Who hurt you, boo? You should smile more. It may feel like the whole world is against you, but do all of you have to be so bitter?
Suggested Reading
Look at all of your athletes and celebrities with astronomical success. You have special programs to get you into colleges and businesses based almost entirely on your race and gender. You get hella advanced degrees. There are magazines and TV shows and movies centered squarely on you. Even when you think there aren't. ย You have 11 white history months. Shit, even some of my best friends are white.
So why are you so angry?
Your president won. Heโs angry. The presidentโs press secretary has a cushy government job. Heโs also angry. And even in your declarations about your winning, youโre still angry, as if youโve finally been relieved of consistent Ls.
Yet you have very few Ls. Okay, except that time in the South when you literally lost. But, at the end of the day, you got back your property, your land, and your money. You got back everything brah.
Oh wait, back implies that you lost something. And really, you never lost your country. I mean, Iโm no STEM major, but adding the years of dominating America, subtracting a few years of a Civil War and a handful of black politicians during Reconstruction, ย remembering that rich white men in the Union were still white so adding them too, multiplying by 6, adding the seats you got after Reconstruction when the handful of black politicians were kicked out, adding 150 more years of black prison labor and white capitalism, 44 white male presidents, 8 bajillion white male CEOs, add .5 for Barack Obama, carry over the one annnnd yep *types furiously in TI-83 to confirm* youโve always had this country.
In the last year or so the words โeconomic anxietiesโ โwhite working classโ โrust beltโ and โmiddle Americaโ have been bandied about. And guess what, I get it. Both liberal and conservative economic policies for the last 50 years have hurt the interests of labor, the poor, and working class people of all races. ย Yet everyone is still only talking about you. Your needs are being prioritized.
And while a critical mass of you in the Midwest either stayed home or quietly voted for a tyrant in 2016, not all of yโall were in that minority who tipped the election. The majority of you have voted for a white Republican guy every election since the 1960s regardless of whether his policies actually align with your needs. And a lot of your women do too. And when your sub-mediocre leaderโwho need I remind you, wonโisnโt outchea throwing Twitter temper tantrums or throwing his own administration under the bus, he's golfing on his resort. Heโs not leading a damn thing but his turkey neck towards impeachment. He is not checking for you. But it doesn't matter if he isnโt. Because the whole western world is.
So let that hurt go. You are still white and you are a man. You can take comfort in the fact that you can assault, stab, massacre, stab some other people, steal, kill, rape, threaten, lynch, and did I mention kill, but your power and privilege will generally protect you.
If you step out of your glass case of emotion, maybe, just maybe, think about why you conflate peopleโs will to destroy white supremacyโthat thing that allows people like you to commit atrocities with fewer consequences than anyone else in the world and, often, benefit from themโwith the destruction of white people. Or yโknow, keep being angry.
Straight From
Sign up for our free daily newsletter.