No I couldn’t, because everyone would think it’s just some white supremacist/manosphere/redpill nonsense, and likely the only people who would show up would be those types anyway.
Literally every other demographic gets their own “spaces” and “identity groups,” and if a white man shows up to those they’re seen as invading where they don’t belong. In mixed-identity spaces, white men are sidelined because they’re the “oppressors” and nobody wants to hear their input, perspective, or opinion. But if white men form an identity group, then everyone assumes it’s about racism and sexism. And if a white man self-isolates, then he gets called an incel and a creep.
There’s literally no good option available other than to be a self-effacing fly on the wall who passively agrees with everything said by a woman or person of color and never critiques, questions, seeks clarity, nor adds nuance.
Women get “women’s spaces,” but “men’s spaces” are to be deplored. BIPOC get “BIPOC spaces,” but “white spaces” are to be abhorred. LGBTQ+ get “queer spaces” but “straight spaces” are to be despised.
And if people say “all spaces are straight white male spaces by default,” then why is it unacceptable to boot anyone else out of those spaces? If someone of a different demographic shows up and starts demanding the narrative/vibe/atmosphere shifts to suit their sensibilities, anyone who doesn’t comply is seen as a racist/sexist/homophobe. But careful not to walk on too many eggshells, because it’s actually offensive to even imply that someone might be easily offended.
Literally the only other option is to hang out in actual racist/sexist/homophobic spaces, which I don’t want to do because I detest those types of people. I just want a space where I can hang out and feel welcome and taken seriously while retaining a modicum of self-respect. But this default view of “white man = oppressor (unless gay)” kinda gets in the way of that. And no one cares if I complain about it, or even believes I could have anything worth complaining about.
That’s what I mean by “white working class men are being excluded from class solidarity.” Maybe don’t force them into racially homogenous echo chambers and movements like trumpism won’t gain any momentum?
Did you miss the part where I said that I don’t either? I’d rather wither away in isolation than hang out with maga types.
In terms of sheer numbers, however, when a large portion of a certain demographic are made to feel rejected from mainstream society, they tend to form a counterculture. In this case, a large portion of the maga base might not have become so vile if they had found validation and acceptance anywhere else. I’m not saying the maga base wouldn’t be vile, but their numbers would be much smaller without anyone to recruit.
Do you have a friend group? Is it culturally diverse? Do you feel respected within it? Or if it’s all white dudes, does anyone ever suggest it’s too homogenous?
Or are you a loner like me? If so, how do you feel about that? Does anyone ever treat you like your isolation is a moral failing on your part?
In terms of sheer numbers, however, when a large portion of a certain demographic are made to feel rejected from mainstream society, they tend to form a counterculture.
Like queer people and people of color and stuff? Agreed. They are marginalized far too often.
In this case, a large portion of the maga base might not have become so vile if they had found validation and acceptance anywhere else.
Those do sound like personal and moral failings. I’m so sad that I’m lonely that imma vote for the racist pedophile. That’ll show em!
I’m not saying the maga base wouldn’t be vile, but their numbers would be much smaller without anyone to recruit.
Their base is so large because there are so many bigots. The Nazi rally in NY? The people throwing rocks at black kids trying to go to school? The ones who murder trans people? Where do you think they went over the course of our nations history? Did they cease to be? Change their ways? Or pass their bullshit down so their kids can do it too, just more in the dl.
Do you have a friend group?
Yes.
Is it culturally diverse?
Yes.
Do you feel respected within it?
Pretty much. That’s why we are friends.
Or if it’s all white dudes, does anyone ever suggest it’s too homogenous?
Lol, why on earth would I only hang out with white men?
Or are you a loner like me?
I’m pretty comfortable being alone because my job is quite social. I love the ability to throw on some tunes when the wife and kids are out of the house and get some work done.
If so, how do you feel about that?
If I was unhappy I would change something. I just moved out of a red state last month and I’m ecstatic. I left behind a bunch of the sorts of racists and other bigots that you’re talking about.
Does anyone ever treat you like your isolation is a moral failing on your part?
Not really. Why would they? Am I being destructive to them or myself? But if it came to that, therapy sounds like a good option.
Fact is, you can blame any minority groups that you want for your personal feelings or failings. Being a bit isolated isn’t, strictly speaking, a moral failing. Turning that anger against people who are already marginalized by society is a wild moral failing. No one has to vote for a rapist and felon because they are sad. People do that when they have gotten over the cognitive dissonance required to become a terrible person.
Life isn’t about never having ups and downs. It is about how we respond to our own bullshit.
The truth is I’m far more worried about my long-term illness than I am about being lonely. I can literally walk into the record/video game/comic store right now and chat it up with people rn.
Well not right now because my body is acting up, but you get the point.
Like queer people and people of color and stuff? Agreed. They are marginalized far too often.
I agree with that, but I disagree with the common sentiment that it makes it okay to do the same to cishet white men.
Those do sound like personal and moral failings.
I also agree that voting for trump would be a personal moral failing, and I despise people who do that. What I’m saying is that voting for trump might not have had the allure that it did for some people if his message that “it’s okay to be white now” didn’t have the effect on them that it did
Their base is so large because there are so many bigots.
The examples you describe are undeniably terrible people, and those actions are atrocious. There’s no excusing that, and I’m not attempting to. But among the 77 million people who voted for trump in 2024, those examples are a small percentage. How many trump voters were merely disaffected people who felt like they had no place until they were welcomed into social circles where covert racism is normalized? It’s a slippery slope, especially in the age of social media.
There’s a reason right-wing propaganda is so effective at what it does. I’m talking about the radicalization of large portions of the populace. How else do you explain the sudden shift of gen z toward the right? Clearly it held some attraction for them. Do you mean to tell me all those people were just inherently bad and destined to vote that way regardless of life circumstances?
Radicalization doesn’t start from “they were born evil.” It starts from nefarious actors targeting vulnerable groups and individuals, and in this case they found a wealth of disaffected youths, most of whom were cishet white males, who felt like the world was leaving them behind and that there wasn’t a place for them in society anymore. Do you think that messaging would have worked if it didn’t ring true for them at some level?
Mind you, I have some experience with investigating patterns of radicalization, so I’m not simply talking out of my ass here.
And again, I’m not attempting to excuse trump voters. I find them all deplorable. What I’m arguing is that there was a set of circumstances that led people in large numbers down the rabbit holes that led them to become trump supporters, and those circumstances can’t be narrowed down to just simply “they were born evil and were always going to be evil.” That mentality doesn’t help anybody, and it doesn’t help solve the problem. We have to look at all of the contributing factors in order to understand the problem if we’re ever going to remedy it. Although at this point I’m really beginning to wonder whether it’s past the point where it’s remediable.
Do you feel respected within it?
Pretty much. That’s why we are friends.
Well I’m happy for you that you found a friend group that respects you and doesn’t constantly hold your whiteness or your maleness over your head as if it’s a moral failing for which you owe them something.
Lol, why on earth would I only hang out with white men?
Only if everyone else rejects you for being a white man. Racists have other reasons, but I wasn’t under that impression about you, don’t worry
Turning that anger against people who are already marginalized by society is a wild moral failing.
Again, I agree. However, why is it different when people turn their anger against white men as a whole? For the record, I’m not just talking about racists and sexists when I say “white men.” A big problem with this discussion is that whenever I say “white men,” people seem to think I mean “racists and misogynists.” I don’t, and that’s a false equivalence. I don’t know how many times I have to repeat myself by saying there’s no justification for racist or sexist behavior. The thing I take issue with is how it’s seemingly okay to blame white men as a whole for the racism and misogyny of a relatively small proportion of them.
This whole discussion started because someone mentioned class solidarity and another person mentioned “except for cis white men” or something to that effect. And that seems to be a very common pattern these days.
I mean, I went to college not that long ago and people thought it was white supremacy that I got better grades than them. I’ve seen some of the papers they turned in. They didn’t like it if I corrected their grammar/spelling/punctuation during the peer editing process, they thought that made me racist. I mean, if you want to be functionally illiterate that’s fine, but then don’t blame me for getting a better grade on an assignment. But no, if a white man gets the best grade in the class then the only possible explanation must be institutional racism and patriarchy. They completely invalidated my strengths, which were intelligence and meticulous attention to detail. The time and effort I put into writing a decent paper didn’t count for anything. The stress of being a perfectionist didn’t count for anything. People hated me because I was a white man and I got good grades, and that was unacceptable to them. Nothing else mattered, because the very act of me doing well was enough evidence to them to casually throw around labels like “racism” and “misogyny.” I couldn’t possibly have done as well if the system wasn’t rigged in my favor, as far as they were concerned.
It was pretty insulting, especially since I was never good at sports. Like, I wouldn’t get upset if you beat me at basketball. I’m used to losing, it’s fine. At least let me have my intelligence, don’t take that away from me.
I sorta let them win though, cause I was so afraid of being called a racist or whatever, so instead of continuing in academia I killed a lot of braincells with drugs and alcohol. Maybe I’d be less racist in their eyes then? Nope, it wasn’t enough. Nothing was ever enough. So fuck it, you know?
What I’m saying is that voting for trump might not have had the allure that it did for some people if his message that “it’s okay to be white now” didn’t have the effect on them that it did
The notion is implicitly racist. No one is targeting white people. No one is targeting christians. No one is targeting cis people. No harm is coming to anyone for saying “merry chirstmas.” These are all farces perpetuated by the GOP, including Fox News.
Hate is easy for the ignorant. It is always easy to cop out and say “it must be the jews/asians/queers/etc.”
But do you know who is in actual danger? Latinos getting beat by the government and sent to a foreign hellhole. Black people getting shot by cops with their hands up. Queer people getting hurt for existing.
Those sorts of things are examples of being an institutional and societal target. And, honestly, most of the cis white men who have the biggest problem seem to be the most afraid that lifting others up will diminish their social standing. Ironically, most of them don’t realize that they aren’t really the ones in power anyway, it is the rich folks.
Radicalization doesn’t start from “they were born evil.”
My very explicit claim was that they did it to themselves, willingly. I know people who have pulled themselves out of that filth, even some people of color, and they will readily admit that they were at fault from the start.
Only if everyone else rejects you for being a white man. Racists have other reasons, but I wasn’t under that impression about you, don’t worry
Never once have I watched that happened. It is a largely made-up rationale. You wanna head to the taco shop with me? Just try to talk to them in broken Spanish and they will smile–not because they don’t like you but because you are trying and it means something. There are certainly bad people in minority groups, but they largely suffer more than the majority.
What I have seen? I’ve watched cis white men deny people jobs, promotions, livelihood, etc. And I lived in a red state for a few years so I watched it a lot.
Well I’m happy for you that you found a friend group that respects you and doesn’t constantly hold your whiteness or your maleness over your head as if it’s a moral failing for which you owe them something.
They are out there for all of us, my dude. Being with toxic people is a choice. So is personal growth.
I mean, I went to college not that long ago and people thought it was white supremacy that I got better grades than them.
You may have simply misunderstood the message, which is easy to do if you believe people are blaming you and you specifically did nothing wrong.
What people say more often (myself included as a professor) is that the intersection of white/man/cis is a societally privileged status. “Others” do suffer and are diminished by society’s insistence that we keep lifting up the majority.
They didn’t like it if I corrected their grammar/spelling/punctuation during the peer editing process, they thought that made me racist. I mean, if you want to be functionally illiterate that’s fine, but then don’t blame me for getting a better grade on an assignment.
I mean, you do sound (in this quote) like you probably come off a bit unnecessarily harsh. And do you think that, perhaps, your feelings about your cis/white/male status making you a target may actually make you unnecessarily difficult around people who are different? I’m a latino, and people do treat me differently when they find out. Guess why?
But no, if a white man gets the best grade in the class then the only possible explanation must be institutional racism and patriarchy. They completely invalidated my strengths, which were intelligence and meticulous attention to detail. The time and effort I put into writing a decent paper didn’t count for anything.
This is an issue I see a lot with white men in college. The institutionalized racism and oppression people experienced for literal centuries does create situations where white men are likely to succeed by greater margins. How many white people had their businesses burned down on black wall street? We have literally engineered society so that the people we choose to “other” will have a more difficult climb.
Does that diminish your personal contributions? No. Might it feel that way to hear it for the first time? Absolutely.
The truth is that if you have the social difficulties you describe, you likely may not have encountered the experiences and opinions of POC/queer people/non-christians/etc. That is also not necessarily a personal failing. I grew up in an elementary school with a single black child in my class and virtually no one that wasn’t white due to the nationalities that settled the area.
I’d ask you–did you receive a failing grade for the assignment that you were so proud of? Sometimes we need to internalize our accomplishments. We do them for their sake, not for the sake of recognition.
This whole discussion started because someone mentioned class solidarity and another person mentioned “except for cis white men” or something to that effect. And that seems to be a very common pattern these days.
For people who are regularly oppressed by the cis white men, it is also something natural to feel. You are clearly upset because of your perceived slights (and not all are likely to just be perception), but there is a wild difference between that and generational/lifetime oppression.
Nothing else mattered, because the very act of me doing well was enough evidence to them to casually throw around labels like “racism” and “misogyny.”
I straddle multiple worlds. I’m white. I’m latino. I’m queer. I’m an education…
People do make statements and take actions that are inherently racist or misogynistic. I was one of them at one point. We have to learn and grow.
I sorta let them win though, cause I was so afraid of being called a racist or whatever, so instead of continuing in academia I killed a lot of braincells with drugs and alcohol. Maybe I’d be less racist in their eyes then? Nope, it wasn’t enough. Nothing was ever enough. So fuck it, you know?
I started out just fucking with you because of the way your attitude comes off. I feel different now.
Honestly, I think you are a dude with a lot of pent up issues about a lot of things. You also seem to have some self-destructive tendencies.
Education does improve our lives and outlook. Start small. Go to a community college or something online. Learn to program. Learn to do some science. Whatever. General courses will still expose you to more people and ways of thinking.
Try some therapy. I really mean it–not as an insult either. You sound like you need an opportunity to vent, and some experienced hands when it comes to self-love. I think some of your issues and concerns could go away with some work.
Is your loneliness killing you? Go pick up some Warhammer models or magic cards. I mentioned some of the stores I did because they are right down the road for me. Will you find some dicks playing Warhammer or magic? Sure. But most of them are pretty good and accepting people. Force the loneliness out of your system a bit. It may also reorient your outlook.
Truth is, what you are actually saying is that you have a lot of things you need to process and that there are probably at lest a few personal issues that could improve your life and disposition if they are better resolved.
I hear that all the time, but as a white person who has faced bigotry (what some call “reverse” racism), it sounds the same as if a white person were to say “no one is racist anymore.” In other words, people who have never experienced being a white person, telling me that my experience has a white person isn’t true and never happened.
It gets to be kinda old after a while, so I don’t really engage with it anymore. Especially when the usual response to me getting upset about statements like “white people should be excluded from class solidarity” is to call me racist…
You’re right, hate is easy for the ignorant. And that includes hating white people and men (not to the exclusion of other demographics of course, but we’re already so familiar with the plights of those).
Look, I feel for the Latino community, especially now. I empathize with the Black and Queer communities because I understand they’ve had it rough with a pattern of injustices. But when that empathy gets thrown in my face, and those very people I had empathy for decide to hate me and call me an oppressor just because of my skin color and gender, things I didn’t choose and can do nothing about, then it makes it difficult for me to continue empathizing.
I’m not afraid that lifting people up will diminish my social standing. I don’t have any social standing to begin with, but even if I did, I would believe in a world where everyone could be lifted up, because life isn’t a zero-sum game. Hence, this whole discussion started with “class consciousness.”
Unfortunately, many people do seem to believe life is a zero-sum game, and that the way to uplift vulnerable/marginalized groups is to tear down the privileged white men. Not even necessarily as a demographic, but as individuals. I’ve definitely felt targeted as an individual for being a white male that people viewed as an oppressor. That’s not me misunderstanding the message, that’s the people who were targeting me misunderstanding the message if they think that targeting me (a white man, but not born into wealth and social status, and thus lacking a fair amount of this privilege that whiteness is supposed to confer; I’ve been marginalized within my demographic for having mental health issues and no social skills) is the answer to everyone’s problems. They just view me as an “easy target,” and who doesn’t love teaming up on someone vulnerable to let out all that anger pent up at the actual authorities and sources of oppression whom you don’t have the power or the courage to focus on? (/s, obviously, teaming up on vulnerable individuals is wrong regardless of demographics).
I mean, you do sound (in this quote) like you probably come off a bit unnecessarily harsh. And do you think that, perhaps, your feelings about your cis/white/male status making you a target may actually make you unnecessarily difficult around people who are different? I’m a latino, and people do treat me differently when they find out. Guess why?
I mean I know I sounded harsh in that example, but it was retrospective. It’s not like I was proofreading someone’s paper and suddenly went “lol, you’re illiterate.” But if I so much correct a punctuation mistake I would get a lecture on structures of power and institutionalized racism and how grammar rules are colonialist tools of oppression and yadda yadda yadda. So naturally I stopped making corrections. And then they got upset when they got a bad grade. Like, dude, you didn’t want me to correct your grammar when I was proofreading. Don’t act like I only got a better grade because of racism. Unless you want to blame the school systems in redlined zoning districts, but that’s got nothing to do with whether or not I deserved an A.
It’s that kind of attitude I’m talking about. I could have helped you get an A, but instead you’re just upset that I didn’t get a D-. How am I supposed to feel any empathy for that?
I even went to an honors conference once, and I was one of only a few white guys there. Out of the other several white dudes, I was likely the only one who wasn’t queer just based on looks. Everyone else was either a woman or a POC, and most were both. And yet I had to sit through a bunch of presentations about how underrepresented women and POC are in education. It felt like a sick joke. They must have been using data that was at least a decade old.
As for my “feelings” about being a target making me difficult to be around, I used to have a solid conviction that smiling at everyone I pass could turn a person’s day around, and potentially snowball into making the world a better place. So I smiled at everyone. Until some black people seemed not to like that; they glared at me meanly, so I stopped smiling. But I kept trying to smile at everyone who didn’t glare at me. The effect was that people started to notice I was smiling at everyone except for those people who happened to be black. So of course they blamed racism, and then all the other black people started glaring at me. So I stopped smiling at them to, until it turned out there were very few black people left whom I could still smile to. So at that point, of course everyone thought it was racism, so I had to stop smiling at everyone. It’s been a few years now, and a long, slow fade, but needless to say I don’t smile anymore…
So I’m sorry if my feelings made me difficult to be around, that must have been so hard for them. The next time a black person’s feelings make me uncomfortable I’ll just avoid them. Fair play, right?
The institutionalized racism and oppression people experienced for literal centuries does create situations where white men are likely to succeed by greater margins.
Okay, the Tulsa travesty was atrocious and there’s still a lot of institutionalized racism that has yet to be reckoned with. I haven’t denied that. What I am saying is that that doesn’t mean I should get a C- on a paper that deserves an A just to make people from systemically marginalized groups feel better about themselves.
And you’re right that where I grew up was not very diverse. I was also homeschooled through elementary school when most kids are at the most formative years of their social development. I went back to public school for middle school and was bullied for having no social skills and generally being a “loser.” So I have very little sympathy for anyone who wants to belittle me, and my refusal to tolerate belittlement might not have sat well with people later in life who wanted to treat me like I was their oppressor.
I went through a time in my mid-twenties where I examined my biases and did all that uncomfortable work of unlearning patterns that I didn’t even know were ostensibly racist/sexist or whatever. I did that because it felt like the right thing to do, not because I wanted recognition. But after all that effort, to be treated like I would always be an oppressor no matter what I do because of immutable characteristics I was born with, to be honest it kinda broke my will to even make the effort anymore.
You’re right, I do have pent up issues, and I do have self-destructive tendencies. I’ve been to therapy. But no matter how much self-work I did or how much progress I made, whenever I would go back out and try to socialize again I was always hit with the same roadblocks. Because I can’t change my whiteness, and I can’t change my maleness, and nobody needs another token cishet white dude in their friend group. Literally nobody wants that, so there’s no place for me because I refuse to hang out with racists.
I’m a total shut in now. I have too much anxiety to even go to the grocery store, so I order groceries from an app. It feels pathetic, but I already spent years in and out of the psych ward with suicidal tendencies so at this point I don’t really consider that an option either. I’m just surviving, but barely, and every day I wonder why I still am.
I did pick up magic: the gathering for a little bit. It was one of my last desperate attempts to break out of my isolation before giving up completely, but at that point I was already too far gone. In fact I had first learned how to play during one of my trips to the psych ward, when one of the CNAs brought her cards in. I already couldn’t sit in a room full of people without having a panic attack at that point though, so after discharge I went to a game shop a couple times to play but ultimately I just couldn’t keep it up.
And this point, I’m learning to be okay with it. I have a cat who loves me, and I’m finding enough diversions to get through each day without thinking about killing myself. But still, at least a few times a day, I’m hit with this dreadful feeling that I’m wasting the only life I get, that I’m getting older by the day and not spending my time on anything worthwhile or important. I just tune those thoughts out now. I’m getting better at that. I spent years torturing myself, trying to think my way through it and figure out a better way. Not anymore. I don’t have that kind of energy these days, sorry…
Literally go back to therapy. Find a new doctor if you need.
Then find some more diverse friends. You have a lot more to unlearn than you suspect.
Can someone be racist against a white person or all of them? Yes. Is it systematic? No. Is it pervasive? Also no.
Gotta stop with your internalized guilt or whatever before you do anything. Dude. Stop seeking external validation. It sucks but each of us is capable of taking joy or gratification in the things we do just because we do it.
And this isn’t “I did try once,” it’s an ongoing process. Sort of like my bing sick. I don’t get to take a pill then live everyday as “fixed,” nor will I ever.
You have to treat your mental illness for what it is, just like my shitty body.
If it makes you feel better you could host a parade or gathering or something.
No I couldn’t, because everyone would think it’s just some white supremacist/manosphere/redpill nonsense, and likely the only people who would show up would be those types anyway.
Literally every other demographic gets their own “spaces” and “identity groups,” and if a white man shows up to those they’re seen as invading where they don’t belong. In mixed-identity spaces, white men are sidelined because they’re the “oppressors” and nobody wants to hear their input, perspective, or opinion. But if white men form an identity group, then everyone assumes it’s about racism and sexism. And if a white man self-isolates, then he gets called an incel and a creep.
There’s literally no good option available other than to be a self-effacing fly on the wall who passively agrees with everything said by a woman or person of color and never critiques, questions, seeks clarity, nor adds nuance.
Women get “women’s spaces,” but “men’s spaces” are to be deplored. BIPOC get “BIPOC spaces,” but “white spaces” are to be abhorred. LGBTQ+ get “queer spaces” but “straight spaces” are to be despised.
And if people say “all spaces are straight white male spaces by default,” then why is it unacceptable to boot anyone else out of those spaces? If someone of a different demographic shows up and starts demanding the narrative/vibe/atmosphere shifts to suit their sensibilities, anyone who doesn’t comply is seen as a racist/sexist/homophobe. But careful not to walk on too many eggshells, because it’s actually offensive to even imply that someone might be easily offended.
Literally the only other option is to hang out in actual racist/sexist/homophobic spaces, which I don’t want to do because I detest those types of people. I just want a space where I can hang out and feel welcome and taken seriously while retaining a modicum of self-respect. But this default view of “white man = oppressor (unless gay)” kinda gets in the way of that. And no one cares if I complain about it, or even believes I could have anything worth complaining about.
That’s what I mean by “white working class men are being excluded from class solidarity.” Maybe don’t force them into racially homogenous echo chambers and movements like trumpism won’t gain any momentum?
Lol. “They are making me hang out with racists and homophobes” is a remarkably strange thing to say.
I’m cis and I’ve never felt the need to accommodate racists and homophobes.
Should I feel more attacked?
Did you miss the part where I said that I don’t either? I’d rather wither away in isolation than hang out with maga types.
In terms of sheer numbers, however, when a large portion of a certain demographic are made to feel rejected from mainstream society, they tend to form a counterculture. In this case, a large portion of the maga base might not have become so vile if they had found validation and acceptance anywhere else. I’m not saying the maga base wouldn’t be vile, but their numbers would be much smaller without anyone to recruit.
Do you have a friend group? Is it culturally diverse? Do you feel respected within it? Or if it’s all white dudes, does anyone ever suggest it’s too homogenous?
Or are you a loner like me? If so, how do you feel about that? Does anyone ever treat you like your isolation is a moral failing on your part?
I genuinely would like to know.
Like queer people and people of color and stuff? Agreed. They are marginalized far too often.
Those do sound like personal and moral failings. I’m so sad that I’m lonely that imma vote for the racist pedophile. That’ll show em!
Their base is so large because there are so many bigots. The Nazi rally in NY? The people throwing rocks at black kids trying to go to school? The ones who murder trans people? Where do you think they went over the course of our nations history? Did they cease to be? Change their ways? Or pass their bullshit down so their kids can do it too, just more in the dl.
Yes.
Yes.
Pretty much. That’s why we are friends.
Lol, why on earth would I only hang out with white men?
I’m pretty comfortable being alone because my job is quite social. I love the ability to throw on some tunes when the wife and kids are out of the house and get some work done.
If I was unhappy I would change something. I just moved out of a red state last month and I’m ecstatic. I left behind a bunch of the sorts of racists and other bigots that you’re talking about.
Not really. Why would they? Am I being destructive to them or myself? But if it came to that, therapy sounds like a good option.
Fact is, you can blame any minority groups that you want for your personal feelings or failings. Being a bit isolated isn’t, strictly speaking, a moral failing. Turning that anger against people who are already marginalized by society is a wild moral failing. No one has to vote for a rapist and felon because they are sad. People do that when they have gotten over the cognitive dissonance required to become a terrible person.
Life isn’t about never having ups and downs. It is about how we respond to our own bullshit.
The truth is I’m far more worried about my long-term illness than I am about being lonely. I can literally walk into the record/video game/comic store right now and chat it up with people rn.
Well not right now because my body is acting up, but you get the point.
I agree with that, but I disagree with the common sentiment that it makes it okay to do the same to cishet white men.
I also agree that voting for trump would be a personal moral failing, and I despise people who do that. What I’m saying is that voting for trump might not have had the allure that it did for some people if his message that “it’s okay to be white now” didn’t have the effect on them that it did
The examples you describe are undeniably terrible people, and those actions are atrocious. There’s no excusing that, and I’m not attempting to. But among the 77 million people who voted for trump in 2024, those examples are a small percentage. How many trump voters were merely disaffected people who felt like they had no place until they were welcomed into social circles where covert racism is normalized? It’s a slippery slope, especially in the age of social media.
There’s a reason right-wing propaganda is so effective at what it does. I’m talking about the radicalization of large portions of the populace. How else do you explain the sudden shift of gen z toward the right? Clearly it held some attraction for them. Do you mean to tell me all those people were just inherently bad and destined to vote that way regardless of life circumstances?
Radicalization doesn’t start from “they were born evil.” It starts from nefarious actors targeting vulnerable groups and individuals, and in this case they found a wealth of disaffected youths, most of whom were cishet white males, who felt like the world was leaving them behind and that there wasn’t a place for them in society anymore. Do you think that messaging would have worked if it didn’t ring true for them at some level?
Mind you, I have some experience with investigating patterns of radicalization, so I’m not simply talking out of my ass here.
And again, I’m not attempting to excuse trump voters. I find them all deplorable. What I’m arguing is that there was a set of circumstances that led people in large numbers down the rabbit holes that led them to become trump supporters, and those circumstances can’t be narrowed down to just simply “they were born evil and were always going to be evil.” That mentality doesn’t help anybody, and it doesn’t help solve the problem. We have to look at all of the contributing factors in order to understand the problem if we’re ever going to remedy it. Although at this point I’m really beginning to wonder whether it’s past the point where it’s remediable.
Well I’m happy for you that you found a friend group that respects you and doesn’t constantly hold your whiteness or your maleness over your head as if it’s a moral failing for which you owe them something.
Only if everyone else rejects you for being a white man. Racists have other reasons, but I wasn’t under that impression about you, don’t worry
Again, I agree. However, why is it different when people turn their anger against white men as a whole? For the record, I’m not just talking about racists and sexists when I say “white men.” A big problem with this discussion is that whenever I say “white men,” people seem to think I mean “racists and misogynists.” I don’t, and that’s a false equivalence. I don’t know how many times I have to repeat myself by saying there’s no justification for racist or sexist behavior. The thing I take issue with is how it’s seemingly okay to blame white men as a whole for the racism and misogyny of a relatively small proportion of them.
This whole discussion started because someone mentioned class solidarity and another person mentioned “except for cis white men” or something to that effect. And that seems to be a very common pattern these days.
I mean, I went to college not that long ago and people thought it was white supremacy that I got better grades than them. I’ve seen some of the papers they turned in. They didn’t like it if I corrected their grammar/spelling/punctuation during the peer editing process, they thought that made me racist. I mean, if you want to be functionally illiterate that’s fine, but then don’t blame me for getting a better grade on an assignment. But no, if a white man gets the best grade in the class then the only possible explanation must be institutional racism and patriarchy. They completely invalidated my strengths, which were intelligence and meticulous attention to detail. The time and effort I put into writing a decent paper didn’t count for anything. The stress of being a perfectionist didn’t count for anything. People hated me because I was a white man and I got good grades, and that was unacceptable to them. Nothing else mattered, because the very act of me doing well was enough evidence to them to casually throw around labels like “racism” and “misogyny.” I couldn’t possibly have done as well if the system wasn’t rigged in my favor, as far as they were concerned.
It was pretty insulting, especially since I was never good at sports. Like, I wouldn’t get upset if you beat me at basketball. I’m used to losing, it’s fine. At least let me have my intelligence, don’t take that away from me.
I sorta let them win though, cause I was so afraid of being called a racist or whatever, so instead of continuing in academia I killed a lot of braincells with drugs and alcohol. Maybe I’d be less racist in their eyes then? Nope, it wasn’t enough. Nothing was ever enough. So fuck it, you know?
The notion is implicitly racist. No one is targeting white people. No one is targeting christians. No one is targeting cis people. No harm is coming to anyone for saying “merry chirstmas.” These are all farces perpetuated by the GOP, including Fox News.
Hate is easy for the ignorant. It is always easy to cop out and say “it must be the jews/asians/queers/etc.”
But do you know who is in actual danger? Latinos getting beat by the government and sent to a foreign hellhole. Black people getting shot by cops with their hands up. Queer people getting hurt for existing.
Those sorts of things are examples of being an institutional and societal target. And, honestly, most of the cis white men who have the biggest problem seem to be the most afraid that lifting others up will diminish their social standing. Ironically, most of them don’t realize that they aren’t really the ones in power anyway, it is the rich folks.
My very explicit claim was that they did it to themselves, willingly. I know people who have pulled themselves out of that filth, even some people of color, and they will readily admit that they were at fault from the start.
Never once have I watched that happened. It is a largely made-up rationale. You wanna head to the taco shop with me? Just try to talk to them in broken Spanish and they will smile–not because they don’t like you but because you are trying and it means something. There are certainly bad people in minority groups, but they largely suffer more than the majority.
What I have seen? I’ve watched cis white men deny people jobs, promotions, livelihood, etc. And I lived in a red state for a few years so I watched it a lot.
They are out there for all of us, my dude. Being with toxic people is a choice. So is personal growth.
You may have simply misunderstood the message, which is easy to do if you believe people are blaming you and you specifically did nothing wrong.
What people say more often (myself included as a professor) is that the intersection of white/man/cis is a societally privileged status. “Others” do suffer and are diminished by society’s insistence that we keep lifting up the majority.
I mean, you do sound (in this quote) like you probably come off a bit unnecessarily harsh. And do you think that, perhaps, your feelings about your cis/white/male status making you a target may actually make you unnecessarily difficult around people who are different? I’m a latino, and people do treat me differently when they find out. Guess why?
This is an issue I see a lot with white men in college. The institutionalized racism and oppression people experienced for literal centuries does create situations where white men are likely to succeed by greater margins. How many white people had their businesses burned down on black wall street? We have literally engineered society so that the people we choose to “other” will have a more difficult climb.
Does that diminish your personal contributions? No. Might it feel that way to hear it for the first time? Absolutely.
The truth is that if you have the social difficulties you describe, you likely may not have encountered the experiences and opinions of POC/queer people/non-christians/etc. That is also not necessarily a personal failing. I grew up in an elementary school with a single black child in my class and virtually no one that wasn’t white due to the nationalities that settled the area.
I’d ask you–did you receive a failing grade for the assignment that you were so proud of? Sometimes we need to internalize our accomplishments. We do them for their sake, not for the sake of recognition.
For people who are regularly oppressed by the cis white men, it is also something natural to feel. You are clearly upset because of your perceived slights (and not all are likely to just be perception), but there is a wild difference between that and generational/lifetime oppression.
I straddle multiple worlds. I’m white. I’m latino. I’m queer. I’m an education…
People do make statements and take actions that are inherently racist or misogynistic. I was one of them at one point. We have to learn and grow.
I started out just fucking with you because of the way your attitude comes off. I feel different now.
Honestly, I think you are a dude with a lot of pent up issues about a lot of things. You also seem to have some self-destructive tendencies.
Education does improve our lives and outlook. Start small. Go to a community college or something online. Learn to program. Learn to do some science. Whatever. General courses will still expose you to more people and ways of thinking.
Try some therapy. I really mean it–not as an insult either. You sound like you need an opportunity to vent, and some experienced hands when it comes to self-love. I think some of your issues and concerns could go away with some work.
Is your loneliness killing you? Go pick up some Warhammer models or magic cards. I mentioned some of the stores I did because they are right down the road for me. Will you find some dicks playing Warhammer or magic? Sure. But most of them are pretty good and accepting people. Force the loneliness out of your system a bit. It may also reorient your outlook.
Truth is, what you are actually saying is that you have a lot of things you need to process and that there are probably at lest a few personal issues that could improve your life and disposition if they are better resolved.
I hear that all the time, but as a white person who has faced bigotry (what some call “reverse” racism), it sounds the same as if a white person were to say “no one is racist anymore.” In other words, people who have never experienced being a white person, telling me that my experience has a white person isn’t true and never happened.
It gets to be kinda old after a while, so I don’t really engage with it anymore. Especially when the usual response to me getting upset about statements like “white people should be excluded from class solidarity” is to call me racist…
You’re right, hate is easy for the ignorant. And that includes hating white people and men (not to the exclusion of other demographics of course, but we’re already so familiar with the plights of those).
Look, I feel for the Latino community, especially now. I empathize with the Black and Queer communities because I understand they’ve had it rough with a pattern of injustices. But when that empathy gets thrown in my face, and those very people I had empathy for decide to hate me and call me an oppressor just because of my skin color and gender, things I didn’t choose and can do nothing about, then it makes it difficult for me to continue empathizing.
I’m not afraid that lifting people up will diminish my social standing. I don’t have any social standing to begin with, but even if I did, I would believe in a world where everyone could be lifted up, because life isn’t a zero-sum game. Hence, this whole discussion started with “class consciousness.”
Unfortunately, many people do seem to believe life is a zero-sum game, and that the way to uplift vulnerable/marginalized groups is to tear down the privileged white men. Not even necessarily as a demographic, but as individuals. I’ve definitely felt targeted as an individual for being a white male that people viewed as an oppressor. That’s not me misunderstanding the message, that’s the people who were targeting me misunderstanding the message if they think that targeting me (a white man, but not born into wealth and social status, and thus lacking a fair amount of this privilege that whiteness is supposed to confer; I’ve been marginalized within my demographic for having mental health issues and no social skills) is the answer to everyone’s problems. They just view me as an “easy target,” and who doesn’t love teaming up on someone vulnerable to let out all that anger pent up at the actual authorities and sources of oppression whom you don’t have the power or the courage to focus on? (/s, obviously, teaming up on vulnerable individuals is wrong regardless of demographics).
I mean I know I sounded harsh in that example, but it was retrospective. It’s not like I was proofreading someone’s paper and suddenly went “lol, you’re illiterate.” But if I so much correct a punctuation mistake I would get a lecture on structures of power and institutionalized racism and how grammar rules are colonialist tools of oppression and yadda yadda yadda. So naturally I stopped making corrections. And then they got upset when they got a bad grade. Like, dude, you didn’t want me to correct your grammar when I was proofreading. Don’t act like I only got a better grade because of racism. Unless you want to blame the school systems in redlined zoning districts, but that’s got nothing to do with whether or not I deserved an A.
It’s that kind of attitude I’m talking about. I could have helped you get an A, but instead you’re just upset that I didn’t get a D-. How am I supposed to feel any empathy for that?
I even went to an honors conference once, and I was one of only a few white guys there. Out of the other several white dudes, I was likely the only one who wasn’t queer just based on looks. Everyone else was either a woman or a POC, and most were both. And yet I had to sit through a bunch of presentations about how underrepresented women and POC are in education. It felt like a sick joke. They must have been using data that was at least a decade old.
As for my “feelings” about being a target making me difficult to be around, I used to have a solid conviction that smiling at everyone I pass could turn a person’s day around, and potentially snowball into making the world a better place. So I smiled at everyone. Until some black people seemed not to like that; they glared at me meanly, so I stopped smiling. But I kept trying to smile at everyone who didn’t glare at me. The effect was that people started to notice I was smiling at everyone except for those people who happened to be black. So of course they blamed racism, and then all the other black people started glaring at me. So I stopped smiling at them to, until it turned out there were very few black people left whom I could still smile to. So at that point, of course everyone thought it was racism, so I had to stop smiling at everyone. It’s been a few years now, and a long, slow fade, but needless to say I don’t smile anymore…
So I’m sorry if my feelings made me difficult to be around, that must have been so hard for them. The next time a black person’s feelings make me uncomfortable I’ll just avoid them. Fair play, right?
Okay, the Tulsa travesty was atrocious and there’s still a lot of institutionalized racism that has yet to be reckoned with. I haven’t denied that. What I am saying is that that doesn’t mean I should get a C- on a paper that deserves an A just to make people from systemically marginalized groups feel better about themselves.
And you’re right that where I grew up was not very diverse. I was also homeschooled through elementary school when most kids are at the most formative years of their social development. I went back to public school for middle school and was bullied for having no social skills and generally being a “loser.” So I have very little sympathy for anyone who wants to belittle me, and my refusal to tolerate belittlement might not have sat well with people later in life who wanted to treat me like I was their oppressor.
I went through a time in my mid-twenties where I examined my biases and did all that uncomfortable work of unlearning patterns that I didn’t even know were ostensibly racist/sexist or whatever. I did that because it felt like the right thing to do, not because I wanted recognition. But after all that effort, to be treated like I would always be an oppressor no matter what I do because of immutable characteristics I was born with, to be honest it kinda broke my will to even make the effort anymore.
You’re right, I do have pent up issues, and I do have self-destructive tendencies. I’ve been to therapy. But no matter how much self-work I did or how much progress I made, whenever I would go back out and try to socialize again I was always hit with the same roadblocks. Because I can’t change my whiteness, and I can’t change my maleness, and nobody needs another token cishet white dude in their friend group. Literally nobody wants that, so there’s no place for me because I refuse to hang out with racists.
I’m a total shut in now. I have too much anxiety to even go to the grocery store, so I order groceries from an app. It feels pathetic, but I already spent years in and out of the psych ward with suicidal tendencies so at this point I don’t really consider that an option either. I’m just surviving, but barely, and every day I wonder why I still am.
I did pick up magic: the gathering for a little bit. It was one of my last desperate attempts to break out of my isolation before giving up completely, but at that point I was already too far gone. In fact I had first learned how to play during one of my trips to the psych ward, when one of the CNAs brought her cards in. I already couldn’t sit in a room full of people without having a panic attack at that point though, so after discharge I went to a game shop a couple times to play but ultimately I just couldn’t keep it up.
And this point, I’m learning to be okay with it. I have a cat who loves me, and I’m finding enough diversions to get through each day without thinking about killing myself. But still, at least a few times a day, I’m hit with this dreadful feeling that I’m wasting the only life I get, that I’m getting older by the day and not spending my time on anything worthwhile or important. I just tune those thoughts out now. I’m getting better at that. I spent years torturing myself, trying to think my way through it and figure out a better way. Not anymore. I don’t have that kind of energy these days, sorry…
Literally go back to therapy. Find a new doctor if you need.
Then find some more diverse friends. You have a lot more to unlearn than you suspect.
Can someone be racist against a white person or all of them? Yes. Is it systematic? No. Is it pervasive? Also no.
Gotta stop with your internalized guilt or whatever before you do anything. Dude. Stop seeking external validation. It sucks but each of us is capable of taking joy or gratification in the things we do just because we do it.
And this isn’t “I did try once,” it’s an ongoing process. Sort of like my bing sick. I don’t get to take a pill then live everyday as “fixed,” nor will I ever.
You have to treat your mental illness for what it is, just like my shitty body.