The Myth of White Male Privilege

When the universe keeps repeatedly hitting me on top of the head with a topic from several sources along the lines of “White Male Privilege – The Problem with the World Today” I finally have to take the hint and realize it’s something I need to write about. That also means it’s something I have to give thought to, mull over, weigh, and form a real opinion on. First a bit of disclosure – yes, I am a white male. Secondly, a bit of qualification – I am a white gay male. Did you feel the shift in your thinking there between those statements? I am at once part of the problem, I’m a conspirator in this evil white male oligarchy and in the next breath I’m an outcast, a pariah, another victim – we live in a complicated society. I will freely admit though that in the hierarchy of who gets the raw deal, I’m better off than most. I absolutely concur that if someone sees me standing next to an equally intelligent, thoughtful, personable, black feminist lesbian with an accent – yeah I’m going to get the job, they’re going to trust me more, they’re going to value my opinion more. I get that.

First let me put out a thought and let’s use politics as a metaphor – regime change is not the solution, it wasn’t in Iraq, it’s not true in most cases, it’s not the case here for changing society. That’s not to say that the people running things aren’t total assholes, haven’t totally messed things up, don’t deserve to get their butts kicked, but changing one group’s rule for another just invites a changing of faces with no real change in the business model. If you could wave a magic wand and suddenly women, or blacks, or Latinos would suddenly be running things and making the rules, you’d quickly have the same problems, the same abuses, the same outcries, just the faces would be different. This is as far though as many people have seen this problem through though. They’d be perfectly happy seeing different faces in the same system. There are plenty of countries where other groups run their society and all they tend to prove, is that the world gives us all an equal opportunity to screw things up. Let’s think bigger than that.

Nation building is the way to go, building an inclusive, solid society that looks beyond tribalism and privilege. We need to look hard at the institutions that maintain these, but actually we need to look hardest at ourselves. We’re all, ALL, part of the problem. We are all hardwired from an early age to buy into certain concepts, certain ways of thinking, based solely on what we are. In some ways subtle, sometimes not, the world is full of lessons for all of us, full of indoctrinations and programming. As human beings we inherently always seek to learn how things work, what the system is, what the rules are, we’re constantly, judging, evaluating, weighing – it’s just how things work. Here I must remind everyone of my unique status, as a white male I’ve been sold this same package of goods and hardwired to believe it in a thousand different ways, as a gay white male, I’ve had to question, evaluate, and rewrite all the rules I had once bought wholesale and with little doubt of their validity. Sometimes living in two worlds has its advantages, here it’s being able to see a bit of both worlds and trying to reconcile the differences.

One common theme that keeps coming up that raises my hackles every time – is this concept that somehow white males need to relinquish their power, as if the power we each hold in our society is something physical, like a scepter that we hold in our hands, that we can literally hand-off to someone. It’s not that simple. Believe me most white males today if you walked up to them and told them that well you know all this massive power they hold as a white male, just won’t do, that they’re too powerful, too strong, too privileged, that they need to spread the wealth around a bit – they’d be clueless, they’d be asking “excuse me? Just what power and tell me where I can get some of this stuff.” Remember power is relative, most white guys feel they’re doing all they can to make it, put food on their table for their family, struggling to be heard, and make a place for themselves – stuff we all worry about. So let’s be specific about who the bad guys are here, not every white male is the enemy, in fact most aren’t, I will grant you though most are part of the problem as unwitting pawns.

Let’s not underestimate the power of those with real power and influence to get huge chunks of society to do their dirty work for them and even get the average working Joe to work against even his own best interests. That’s what all the labeling has been about lately with “socialists,” and “True Americans”, it’s what’s been driving so much of this recent action with the tea parties. You have all these middle class people fighting to keep taxes from being raised on the wealthy. You have outrage that our black president may have bowed to a foreigner, that he’s all about turning us into a bunch of whiney Europeans. Average Joes are terrified that they’re going to lose their American dream, when, I hate to break it to them, they never had a shot at. Okay – right there, that last sentence – I know I just lost most of my white male audience, for I’ve dared to speak a truth they don’t want to face. Their power to improve and change their lives is limited and mostly out of their control. The American dream they’ve been sold on, is for them, mostly unattainable with the current system. The crap about working hard, being a good citizen – basically translates into please work for as little as possible, buy everything you can, and keep your mouth shut. I’d ask most of my other readers to give them a bit of a break for the truth is – they’ve been played.

So then who are the bad guys in this battle. Is it one of these mythic shadow groups, that secretly pull the strings and truly run everything – mmmm, probably not. Is it an oligarchy of big business and privileged families that have an inherent interest in status quo – more likely. Most are probably convinced they’re working for stability, a greater common good, and the American Way. Well, that’s easy for them to say. Oh, and I’ll whole heartedly agree that they’re predominately (99.9%) white, and that part of the status quo and their greater common good involves keeping it that way. However, that’s not any great master plan other than keeping their own asses in power.

So what to do? First I’d ask the long list of power-deprived lesbians, blacks, latinos, gays, etc., etc., etc., Please to just give these guys a break. Have some pity. They’re not your enemy but they are a big part of the problem. They could be your greatest ally. The average Joe (even Joe the Plumber) has much more in common with any of you, than they do the power elite that’s pulling the strings. Win over even a small fraction of these guys and you’d have the votes in our democratic society to make some serous societal change. We all benefit for a better society. We need to remind these guys that they’re losing in a game that’s been fixed. That sometimes the solution, contrary to everything they’ve been told, is to take their ball home and stop playing. If you keep coming up on the short end of the stick, don’t just change the rules of the game, change the damn game. Mainly, just to think, think hard, be open, really examine all the things they’ve taken for granted. Also, to remind them that a good starting point is to start a conversation with all these people they’ve been told they’re not supposed to like, cause they’re not supposed to be like them. This is their great potential for strength as well.

We need to build a nation that can get beyond this intense tribalism that our system here in the United States has fostered, has built between sexes, races, genders. We have to make valuing diversity non-threatening, make it a true American value, not just give it lip service. We have to win over hearts one at a time, do a lot of work in the trenches. We all have to listen and we all have to talk – all of us. We have to risk sounding ignorant, and stupid and bigoted, and shallow, and extreme. We have to let go of egos and preconceptions, suspend the rules. Every white guy isn’t a redneck. We all have to acknowledge and feel our inner bigots, and racists, and classists, and sexists and work though it – on all sides. Let’s not pretend that any of us are pure or untainted in this fight.

In conclusion though, the myth of white male privilege is that it’s somehow a product of exclusion, involving smoky rooms and side deals. That all the white guys in the world get together in secret meetings and decide how they’re going to stay in power – they don’t. Most white guys are as clueless as the rest of us. If anything they just need to wake up, realize that change is a win-win proposition, and to not believe the hype they’re fed. Remember that in the grand scheme of history this whole business of wide-spread immigration, mass communication, all sorts of people living altogether everywhere is relatively new. Look how just in the past decades we’ve gone from warring nations, to nations so intertwined we can’t really afford to go to war. It’s increasingly that way with societies too, and it should be, societies and cultural groups fighting with each other and vying for power becoming societies and cultural groups so intertwined so sharing in common interests – that we can no longer afford a culture war.