I'm White and I Feel Really Bad About It
It's not an easy time to be a White Guy. I'm now into my fourth big decade of White Guyness, and I've been OK with it until now. I've tried my best to spend my one and only life on this planet trying to get along with everyone, eke out a living, not causing any trouble and mixing in a laugh here and there as I go. Mostly trying to live out my dreams of a few uninterrupted hours every NFL Sunday, watching the Red Sox win another championship, emptying my beer fridge and hoping against hope the kids will put their own damn dishes in the sink once in a while.
You'd think with such humble expectations I'd manage to get through this life without doing too much damage. (Or too much of anything else if you ask my Sweet Irish Rose. She'll tell you all about it once she's done clearing the table.) But from what I've been hearing more and more lately, the White Guy in me has been busy demeaning women, destroying the planet, subjugating native peoples, stereotyping ballplayers, producing unfunny comedy and wrecking the neighborhood. No wonder I'm too tired to help my wife around the house.
Not only to I feel bad about my Whiteness, I feel bad about feeling bad about it. Apparently we're not the most sympathetic people in the world, because whenever a White Guy says "Why is it OK to make fun of White Guys but not anyone else?" you can hear multi cultural eyes rolling across the globe and "Gimme a break" in a hundred languages. If a Mesopotamian says he's tired of the negative portrayal of Mesopotamians in the media, someone immediately forms a Mesopotamian Anti-Defamation League and the mayor's office opens a Dept. of Mesopotamian Affairs and the government starts printing election day ballots in Mesopotamese. But no one wants to listen to a White Guy yell "Unfair!" Just ask the Duke Lax team.
Maybe it's hard to argue that White Guys have caused more than our share of problems. If movies have taught me anything it's that my people are always running things and always up to no good. WWII. Russian terrorists. Evil business tycoons. Shadowy quasi-government agencies. The Galactic Empire. White Guys always seem to be large and in charge in movies. I guess it's true of real life as well. Except that the decidedly non-Caucasian places in the world don't really seem to be paradises either. And I can't take the rap anyway, since the only time I'm in charge of anything is when I'm alone in the car and I get to pick the radio station.
Are there two sets of rules for White Guys and non-White, non-Guys? Last week Isiah Thomas lost a sexual harassment lawsuit in which we admitted to calling a NY Knicks employee a "bitch." Under oath Thomas said it's more wrong for a White Guy to call a black woman a bitch than for him to say it. "A white male calling a black female a bitch is highly offensive. That would have violated my code of conduct," he said. Trust me, if there's one social movement I'm trying to get behind to make the world a better place, the "Equality of Calling Women Swear Words" is definitely NOT it. In fact, I've never wished for the right to talk to girls the way Isiah does. Not even Oprah when she did a whole show about the clothing boutique that wouldn't stay open late for her. And somehow I doubt Oprah would suffer much if I did.
While living out my simple, unassuming little White Guy existence, somehow I've managed to ruin the quality of life for indigenous peoples everywhere. I spent some time in Hawaii after I got out of college. I met a native Hawaiian woman who told me life for her people was great until the Europeans came to the islands. I politely asked her if white people have done any good by Hawaii. "Anything at all? Medicine? Technology? Trade?" until I realized we were doing the "What have the Romans ever done for us?" scene from "Life of Brian": " All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?" "Brought peace?" "Oh, peeeace...SHUT UP!!!"
My town is one of the few remaining whose intramural sports teams are nicknamed "Indians." There have been some mention of changing the name, but nothing much has come of it. Mostly because I think we're decidedly uncruel, ungenocidal people who think "Indians" is just meant to pay tribute to a group of people and is meant to be no more inherently mean or offensive than if we called our teams "Celtics," "Vikings," "Patriots" or "Fighting Irish." People who think if you really want to really help Native Americans, and not just grandstand to make yourself feel better, you can always move out of your two acre lot and deed it to the Wampanoags, who'd gladly take it back. And be sure to leave a note telling them how to winterize the pool.
There is no more accomplished, admired, envied and respected athlete in America than Tiger Woods. But a while back, he did a TV commercial where he said that because of the color of his skin there are places in America he's not allowed to play golf. I know the ad shouldn't be taken too seriously, because the real message of it was "Buy $500 drivers " but still I took it to heart. I called The Country Club in Brookline:
CC: "Pro shop."
Me: "Hi, I'm calling for a tee time."
CC: "Great. What's your member ID?"
Me: "Oh, I'm not a member, but it's OK, I'm a White Guy. You can let me play."
CC: >click< buzzzz
Of course if you're going to write about you White Guyosity, you've got to make it clear you're not hating on anyone. There's been plenty enough real hatred down through the years without anyone piling on. Donovan McNabb has said that as a black quarterback, he's held to a different standard than white QBs. Far be it for me to tell McNabb what he experiences every day, other than to point out that he plays in Philadelphia, and the crap he hears could very well be motivated not by racism, but by the fact that every single sports fan in the city is a colossal asswipe. Eagles fans hucked snow balls at Santa fercrissakes, and they don't get any whiter than St. Nick.
McNabb would certainly know more than I, but it seems to me that as a country we've gone way beyond evaluating a QB by his color. But at the same time, if there's a white Wide Receiver like Wes Welker on an NFL roster, the media is contractually obligated to call him a tough, aggressive, slot receiver with good hands and incessantly compare him to Wayne Chrebet. Why couldn't Welker be compared to a black guy like TJ Houshmanzadeh or a half-Korean like Hines Ward? And if we ever see another white defensive back you know he'll be compared to the now extinct Jasonus Sehornicus.
I hate the White Supremacy crowd more than anyone. But I've never had love for the "We're so lame and everyone elses so cool" self-loathing whites either. There's a comedy troupe called Whitest Kids U Know, and by "White" they don't mean "Funny" or "Clever." Last year I met an attorney from Cambridge. It was right after Halloween and she was gushing about how nice the holiday is in her neighborhood because kids come in from the inner city in busses to Trick or Treat, and she lamented how sad it is that her street has only white children. So I said "Yeah, it really sucks to spend your life surrounded by all those horrible caucasians."
Maybe I should've just called her a "bitch." By Isiah's rules I think that would've been cool.
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