Angry white guy, lol
I kinda want to put this in here so when I'm older and mellow I can laugh at how angsty I was even in my 20s. While the following rant was prompted to finally be put down in text by a recent event, it is by no means a response to any single or even just recent happening.
I have alot of female friends. In a trend that someone somewhere will likely overanalyze, my life's friendship history is vastly dominated by intelligent, emotionally stable, and strong-willed women. They are not crazy. They are not stupid. They are not emotionally distant. They are not cold. I have guy friends, but they're honestly a minority. However, to almost no exception, here is a summary of the exchange between myself and said wimminz when the topic of bias, preference, discrimination, or similar such topics of unfair -isms that have been culturally wired into our society come up -
Her: "Interesting point of discussion."
Me: "General agreement, however, mild argument to the extent of benefit/harm to the preferred/deterred."
Her: "Assesment that you, Seth, are dismissing the idea that racism/sexism/etc even exists. Stop it."
Me: "Repeated agreement that the existence is there. Repeated point about degree."
Her: "Dismissal due to you owning A) A penis and B) Improper mellanin counts."
And that's about it. It gets me every. Single. Time. I will be the very first person to say that my viewpoint is not the alpha and omega. I also know that I have certain topics of discussion that drive me to say/do crazy things while completely circumventing any sort of real logic. So really, what I'm doing here is venting, but I want to fucking vent.
I'm sick of feeling like I have to preface every addition I make to any kind of social discourse with "Well I know I'm a white male and so obviously my opinion has little weight, but..." Seriously. How is this any different than a woman being dismissed as ignorant of something like cars because she's a woman? Because it's a social issue? Because "you have to experience it to know"? Maybe so, and that's possible, and if that's the case - don't fucking tell me how awesome I have it for being a white man, then, since you are not a white man. Fair? No, I guess not, huh.
I will explain: My parents scraped the fuck by to manage to put me and my brothers through school with things like "clothes" and "food" and "pencils". My brothers and I were all tested "gifted", but we went to a school where the Chemistry teacher had to fight tooth and fucking nail every year to keep any sort of advanced learning program in place, and so half the time we didn't really get the benefit of it. Our school was small enough to avoid the notice of most college recruiters, our faculty/facilities couldn't support more than one, maybe two AP classes AT ALL per year. Because of this, being accepted somewhere other than community college was considered a Huge Fucking Deal once you graduated, nevermind the reality that even those chosen few likely would never be able to afford the tuition. And money? Well the best you could hope for in most of the area (we're talking a 30-40 mile radius) were part time fast-food or grocery bagging type jobs since there weren't alot of companies in the area that had much career opporunity in them. And assuming you COULD get the money and DID get accepted into a nice school, our area was so out of touch with the rest of the world that college shock was usually enough to finish off anyone who had squeezed past those hoops.
Once you were on top of all that, you were still a stereotype to some, given where you came from. What stereotype, you might ask?
The above description is usually attributed to the inner city in some stupid afterschool special or whatever recent remake of Dangerous Minds or The Principal is coming around this year. I grew up in a rural town of about 400-500 people, depending on which year we have in question. I went to a school where my graduating class at the time was an ASTOUNDINGLY HUGE 20-something people. And, oddly enough, we were almost all white! But (and here's the really crazy part) - we didn't all have wonderful easy access to great jobs and top levels of education just waiting for us to make the slightest effort to get. And when we did, alot of the time we were all just backwater hicks to the people holding the keys. "Oh you went to Lone Jack and now you want to be a lawyer? lolwhut" is not a made up situation.
So no, while I don't deny that sexism and racism exist and are harmful, terrible things, I'm pretty sure I don't agree that I am privy to some special privelege or social status just because of my background. Of course, and this has been fun being told this for over ten years now - since I AM a white male, I get told "Well you just don't know how good you have it since it's all you've ever had, but it's not your fault."
Does that sound like "Don't worry your pretty little head over it, you just don't understand" to anyone else?