I Am Embarrassed to Be a White Male

I am a white man, but I have never thought of myself as being just that. Growing up, I thought of myself more as a smart person, a Jew, and an adopted person. None of these things bother me, but they also don't make me feel better than other people. This is not me above - it's just an image!

Kind of late in my life, I have become more aware of what a twisted world I have lived in. I don't think that I ever exploited women or non-whites, but I never really learned as much as I should have about what they were experiencing. I am learning now! I wrote a blog discussing how I view myself as a feminist as I reviewed a book by Gloria Steinem. I also shared my view on Maya Angelou, who I never knew much about.

Both Steinem and Angelou were about more than discrimination against women! They both fought for the rights of Blacks. In the piece I wrote on Steinem, I shared that I grew up very close to where Elvin Hayes, the great basketball player who was a star of the Houston Rockets, lived with his family. I felt like racism was prevalent then, and the problems following George Floyd's murder in 2020 tell me that it is very alive today. Thankfully, it's not as bad as it used to be. This, though, is not good enough!

I remember as a high schooler learning about the idea that governments should pay reparations to Blacks for being enslaved in the U.S. The idea was first floated in the late 1800s, when the victims were easily identified. In the 1980s, after the Supreme Court ruled the the federal government needed to pay $122 million to eight Sioux Indian tribes to compensate for the illegal seizure of land in 1977 and Congress approved paying $1.25 billion to 60K Japanese-American citizens who had been interned in prison camps in World War II, a new call arose.

While I believe that victims are entitled to compensation, I struggle with reparations to Blacks making sense. The challenge, in my view, is that the time is so distant that it is almost impossible to prove who the victims were. Being Black does not mean that one is a victim of the horrible slavery from our past, and being white does not mean that one is guilty.

Still, though, there are many issues. Rather than reparations, which are direct payments to individuals, I would prefer to see the government do a better job of using laws to prevent discrimination. The NAACP calls for a national apology:

Reparations would involve a national apology, rights to the cannabis industry, financial payment, social service benefits, and land grants to every descendant of an enslaved African American and Black person a descendant of those living in the United States including during American slavery until the Jim Crow era.

As a cannabis industry analyst, I can understand the concern expressed here! I think, though, that what they are seeking, which also includes a land grant of 40 acres and some other benefits, is too much. Some states and some cities have already implemented reparations programs, including Evanston, Illinois in 2022 after approving it in 2019. Ironically, this was funded with tax revenue from cannabis! BET published an update in October that lists 10 cities that are considering reparations for slavery and structural racism.

While I struggle with the idea of reparation payments, I like the BET focus on the words "structural racism." We need to halt this. Period. I would go further: The government should not have any laws that permit discrimination. On reparations, Pew Research Center published 2021 research in late 2022 that indicated that 80% of whites were against paying reparations to descendants of slaves, while 77% of Blacks favored it.

The Steinem book taught me something that I did not know: Opposition from women got in the way of the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, which was seemingly her biggest goal. She testified in 1970, but many women opposed it, including Phyllis Schlafly. Most people seem to not know this, but ERA never passed! Constitutional amendments require that 75% of states must support it. I wasn't a voter then, but I would support it now.

Diversity, equity and inclusion are good things! There have been many DEI programs created, but there is a lot of backlash now from conservatives. When George Floyd died, it became very popular, but now there is resentment.

I don't hate myself, and I don't hate white men for being white or for being men. I have benefitted from being a white man, but I resent the way society seems to elevate white people and males. I am thinking about writing another book, and this may be what I write about. Whether I write the book or not, I intend to do a better job of promoting a world that is not discriminatory regarding race, religion, gender or sexuality.