After much reading here - a straight white guy's take on all this mess

[The Straight Story]

There is, obviously, some tension a brewing in these here parts. This little corner of the web many of us call home seems to be, at times, a volatile place on some subjects.

So I thought a lot and tried to understand a bit more as to why. One cannot broach such a topic without someone getting pissed of at them. Oh well, people have been pissed at me before...

At some point, you have to start at the top. And the top of the heap:

White

White people have the most power, majority, etc and so on. No need to go into depth.

So what happens from there?

We start to classify people into minority groups who want (and should have) their rights to be at the top as well, and that is where things sometimes go wrong. Allow me to demonstrate:

White,
-Straight, Male - top rung
-Straight Female - A minority
-Gay Male - A minority
-Gay Female - A minority within a minority
-Handicapped - same as above in template (male/female/min within min, etc)
-Mentally Handicapped (ibid)

You get the picture - people are continually slotted into sub groups who feel they do not have the same rights and privileges as the top group. And really, they don't.

This leaves the straight white guy chilling with a brew in Texas working at a gas station wondering why folks like Obama are so much more successful in life while he is sitting there trying to pay his rent on time.

So then he starts subdividing more - overweight, a minority, etc and so on. He is not getting where he wants in life due to some factor X and yet others who claim to be a minority are kicking ass. Where is all his white mojo and power at? He must be a minority in some way too.

Most the white people in this country are not in powerful positions, they are the day to day folks just living their lives trying to get by.

But they are lumped in with all the others. They are told - you can be anything you want because you are white, if you are not where you want to be it is solely your own fault for being lazy - you have the potential minorities don't have.

Unless, of course - we are talking about some homeless white guy and the above paragraph is being spoken by a rw crack job. Then we take some offense of course.

Now - before someone goes off saying 'oh you poor white males have it so hard' - that is not my point at all.

What happens is we start lumping people together with negative additions and we see it as ok for them.

To wit:
White males + power = always bad thing
Any minority group + anything sounding bad about them = Xphobia
Any minority group + anything repressive said = spot on, we love ya
---ie, blacks have been screwed over (that is ok)- versus blacks do X (insert something negative) which is considered racist.

The refrain is 'not all X minority are the same, and to use a blanket statement based on race is racist' - unless, of course we are referring to the top rung as defined previously.

-----
In the end, there are a lot of us straight white males who care about those who are not straight white males and want to see them happy and enjoying a great and free, equal, life in this country.

If we disagree at times on issues it does not mean we are Xphobic or don't care, we all see things differently and continual input helps us all in examining issues in a more broad light.

It is not race, but ideology which is what we must work together to fight.

There are plenty of downtrodden white males in this country - gays, homeless, handicap, et al.

And then there are people like Condi in power - sending lots of white, black, men, and women to their deaths.

It does not matter the race, sexual orientation, etc of people - power and ideology are the true oppressors of people, and all are capable of tilting in that direction.

Gays, blacks, women, handicap, etc - all can use their talents as humans to beat down those who do not submit to their views on things. It can be as simple as calling someone a hater who does not toe the line as you feel they should, or as complex as having and educated black woman (and man with powell) thrust our young people into death's waiting arms via a senseless war.

In the end - we all have some power - how we use it says more about us than the label we affix to ourselves.

You are human first, gay/black/woman/etc second - and as history shows, humans of all stripes have a tendency to abuse power.

[PresidentObama]

1. Yes, we all have some power.

Like you said. But do we all have equal power? Is equality a reality in America?

The answer is no, and thats the problem. All men are created equal, but society doesn't see it that way. Which is why gays can't marry, women make 70 cents on the dollar of men, and discrimination against blacks is still a reality.

[William769]

3. I am reminded of what Porter Goss said to me during the March on Washington (1993).

We are all protected under the U.S. Constitution, but some minorities protections are ignored. Pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?

EDIT: spelling.

[MuseRider]

5. Power

and I would add respect.

The next Doctor who checks me then looks at my husband to tell him what is wrong with me is going to find his tie tighter than he ever imagined. Can you imagine the reverse ever happening if the male was conscious?

[Clark2008]

9. I've never had that happen (of course, my husband only

goes to the doctor with me when we have baby ultra-sounds), but I HAVE had car salesmen do that. What's funny is that, between the two of us - my husband and I, I know a great deal more about automobiles than he does.

[MuseRider]

12. LOL me too.

I was trying to get the price down on a truck I wanted (needed) and the owner of the dealership is a friend. He kept telling me that he was doing me a favor but I knew he wasn't, the price was still too high. I left, they called two days later and my husband "sealed the deal" for me for $2000.00 more than my friend had left as his bottom line. I had him then I didn't.

This was a hearing test, pretty critical for me and the doc was telling my husband how deaf I was getting and how I might go totally deaf. Not good for a musician but I was certainly not deaf when he was talking about me.

Edit to add congratulations to the two of you

[Karenina]

15. A straight black gal's take on all this mess...

Car salesfolks are CAR SALESFOLKS. Mechanics come under the same heading. If the feel they can snow you, THEY WILL. Years ago, right after I left the mechanic I got stranded. A Mexican guy came to my rescue. It was just a rotten hose that had a BIG THUMBPRINT on its underside. He ran to the nearest strip mall and got a replacement, then STOOD BACK and instructed me in Spanglish, insisting I DO IT MYSELF having noticed I had tools. Refused to take a cent from me. The next day I bought a Chilton's.

The next trip to a mechanic, I got a $800 quote as the blah blah had to be blah blahed. I looked the guy in the eye and said in my sweetest feminine voice, "Check valve?" He turned COMPLETELY RED. I called the boss out of his office and asked HIM to diagnose. Check valve it was. $150 parts and labor.

The guy that tried to scam me, rather than being an angry white male, actually respected me for being on top of it. He was NOT offended when I asked for the defective part. (He was Scottish NOT American). The next time I had to come in he taught me ALL KINDS OF SHIT about my car. I ended up able to do ANYTHING that did not require a lift (brakes and fuel injection excepted).

You can't get there today.

[Bucky]

2. Charming formulas, but a bit over generalized.

There are black people with more power and money than me. There are gay people with more power and money than me. There are women with more power and money than me. If we restrict everything about the individual to a few simple categories and judge how worthy their causes are based on some rigid demographic formula about those categories, you're ignoring the value and the worth of the individual. This country and the entire tradition of liberty that inspired it rests on the rights of the individual. All that collectivist crap and identity politics crap is just another way to keep political progressives separated and disorganized.

[Morgana LaFey]

19. Not exactly

You're spouting rightwing talking points:

All that collectivist crap and identity politics crap is just another way to keep political progressives separated and disorganized.

The rightwing dreams up shit like that so they can continue being racist, sexist, homophobic, and get away with it instead of having to deal with all those tedious claims for equality, dammit!

This country and the entire tradition of liberty that inspired it rests on the rights of the individual.

And all those minority INDIVIDUALS make up a group -- groups (plural) of oppressed INDIVIDUALS. The INDIVIDUAL minority in a racist, sexist, homophobic culture can never become more than a TOKEN, and all her sisters and brothers will not be able to count on the same opportunity that the average white male has by birth. THAT makes a lie of the whole premise on which this country was formed: equality. The INDIVIDUAL can make little progress (except as a toadie TOKEN) unless s/he bands with others in her GROUP to effect change.

And those changes will NEVER happen unless there are people of the dominant culture (i.e., white straight males closely followed by white straight females) who are working WITH them to effect change towards equality.

[Bucky]

21. For the record, I do not spout and I never repeat right wing talking points.

Rightwingers may have attempted to co-opt some of the Jeffersonian rhetoric about the rights of the individual to justify their larcenous economic policies. Collectivism is the polar opposite of liberalism. I suggest you bone up on your Rousseau and Locke and then come back and tell me why the rights of the individual are right wing talking points. I'll suggest to you that the real threat to our country comes from statists and corporatists like Alberto Gonzalez and Antonin Scalia as much as from straight up crooks like Cheney and Bush.

And those changes will NEVER happen unless there are people of the dominant culture (i.e., white straight males closely followed by white straight females) who are working WITH them to effect change towards equality.

If you really want allies in the "dominant culture" I will also suggest you quite insulting the entire culture with such rote rants as "minority in a racist, sexist, homophobic culture can never become more than a TOKEN" and learn to market your message a little better. Support for equal opportunity sells; saying a whole culture is racist just turns people off.

[Morgana LaFey]

29. No, I think NOT.

It is sexist -- and racist and homophobic since we're talking about all three conditions of oppression -- to the max to attempt to set conditions on what I as a member of an oppressed group must do to gain your approval or acquiescence. It's obvious you don't happen to SEE how male and patriarchy centric that is, but it is, and if you thought about it you might ... nah, on second thought, I don't think you would.

And sorry, I don't give a damn what Locke and Rousseau or anyone else said about ANYthing. Maybe they were wrong. Maybe you don't understand them. Maybe times and our understandings have changed. Maybe I just don't care because if you're trying to say INDIVIDUALISM trumps everything, AFAIC, that's mere anarchy (and not even in the mostly good sense of contemporary anarchists).

Nice try. YOU don't get to define what is and isn't oppression or how it works or what the oppressed "must do" to gain approval and the equality that is our birthright. What unmitigated arrogance.

Oh, and as for rightwing talking points -- yes, indeed, what I quoted from your previous post is most CERTAINLY a rightwing talking point.

I'll say it again: if you are attempting to use "liberalism" as exemplified by Rousseau and Locke to defend yours and the culture's misogyny and racism and homophobia, I would hope they'd be supporters enough of simple equality (in this day and age) that they'd be rolling over in their graves at your misuse of their fine philosophies.

[blonndee]

31. Holy Jeebus...that is brilliant.

Very well said. :applause:

[Chulanowa]

35. I have to ask, Morgana...

Can you ever make a post where you don't dismiss a guy as being too stupid due to his sex to realize how much he hates women?

[Morgana LaFey]

38. Sure -- on those occasions

when he isn't busily proving that he IS, tho it's not stupidity, as a rule, but firmly entrenched belief in their own right to feel superior at everyone else's expense, their own firmly entrenched intention to hang onto and preserve their white male privilege and sense of entitlement for all their worth.

Soooo, you see, as a result, it doesn't happen too often here at DU. Which is why you think that's all I can do or say.

[Chulanowa]

39. Ah, alright

Perhaps I just have bad luck and only catch these sort of posts of yours.

[msongs]

4. many people prefer the role of victim so they can blame "others" for their own failures

or their alcohol/drug addictions, or their poverty because they spend all their money on crap instead of saving, or their
credit card debt and think they should be forgiven for choosing poorly. people must be honest, forthright, determined and courageous to accept blame for their own failures, then change themselves to achieve what they want instead of blaming others.

Msongs
www.msongs.com
batik & digital art

[xchrom]

6. i have no idea WHAT you're talking about relative to the op.

[k_jerome]

7. can you explain what this means clearly? nt.

[Karenina]

11. Your posts so consistently reveal such predjudice

and bigotry. I so wish you were willing, even once, to challenge your assumptions. :-( It's sad, M. as on the whole you're no ogre.

[WindRavenX]

24. are you saying gays are playing the "victim" in this?

Coz if so... :puke:

[cui bono]

36. No, just that gays are drug addicts and spend all their money on crap.

Oh, and yeah, that they blame others for it.

;)

[sniffa]

27. wow! you're even deeper

i reaLLy need my 2nd martini now.

[xchrom]

8. minorities -- even ''powerful'' minorities

are not yet in a position simply ''be'' human in america.

i'm beginning to think that the problem here is a function of some inability to understand fucking nuance.

to understand eddys and flows that go on with in society -- we as liberals and progressives CLAIM as a higher ground some notion of intellectual superiority and some ability to APPRECIATE subtlety and metaphor.

yet we come off -- depending on the situatiion -- as being thick as a fucking brick.

the whole thing reminds me of nothing more as people simply not reading enough -- yes -- that's what i said and i mean.

read.

everything.

you want to know how gay people live and feel -- under our skin? read gay literature.

african americans -- the same.

and so and so forth.

[JackBeck]

10. Personally...

I would start with Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" to grasp the concept of "other". I read it in two days when I was in college, pretty much before I came out. The part that blew my mind was when he was living with the blind woman.

[MuseRider]

13. I was thinking the very same thing

yesterday. I was reflecting on what was going on here and trying to remember when I became aware of how "different" people were treated and I remembered that that movie made me cry when I was little and nobody could figure out why it upset me. I read it when I was older, very effective message.

[JackBeck]

14. Reading it blew my mind.

I never could understand why he became such a monstrous figure in the movies. It was one of the saddest pieces of literature I think I've even read. I couldn't put it down.

[MuseRider]

28. It was many many years ago that I read it

but I still remember the sadness. It did make me a better person, a more understanding person both the movie and the book. At this point I don't think I could ever get through it again. I guess some of us, rather than becoming hardened become softer hearted. I can't bare what is going on here recently.

I think they made him that way in the movies so people would feel free to hate him because of his differences. Maybe it was to bring out the sympathy as well, I don't know but that is what it did to me. It was a great learning experience for me.

[Miss Chybil]

16. "the Other" is the crux of the whole problem.

I don't think we can ever get past that. If we were all the same color, the Other, would be a different religion. If we were all the same religion, the Other would be born on the wrong side of the tracks. If we all were born on the same side of the tracks, the Other would sing, while we all danced. And if we all sang, the Other would grow food. If we all grew food, the Other would eat meat. If we all ate meat, the Other would not.

Our brains are programmed to sort and categorize. That's pretty much all we do. Honest dialogue is the only way to broaden the "categories."

[JackBeck]

17. Which is why I love when Frankenstein lived with the blind woman.

She didn't know he was an other until she felt his face.

[Morgana LaFey]

20. It's not our brains -- at least not an inherent feature of humankind

it's our societal upbringing, our acculturation. We are raised by emotionally and spiritually wounded human beings who have little choice, as a rule, but to similarly wound us -- it is what I call the Disease of Patriarchy.

That disease is an innate feeling of inferiority, that we are "not good enough," and we got it from our parents because THEY were raised that way and they didn't know any better than to raise us the same way. MUCH of their parenting they thought wasn't just "okay" but fabulous. Some parents still strongly believe that spanking a very good thing and emotional insults and belitting and manipulation and bullying is a GOOD (or at least effective) way to get kids to do what they should.

Because we never feel "good enough" we are always looking for people who ARE inferior, or who we can convince ourselves are inferior to us. And so it goes. Very heady to be "better than" half the human race, or big swaths of it, people with a different and highy identifiable skin tone. You can say to yourself (and it doesn't need to be all that conscious): Well, I may be a royal fuckup, a loser and an idiot, but AT LEAST I'm not a woman. Or AT LEAST I'm not a fag. Or AT LEAST I'm not _____ (fill in the skin tone of your choice). Very, very powerful stuff.

This need to feel superior to others is really something of an addiction. So is the need for money and power that some people have. It's MORE than just a normal sense of ambition, it's how they give themselves value and how they devalue others.

And all this is how the Patriarchy perpetuates itself. Because truly healthy human beings would NEVER put up with this shit. Seriously.

[cui bono]

37. And the "other" is created/perpetuated by those in power so as to divide and conquer

As long as the poor and powerless are fighting amongst themselves they won't band together and rise up against the machine.

[motocicleta]

22. Yet I do not need to read gay lit, black lit, etc

to know that I am in the dominant class, and that this is a racist, homophobic society. Why is that so difficult for others in my class to understand? I do not know, but it is clear as day that a majority of the majority simply cannot empathize with the truth of your first line - minorities are not yet in a position to just be human in America. I feel like that line may have some power to open minds.

[StClone]

18. We needed a day (week?) of Healing

We need to have some real dialogue on DU to get some understanding and compassion as to where our fellow DUers are coming from. Please PM me if I have offended you. I need to understand how and why. I hold no grudges and have never felt slighted here though I have had some heated disagreements.

I hadn't realized things were so bad though I thought the "shower business" was offensive.

[TahitiNut]

23. I think it's wonderful ...

... that we can merely identify our gender, race, sexual orientation, military service, religious affiliation, and age ... and have all our opinions automatically assigned. No thought. No study. No discussion. No need to put forth an effort to say anything - since, if it's not compliant with the assigned perspective we must be lying.

After all, square pegs belong in square holes and round pegs belong in round holes. It's obvious. We know this is true - that's why people eschew profiles in order to keep their attitudes secret, right?

:rofl:

[lumberjack_jeff]

30. A sufficiently thorough bio should count for 1000 posts, shouldn't it?

After all, if a reader knows enough about your background, gender, heritage, education, location, religion and occupation, they should be able to prejudge anything you would potentially say, cross-referenced with what was said previously by members of your group.

:rofl:

[TahitiNut]

32. Well, I've been told (in no uncertain terms) that what I thought I thought ...

... wasn't really what I thought. As you might imagine, that was news to me. It was truly 'enlightening.' That person needed very little of the data you suggest. Now, if we could only harness that power.

[sniffa]

25. you are so deep

and i say that after onLy 1 martini, and a few bowLs of dank.

[Jonathan50]

26. Straight white male here.

I grew up in the deep south of Jim Crow. Separate schools, drinking fountains, restaurants the whole nine yards.

I was lucky though, my parents were immigrants from England and were genuinely shocked at the racism in the south at the time, that part wasn't in the brochures they used to choose Atlanta to move to (because of climate mostly). My father didn't like white southerners very much, he thought they had no sense of humor.

My mother was an antique dealer and had many gay friends in the antique business so I never even thought of gays as being any different from any one else.

I ended up drafted into the Marine Corps right after high school, spent two years in and when I came out I was so disillusioned I ended up becoming a hippy.

Today I'm a libertarian leftist and still a hippy at heart.

What a long strange trip it's been.

[lumberjack_jeff]

33. Except for the redefinition of what "minority" means...

... I agree.

Trouble comes when it is assumed that unchallenged power flows to every individual of any group with perceived power.

It is human nature for powerless people to blame the powerful. It is also human nature to mis-diagnose who owns that power. Gary the plumber isn't it.

[spoony]

34. Thoughtful as always!

I ever enjoy reading your posts on topics raging here on DU, because you take in a lot of information and really churn it around in the ole noggin, then type up eminently reasonable and fair posts.

[TZ]

40. nicely said

reminds me of one of my favorite sayings that no generalization is worth a damn including this one! Wish I could remember who said it though.

[treestar]

41. I'm just glad you did not get flamed to death for this

by the purveyors of suffering.

It is true that not every straight white male is on top of the heap. Which goes to show that anyone can do anything, and there is no reason to feel guilty just on ground of birth as white, straight, or male.