White Males Need Not Apply

This is a phrase I first heard while listening to the Savage Nation radio show. It was from an explanation about a stimulus package from the Obama administration by Robert Reich. The stimulus would go to fund new construction jobs. However, Reich says that he doesn't want to use the money to fund "high-skilled people who are already professionals or to white male construction workers." This is part of the myth that today, white men still have an unfair advantage over minorities and women.

I admit that I do not know all of the statistics regarding race and gender for this country, aside from whites being the majority race in the country and the wage-gap myth.  All I have is my experiences from coming to age in a major melting pot area of the country: Arizona.  I was always exposed to other races, ethnics, and females in my everyday life.  Early childhood was truly less complicated than what I and every one of my peers were exposed to later in life.  Everyone was equal.  There wasn't talk about racism, sexism, bigotry, bias, and privilege.  As I moved up to middle and high school, the education about history and social issues started flooding in.  We were all taught that whites owned slaves and women were slaves to men.  Getting to the end of high school, the budding radicals vowing to fight racism, patriarchy, and the rich started cropping up around me.  Peers, teachers, television shows, and even some of my own family members all believed that evil, greedy, privileged, racist, patriarchal, homophobic, extremist, Islamophobic, bigoted white men were responsible for all of the country's ills and then-presidential candidate Obama was going to put a stop to it.  I heard about how white men are terrible people and need to prove constantly that they are not like that.  The funny thing is is that the reality just did not match this vision.

My high school life and early college years was spent trying to prove I wasn't like those other evil white men.  I now realize that not only is this fight futile, but is a complete fabrication.  No matter what I do or what I say.  I will always be seen as racist and sexist, simply because I am a white male.  The fact that this is a racist and sexist assumption to make of me.  However, I am deemed privileged, so any defense of my character or accusation of another person's bigotry is halted right away.  Any injustice I may have ever experienced or am going to experience is just me being selfish and apathetic of "disadvantaged" minorities and women.  I am instructed to feel guilty for being what I am, even though I did not have a choice in the matter.

I was taught to be proud of who I am and that everybody is equal.  Unlike those early years, I have come to the realization of the double standard of "political correctness" (PC).  Political correctness is just code for "non-white males."  I have decided a while back that I will hold everyone to equal standards and have pride in who I am.  I have this one body for this one life, and I will be damned if I am going to be told that I am a shameful person for being who I am.

- Forsaken Eagle