A Fish Called Whitey..

One fish asks another fish “how’s the water?” The other fish replies, “what the hell is water?”

I made an observation recently that talking to whites about #WhitePrivlage is analogous to that fish joke. I didn’t mean it to be funny.

White people as a whole, exist within, are nourished by and enrich the invisible medium of #WhitePrivilege that most neither notice nor acknowledge exists. It even makes those who acknowledge it’s existence cringe and change the subject faster than the turnover at Starbucks during Pumpkin Spice season.

It’s everywhere because white people need to be in everything. If Pop Culture is not about white people directly, they are quick to highlight their beneficence in letting a non-white narrative be told. But, being white they still expect to be included in ERYTHING! They need some touchstone of whiteness. In movies, they forever talk about box office and how only white men will watch movies featuring white men. A racist fig leaf I find unfounded in today’s diverse movie markets and ludicrous on it’s face.

They remain so petty in this regard, they INVENTED a new role for a white man to appear in Disney’s proposed live-action Aladdin. The same white guy that is the star of that awful movie about a white guy that knew Bruce Lee.

I guess he’s now supposed to be Jesus of Agrabah?

At least his name isn’t Chris.

The fix we currently find ourselves in is the natural byproduct of hundreds of years of white supremacy in the Americas. Prior to the mid 1600s, in the colonies that would later become the United States, there was no importance placed on whiteness.

By the 1670s, the indentured servitude of Africans was on the rise. So to keep white European servants and black African servants from forming a rebellion against the power elite, white European servants were given certain privileges that black African servants were not, including land and the ability to testify in court. Fast forward a couple centuries during the Civil War, rich Southerners duped poor white people, who didn’t even own slaves, to fight by convincing them that their skin color was more important than their interest in the free labor they lined their pockets with. Not much has changed looking at the election results last year.

White is default setting for humanity. It’s why when they say “American” it doesn’t mean Native North American People or Indigenous South American Tribes descendants that are the only true Americans. It doesn’t even include you or I if you’re the wrong color. It means “White”. Nobody was fooled by the “Make America White Again” Campaign, except Tina Fey fans maybe. See you don’t have to be a klansman, you don’t have to drag a black man behind your truck. You can be a nice white lady or “Progressive” dudebro and still, membership has its privileges. It’s baked in the firmament of this country. American as sheetcake, Chevrolet, jokes about big, scary black men & enslaved black girls being raped.

All Media is driven about them as well. What effects them, how it effects them. When drugs plagued “Urban” (Black & Latino) communities. It was strictly a Law Enforcement issue. We got Rockefeller Laws in the 80's because Powder Cocaine & Crack Cocaine came with TOTALLY different sentencing guidelines. The lighter you were, the lighter your sentence. Remember “The War On Drugs”? Well, guess who let the cartels smuggle all that shit in because they were fighting Communism? You guessed it. Good old Uncle Sam. And when mandatory minimums and talk of “super predators” (Bill & Hill) and all the money pumped into the Prison Industrial Complex. incarcerating a generation of Black & Brown Men destabilizing already marginalized communities. Where was the compassion then? Where were all the Pussy Hats & Safety Pins when Black & Latina Women struggled to keep their boys & girls out of trouble? Where was all this Intersectional Feminism and All Lives Matter White Folks? Don’t believe me. Go do your research. When Whites started stealing their Nana’s OxyContin. What happened? Totally different story. It’s an Opioid “Epidemic” we need more treatment. We need more compassion. Yeah, right. Must be nice.

Conversely, when white people perform terrorist acts — as when Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people — their whiteness is never part of the news story.

Here’s the thing. You’ve got young men more privileged, pampered and babied than any generation before them that somehow believe they are being marginalized. They are entitled up the wazoo yet march in southern towns holding Tiki Torches protesting for rights they’ve had longer than ANY subset of Americans. Women, Native Americans, Asians, LGTBQ let’s not even get into my Black ass. They’ve got their Idiot Television Reality Show President and they are angrier than ever. All those guys looked fairly well dressed, they had the disposable income and the job security to travel to Charlottesville to march. So what was that protest for? That’s like the Militia dunderheads escorting them heavily armed protesting about the 2nd Amendment.

My concern is there are entire crops of perfectly good white boys going to waste. In a June 2004 study, the American Medical Association found that the rates of mental disorders like anxiety, depression, and substance abuse were twice the global average in the United States. White privilege generates anxiety among advantaged white people because they are constantly afraid of others gaining on them. This is the appeal of Demagogues like Trump. He feeds the narrative that the game is rigged against these young men and it’s the immigrants, blacks and everyone who isn’t a white guy to blame if they aren’t getting ahead. The old Southern Strategy worked like a charm on kids born long after segregation or World War II fascism. Trumps dog whistle rhetoric breads xenophobic violence and unless white people get their house in order we are all are going to have a rude awakening. It’s already chillingly like Germany before the war.

Teens donning hoods & holding swastikas will lead to what I just read about today. A young boy, about my son’s age assaulted by a group of older boys. Rope burns on his neck. This isn’t in Ohio 1919 or in Mississippi in 1964, this happened August 28th, 2017 in Claremont, New Hampshire near the town my kids Grandmother lives in.

http://www.vnews.com/Family-of-Boy-Says-Older-Teens-Deliberately-Hung-Him-Claremont-NH-12308069

They called it a “rope incident” but we all know what it was. It was a lynching. I read a report recently between 1882 and 1930, there were some 214 lynchings in Tennessee alone. Most were hanged, some were shot, and at least seven black men were burned at the stake. Today, the rise of the “alt-right” and it’s spiteful, vitriolic rhetoric seek to make naked racism, hatred and misogyny acceptable again — even fashionable. Suddenly, it’s okay to hang nooses in African American museums beat up minorities, abuse women, body-slam reporters and threaten lynchings. So for the sake of my beautiful black babies I’m going to beat my head against the wall and maybe a few of you will finally wake up and be of some use.

Politicians often talk about issues like poverty, housing, education, and healthcare, but they rarely connect them to the role that racism plays in the United States. The media often reports individual hate crimes, while systematic and institutionalized injustice is not typically reported. For example, a 2004 study published by the American Journal of Public Health found that, between 1991 and 2000, there were almost one million black people in the U.S. who died because of insufficient healthcare. The study received almost no media attention.Why do you think mainstream media report on individual, interpersonal cases of racism far more than systematic and institutionalized forms of racial injustice?

There are no accidents only precedents. White people don’t need to worry about their actions being ascribed to their race, whereas people of color constantly have to worry about their performance triggering negative group stereotypes. Well, Nazis and Klansmen are running around with impunity and those days are over. I if I don’t get to be an individual in this society? If I’ve got to worry about my kids getting lynched in 2017 near the Dartmouth Campus? You don’t get to sit complacent anymore.

Trump is on you.

So get to work Whitey.

First. White privilege has nothing to do with your guilt. Or your feelings. FUCK your feelings and your guilt. Get over yourself. If you can’t handle the fact that Whites have an unfair advantage in this society and being called on it? What good are you as an ally? Put on your big girl or boy pants.

Still here? Ok.

All Americans living today are not responsible for the creation of systems of inequality, of privilege, of oppression, and of marginalization. Those on the short end of the stick like me and those like you in the car bird seat simply inherited the legacy of our country’s past. It’s a miracle my people are doing as well as we are with the odds against us. We can’t rest. Neither can you.

Because you were born in a world you didn’t make doesn’t absolve you of doing something about it. So, first, learn American History. Not that Lost Cause bullshit about fighting a war of Northern aggression or Antebellum Southern pride and no mention of Slavery. Read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History ( The latest one) is a good start. Since you white folks don’t seem to mind living in the past when it glorifies you, (your strange fixation on sportsball players taking a knee during the National Anthem and honoring traitors with statues are perfect examples.) you should also accept and take responsibility for the less glorifying aspects of Americas past — not because you created these problems, but because you currently reap the benefits. We do not come to the table equally.

Ask yourself — What can you do to challenge white privilege on a personal level? How about on a communal level? A national level? A global level? But, this is important. —

PLEASE Don’t do it here!

Share in your space, go forth. I don’t want a lot of long winded yahoos hanging around in my mentions contemplating your navels. Y’all love to pontificate to eachother. Listen. Learn. Defer. Get a backbone. Talk to people who actually might benefit. Like, your kids. Better yet. SHOW them how you want them to be. Those Nazi kids learned that shit from home. Man & Woman up and confront the ones you are currently avoiding in your family.

But, I don’t want to hear about it.

Not up for debate.

I don’t care.

Tell other white people.

I will however, give you some homework Peggy McIntosh, an American feminist and anti-racist activist, wrote the 1988 essay “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies.” Click the following link to download the essay:

http://www.mediaed.org/Handouts/WhitePrivilegeAndMalePrivilege.pdf

It’s dated somewhat, it’s not perfect nor comprehensive, but, especially if you voted for Trump, you’ve got to start somewhere. Read the entire essay, with special attention to McIntosh’s discussion of the 46 effects of white privilege in her daily life. (This discussion begins on p. 5).

Extra Credit: Write a paper connecting the personal effects of white privilege in your daily life if you want. But don’t send it to me. I DON’T CARE. Talk to other White People about it. Ok. I’m done.

DON’T THANK ME. Don’t write me. Just go do the work. I’m not giving you cookies. But if you’ve read this far?

You go to war with the white folk you got, not the ones you wish you had.