What's the Male Version of a Karen?
On Facebook, I post a lot of personal stuff. I write things there, like I write things here, about what I’m doing and what I think. I don’t tend to share articles or memes or songs or other people’s posts or Tweets or whatever. I’m not a good Twitter user. Twitterer? Tweeter? Do we capitalize “Tweets”? I don’t even know. But I don’t post about my outrage at an unarmed black man killed, again, by a cop or a white woman willing to weaponize the police to protect her privilege to do whatever the fuck she wants in Central Park with her unleashed dog.
Anyway. Most of my stuff is personal, not political. Of course, for a lot of people, the political is personal, it seems like especially now. But I don’t feel like I’m educated enough or well-versed in anything enough to write something or share something and say, “This is the truth.” I am becoming more and more sure that everything is extremely complicated, and if a statement, a belief, a public policy recommendation is simple enough to be put into a social media post, it’s probably too simple to be true, or meaningful, or effective.
Good Rod. Progressive Rod. Your pal Rod.
Shortly after the shelter in place orders, with the privilege of having a job that allowed me to continue working and getting paid and paying my rent while simultaneously staying home, I decided I would grow a pandemic beard. But after a couple of months, I got tired of it, so I decided to try a couple of alternative looks. It was fun, and the guy with the coffee cup made me laugh. When I showed my son, he said, “Oh my God! What did you do!” That still makes me laugh, just thinking about it. Now, though, I’m seeing those photos as symbolic of aspects of myself, some performative, some hidden away, but all parts of me.
Anyway. I listen to a lot of podcasts. Much of my worldview these days is shaped by WNYC, Radiotopia, Gimlet, NPR, Slate, and others. Recently I’ve been listening to The Heart’s series, “Race Traitor.”
Already I’m feeling uncomfortable writing this. And that’s good. Discomfort is what this is about. Discomfort is good.
The Heart is not for me. I am a 48 year old cis white man. I know nothing about what it’s like to be queer, or a person of color. But I like they way they make audio. I like how they’ve evolved from their origins as something called Audio Smut, into The Heart, then into something new called Mermaid Palace. I like how they experiment with form. And I like that they are making audio about what matters to them. They are earnest.
What struck me about the “Race Traitor” series is how uncomfortable it’s making me. This is not a new feeling; I’m old enough and liberal enough to have spent some time in it before and to have spent more than some time trying like hell to argue or explain my way out of having to feel it. But I think I’ve come into enough maturity and experience to finally start to realize that while most of the things I write and say and post are about me, not everything else out there in the world is about me. Sometimes, the best thing I can do is just shut the fuck up and listen. And often, what you have to listen to is very uncomfortable.
Coworker Rod. Goofy sense of humor. Sure, we’ve got problems, but America is the greatest country on earth.
Times when I (and maybe you too) should shut the fuck up: I have no business explaining to a person of color why “Black Lives Matter” should really be “All Lives Matter” or “Blue Lives Matter” or whatever. They have lived their entire life with experiences I haven’t and can’t experience myself. Their experiences were nothing like mine, in a culture and with a history that I do not and cannot share, because my culture and my history are nothing like theirs. I have no business explaining that this was just one bad cop, or that there were other circumstances, or whatever bullshit extenuation I can come up with to reduce my discomfort over the incontrovertible fact that people just like me have done, are doing, and will do horrible, cruel, unjust things to people just like them. Full stop. No excuses, no explanations. The evidence of it is everywhere. Everywhere, every day. You can only tell yourself “this incident is an anomaly” so many times before you have to sit with the discomfort that this incident is not at all an anomaly.
Angry Rod, the guy LBJ was talking about when he said, ““If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” And yes, LBJ’s record on race is also complicated.
The power in the United States is white power, and it has dropped its mask. It has stopped pretending to believe in high minded concepts like justice and equality. It is openly acting with brutality to people of color, women, and queer folk. Those with wealth and power have done, are doing, and will do everything they can to take wealth and power, keep wealth and power, and grow wealth and power. They are fucking poor people, openly. Wealth and power are white. Poverty is brown.
Even writing this, I want very much to reiterate “they” are cruel. Not me. White power is “they” and “it,” not “we” and “I.” And I want to make sure you know that I live in a crappy, over-priced two-bedroom apartment. That I am not wealthy. That I am not powerful. That I am not hurting anybody. It’s a reflex. In saying that I sit with the discomfort, I’m still trying to ease that discomfort by saying it’s not really me. “I am not white power!” But I am.
I am all stocked up in privilege over here, so much that I couldn’t even begin to catalog it all. My family didn’t have to deal with racial profiling and redlining in housing, discriminatory lending, and the many other actual, systematic, long-term policies that prevent generational wealth building for people of color, such as the violent destruction and confiscation of black owned businesses and the murder of those who had the impudence to be aspirational. I’ve never had to deal with job discrimination because of a vaguely black or Muslim sounding name. If I get pulled over for speeding, it never occurs to me that there’s a real possibility that I could die. When my 12-year-old wants to shoot at the fence with his Airsoft gun from the balcony of our apartment, I don’t panic and tell him, “Fuck no! Are you trying to get shot?” And we can talk about mass incarceration if you want, too.
That’s uncomfortable. I have all the opportunities and privilege in the world, and I’m not a wealthy man. All of the failures and barriers to my success are my own. Very uncomfortable. I have the privilege of believing that anybody out there actually cares and wants to read or hear about what I’m doing or what it means to be me, what I love and what I’m afraid of and the ways in which I’m struggling to grow and change. I have the privilege of putting myself out there in a public way without fear of violence or other manifestations of white outrage at my gall.
And most importantly, I am not willing to give up what I have, nor am I willing to make anything more than a minimally inconvenient sacrifice, to make life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness equally accessible to all people. And that is deeply uncomfortable. I’m good over here. I feel bad for you over there, but I’m good. I’m good. I’m just a little uncomfortable is all.
