years.
I'm posting this on a Saturday afternoon, triggered by something written on Friday. Sooooo.... I'm not exactly expecting a huge response to this. But consider this: you might very well live to see white people become a minority in America. The closer that situation becomes to reality, the more starkly highlighted the difference between "white male" and "powerful" will become. Please be mindful of it when you feel inclined to make sweeping statements about men, white people, and me.