Should I be ashamed for being a straight white male?

I know I’m supposed to be. But I’m not. 

I had nothing to do with being a straight white male. I was born that way, and, I guess, I just sort of accepted it. Nothing I could do about it. So I’ve learned to live with it. 

It’s not easy to be me. 

Everything I read these days blames me for all the ills in this country.  Racism. Homophobia.  Xenophobia. Misogyny. Income inequality. Climate change.  Toxic masculinity.  Some even blame me for slavery more than 150 years ago. 

Honestly, I had no idea I was the cause of all this.

I was born in the early 1950s. My parents were white. My grandparents were white. All my aunts and uncles were white. So were all my cousins.  As far as I know, they were all heterosexuals.  I guess I should have expected to be a straight white male – it was hereditary. 

I don’t think anybody in my family ever had anything to do with slavery.  My mother’s parents, and I believe their parents, were Methodists – traditionally abolitionists.  My father’s parents and grandparents were Seventh-Day Adventists, traditionally opposed to slavery, too. Like many white males, I’m confused about my role in supporting slavery generations ago. 

The media and Democrats tell me I had the advantage of “white privilege.” Funny, but I don’t remember having any advantage being white. Nor apparently did my parents or grandparents.

Everybody worked hard all their lives, never made a lot of money, and to my knowledge never got a leg up or special treatment because they were white. Most of the men spent time in the military, served in WWII, and when they came home had to start over. That wasn’t easy. 

My father, for example, was a major in the Air force when he left the service. The only job he could find then was working at a lumberyard in Miami. He got a job at the Post Office working nights to support his wife and two kids; he went to college during the day to earn his master’s degree on the GI Bill.  Then he went on the road selling college textbooks for many years.

He was a hard worker with a good education. That was his advantage. Not his whiteness. It didn’t guarantee him anything, either. In his later working years there were times when he was out of work, which happens to white males, too.  Times when we didn’t have a lot of money. Times when my mother worked to help make ends meet. We were never poor, we always had good food, decent clothing and shelter, but we were never what you would call affluent. 

My sister and I never got an allowance. At an early age we were taught to work and save for things we wanted beyond the basics. If you wanted something extra, you worked for it.     

I had a paper route, sold seeds door to door, mowed lawns, and shoveled snow to earn spending money as a kid.  I don’t think my male whiteness gave me any advantage. When I was 15 I got a summer job hand-sanding cars in an auto-body shop in Miami, taking orders from James – an older black spray-painter, and a good man – I don’t think white privilege had anything to do with it.

Starting at 16 I also worked in a band.  We worked a lot and played for anyone who could pay us.  We once played an after-hours club (actually a topless joint); the almost entirely black clientele that night liked us because we were good, not because we were white.

     

Good grades and good test scores alone got me accepted to the college of my choice. I took out college loans to pay for college, and then paid those loans off in full, on time, even when I was only making about $4,000 a year in my first job out of school. I didn’t think I was special because of that. It was my debt, alone.  Nobody gave me a discount or cut me a break because I was white, or male.

When I ran my own business for about 30 years, some of my client contacts were white; some were black; some were Hispanic; some were Asian; some were gay; and most were female.

I think if you asked any of them how I treated each of them, not one would ever say their race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation had any bearing on my relationships with them. I did good work for everyone.  And treated them all the same: with courtesy and respect.

It never occurred to me I should treat them any differently. 

So I’m now puzzled how I could have lived a lifetime without ever understanding how evil I’ve always been. How I – and other straight white males like me – secretly harbored racist, homophobic, xenophobic, and misogynist tendencies all along. And how I’ve always enjoyed some great advantage solely on the basis of being a straight white male. 

I suppose I’ll just have to continue to learn to live with it.