According
to the very reliable source of a couple of Facebook posts I have seen recently,
I cannot live a full, proud and honest life unless I make a public declaration
of my pride in being a straight white male.
I cannot tell you what a huge burden this has lifted from me and what an
enormous difference it will make in my life.
No,
really. I can’t tell you.
Actually, I
have known that I was a straight white male since I was just a child, and let
me say, I have been tormented by that knowledge. As a young boy I would force myself to play
with dolls or take up games like chess or scrabble; or basketball; when I
really just wanted to go outside and play football, or watch boxing or
professional wrestling on tv; every night I would dream about growing up to be
one of those guys who is the embodiment of the American cultural norm, even
though I understood that I would suffer terrible reverse discrimination. In high school, I hid my orientation and
identity as well as I could. I learned
Spanish, took home economics, developed a fashion sense and learned how to
match my socks to my v-neck sweater, but I secretly kept a set of L.L. Bean
clothes in the back of my closet. I
also teased my hair way out, and learned to eat non-white foods like watermelon
and fried chicken; and gay foods like quiche.
When I went to college, I majored in theater and would tell everyone what
a great actor Sidney Poitier was and how we shouldn’t judge Pee Wee Herman. I kept not one, but two Little Richard albums
next to my stereo; and I would laugh hysterically just at the mention of Lily
Tomlin. I talked all the time about my
admiration for Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eleanor Roosevelt and how I thought that
Amelia Earhart was a much better pilot than Lindberg; and I had pictures of people
like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and Chief Joseph on my walls, but longed to have
the courage of my roommate, who put up posters of General Patton and George
Wallace.
It was all
a lie, of course, and I hated my fake life.
But it wasn’t
until I left college and started a career that I really understood the straight
white man’s burden. Since I was a
theater major, I had to apply for jobs that didn’t use any of my actual skills;
but as soon as the employer began to suspect that I might be a straight white
guy, I would get an interview and a job offer.
How could I try to pass as non-white if I was always having to pull
myself up by my grandfather’s bootstraps?
How could I pass as gay if I kept getting offered really good jobs in
prestigious companies? I’d go out partying
at night and drive home; and I can’t tell you how many times I got stopped and
was so afraid that I wouldn’t get roughed up or searched or referred to with
vile slurs and epithets, or even that I might just get sent home with a wink
and a laugh and be told to be more careful next time; just because some racist
cop saw that I was a straight white male.
But now
that I have decided to embrace my straight white male identity and declare my
straight white male pride, I realize that I am going to have to deal with some
prejudice. I will have to live with the
pain of never being looked at with disgust when I and my girl-friend (There, I
said it!) show affection, hold hands or kiss in public. We plan to marry some
day and I just know that we won’t have the least bit of trouble finding a church
to marry us or a clerk to give us our marriage license. Did you know that gay people actually think
that my marrying my girlfriend won’t threaten the sanctity of their marriages
at all?!? I need to accept that people
simply aren’t going to ask us which one is the woman, or how we “do It.” As an out-of-the-closet straight white guy, I
will have to deal with the burden of no one ever asking me what “people like me”
want; and if something happens, I know that I will be identified as a man, or
an American, without any qualifiers. I
will never have the opportunity to be the first straight white guy to do
something.
As a person
of no particular color, I believe that we should all be color-blind.
All I, and
people like me, are asking for is to be treated just like everyone else, to
know the joys of being denied service; harassed by bosses, random strangers on the
street, and the police; thrown out of the military or the Boy Scouts, a job or
my church; not represented in our cultural messages, such as advertising, film,
or television, except as stereotypes; paid less for the same work. Let’s face it: white male privilege sucks.
I suddenly
feel so free and strong. Since coming out as a proud straight white male, I can
feel my courage rising.
I think I
may be almost ready to come out as a Christian.
