A day to remember white male privilege

At Ringside, we like balanced reporting

Yesterday, I was on a Federalist Society Webinar and gave a caustic review to Alvin Bragg’s politically inspired, Rube Goldberg prosecution of Donald Trump. It’s not that I think Trump is without blame for some of his behavior, certainly as respects, for example, the Florida-based indictment against him for misappropriation of classified documents when he left the White House and evasion of a subpoena. It’s that Bragg’s case is less a creature of law than a sneering hatchet job. Let’s just tell the truth: It was never really about paying hush money to a porn star or disguising those payments in Trump’s internal corporate records. It was about targeting a particularly despised Privileged White Male — a man who, even more than most such creatures, exploited his undeserved, racist advantages in life to keep his boot on the neck of the oppressed. His role in January 6 was just a spinoff we should have expected all along.

This got me to thinking that I’ve been giving inadequate coverage to White Male Privilege — a view that prevails in academia, the press, and large swaths of the Democratic Party. Let me start to remedy my deficient coverage, beginning with a few pieces I found in the press. (They’re not hard to find). Here’s one, titled, “Ijeoma Oluo on why it's time for white male mediocrity to lose its power. ‘We aren't just talking about a few bad dudes," Oluo said. "We are talking about deliberately constructed identities and systems of power.’ "

When the author Ijeoma Oluo’s first book “So You Want to Talk About Race” was published in 2018, the world did not know the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor or Ahmaud Arbery, nor the fates that would befall them.

Still, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner and a long line of Black people had already lost their lives to police and vigilante violence in recent years. Moreover, the presidency of Donald Trump had exposed deep fissures around race, social justice and inequity that exploded this year in the streets of America and beyond.

Now comes “Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America,” (Seal Press) which examines white male supremacy and its impact on America for generations.

In one passage, Oluo writes: “I do not believe that white men are born wanting to dominate. ... We need to do more than just break free of the oppression of white men. We also have to imagine a white manhood that is not based in the oppression of others. ... We must start asking what we want white manhood to be, and what we will no longer accept.”

So I say to my fellow white males: Time to get with it, guys!

Then there’s this by Robert Jensen (a white male, incidentally, who teaches at the University of Texas), taking a look at the same book in his review, “The Dangers of White Male Supremacy.”

I’m not special, but I live in a culture that designates people who look like me as the standard. A White supremacist and patriarchal society (we’ll get to capitalism later) props up White guys not because we’re superior but precisely because we’re not. White guys need the unearned advantages to keep alive the fantasy that we deserve to be on top. That fantasy is not harmless—our embrace of dominance means subordinating people who don’t look like us, which creates an incentive for White men to remain clueless.

Are you ashamed yet? Get a move on!

Oluo’s book is an engaging mix of American history, political analysis, and social commentary, brought to life through stories of her experience as a Black woman. That doesn’t mean it’s an easy read. No matter how often I face the depravity of patriarchy and White supremacy—the injuries that men and White people inflict on women and people of color—the realities are jarring, as they should be. To not be shaken by suffering would be to abandon some of one’s humanity. To ignore the fact that we White guys benefit from these systems would be to abandon any humanity that remains.

Oluo isn’t suggesting that all White men are evil or that no White man makes important contributions. “I am not arguing that every white man is mediocre.”

So don’t go overboard. See, we’re not all evil! The generous outlook of Wokeism is enough to knock your socks off.

Then there’s this from, you will not be surprised to hear, Berkeley:

In the aftermath of David DePape’s attempt to kidnap U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and his hammer assault  on her husband, Paul, analysts pored over the suspect’s online postings, looking for motivation among a toxic stew of grievance. Some connected him to the spirit of the January 6 right-wing mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol. Many seemed to see him as just another inexplicable flashpoint in the explosive politics of our time.

The attack arguably fits a broader pattern, though, one that extends from Donald Trump’s use of the “birther” conspiracy to delegitimize Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, to the torchlight parade of young neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Va., and from the Supreme Court decisions this year that expanded gun rights and rescinded abortion rights to the venomous narratives spun by some hard-right candidates in this fall’s election campaigns.

Each of these chapters feels like a violation of democratic processes and the democratic spirit, often rising from some compound of racism, sexism, homophobia and antisemitism. But in a series of interviews, Berkeley scholars traced a thread that seems to weave among our conflicts:

Here’s the punch line in case you were wondering who’s to blame (emphasis added):

After decades of economic, political and cultural change, a makeshift force of white men is rebelling against democracy.

“The way certain developments in the economy, in politics and in the social world have gone in the last 40 years has led to working-class white men … feeling like their authority has been undermined,” said sociologist Raka Ray, dean of social sciences at UC Berkeley.

Most of this condemnation of white men takes root in social and economic issues, but not a small part of it includes America’s decades if not centuries of brutal militarism. Today is a good day for us to be mindful of the wretchedness and selfishness of white men.

Today is June 6.

That one looks like he was in high school three weeks ago.

There is much talk in these times about “heroes” who have been in the vanguard for social change here at home. June 6 is a good day to remember that the real heroes never came home.