The Wild Goose Festival was awesome as expected this weekend in Corvalis, Oregon. About a thousand folks gathered for the first-ever west coast version of the event started in North Carolina. There were artists, theologians, pastors, hippies, activists, poets and any number of other curious observers, navigating the landscape to better understand where this movement might be headed.
I offered a workshop on Saturday with Brian Ammons and Bruce Reyes Chow on masculinity and male identity. Folks gathered in the small animal arena on the fairgrounds where the event was held to hear about, and respond to, male identity from three fairly distinct perspectives. It was a rich conversation and pretty fun, at least until one question came toward the end, from a guy in the back row.
I suppose we should have seen it coming, but we had gotten a little too comfortable. The following is a paraphrase of what he said, but the essence is the same.
“Why is it that everyone seems to be criticizing men these days,” he said, “and no one takes the time to thank us or to celebrate us and all the we’ve done. Look around; more or less everything you see around us, we’ve built. Where’s the celebration for us?”
The three of us on the panel looked at the microphone as if it had suddenly been thrust in front of our faces at some high school debate tournament. For three guys known for always having opinions about nearly everything, we were notably silent. My wife, Amy, actually got up to respond, as we had opened the conversation to everyone in the room. She did well masking her rage (which she revealed in full to me later in private), but I’ll admit that I heard scarcely little of her response because my mind was still swimming with all the things I wanted to say, but probably shouldn’t.
But I’ve had a little time to process, and it seemed like an appropriate topic for Labor Day, so here are my more nuanced responses.
For starters, to suggest that men have little space left on the world stage for attention, recognition and celebration seems fairly myopic about the reality around us. From the political sphere to the silver screen, television, professional (and college) sports and other realms of popular culture, men continue to get more than our fair share of credit and attention. More than that, we get more money for the same work, and we have more power given our numbers. The very fact that we’re not the only ones in the spotlight any more hardly means we’re ignored.
And let’s not forget the mark we’ve left on the annals of history. Take a gander at Mount Rushmore (white guys), read about the Lewis and 
Clark Trail (not called the Sacajawea Trail, mind you), or at any number of monuments around our nation’s capital. I can only imagine what it’s like to gaze upon the historic (and present-day) faces of power, only to see so many faces looking back at me that hardly resemble my own.
On to the comment about building everything we see. First, it’s hard to know exactly what the man meant by “we” but given that all appearances suggested he was male and of largely Anglo descent, the comment struck the group (at least those who responded to me afterward) as speaking in part on behalf of white males.
I wonder how the comment sounded to my Native American friends in attendance, whose land was stolen out from under them to built all we saw around us.
I wonder how our African-American and Latino friends felt, knowing that our colonial history has depended (and in some ways, still depends) on exploiting the labor of other people for little or no compensation, and often by force.
I wonder how the women felt, both those who have sustained families with love, wisdom and myriad material provisions, as well as those engineers, manual laborers, scientists and architects who, too, have built what we enjoy and use every day.
I suppose I could go on, parsing out the various groups who have been marginalized, ignored, or forced into their roles as contributors to the vast infrastructure all around us, but you get the idea. If anything, his question served to point to the work yet to be done in broadening our conversations about identity, justice and our respective places in the larger conversation.
In the Christian context, it points, I think to the miles we have yet to journey toward “Thy Kingdom Come.” Yes, we all labor. We all have our trials, and we all crave validation and recognition. But to speak of perceived dispossession from a place of such privilege (past and present) only serves to drive deeper the wedges of misunderstanding, resentment and other-ness against which we, as Kingdom-seekers, should be working toward, together.
It’s not about credit; it’s about justice. and as the poet Robert Frost said, we have miles to go before we sleep.
About Christian Piatt
But here’s the thing, men don’t generally get attention or praise for good deeds. The only time men get attention is when they do something wrong. As for building everything around us, it is, unfortunately true. While it is true that women and minorities have — historically — been oppressed by white men, it does not change the fact that we (white men) created the western world for better and for worse. We can’t really speculate on how different things would be had other groups not been largely oppressed, but we can agree that white men have created the world in which we live. Granted, the credit will be shared much more equally going forward but pretty much everything created — good and bad — up until the 1960′s was created by white men. Not because we’re inherently better — we’re not — but because we controlled the show.
I refuse to abandon the truth in an effort to be politically correct.
The point of the article is that the labors of various ‘minorities’ did contribute to the world that we live in. Saying “What men built the world!” implies that only the labor of white men played a part, which is clearly not true. Because of the inequalities of the time, white men have had more opportunities to be the high profile “movers and shakers” of the world, whose decisions have had the greatest long term impact. However these “movers and shakers” of the various ages always relied on other people whose names rarely enter the history books. In the U.S.A. these lower level but still absolutely necessary peoples include A LOT of non-whites and women. Not to mention the small number of “movers and shakers” who were not white men.
Acknowledging this isn’t being “politically correct” it is simply being aware that the heroes of our history books all had a lot of support staff, that almost all of the actual work was done by said support staff, and that said support staff was far more diverse than the historical heroes themselves.
A lot of the “white men” who built this country- weren’t considered white back then.
It’s not as if there were a workforce composed of 75% White Supers overseeing the 25% Brown & Asian laborers. Read Ambrose “Nothing Like It In the World” and you’ll come away with the understanding that there were a lot of gandy dancers who might be considered white today.
Kind of feel we are diverging a bit, but it is fun…
In 1860 there were some 30 million people in the US of which some 3 million were slaves and there were maybe 50-100 Thousand Chinese.
So there weren’t a whole lot of EuroAmericans playing golf on the backs of brown skinned people.
And then again I am going to maintain that at that time a lot of Euro types weren’t white; for instance the Irish Catholics.
The Irish were welcome to various terrible jobs south of the Mason/Dixon that nobody would allow their valuable chattel to perform.
(Frank Sinatra was the first white Italian & if you don’t believe me ask Mario Cuomo or my Dad.)
Have we forgotten the labor movement? The 5 day work week is maybe 100 yrs old- everybody was exploited.
Have we forgotten the sweet spot sometime between 1955 and 1995 where, for most in the US, domestic work was eased with electric appliances, a family could live on a Father’s income, we could afford 2 cars and medical care?
Prior to that it was a brutal, zero sum world.
The institution of Slavery oppressed generations of poor white agrarians- not to the extent that it denied basic rights to the enslaved, but it certainly retarded social & economic progress for anyone who had to compete against a minimum wage that consisted of food & minimal shelter.
So let’s just put aside forever the idea that their was an amorphous cartel of all Euro Looking dudes taking it easy during the expansion of the the US infrastructure.
And I know it is an unpopular opinion to state my belief that Amerind culture was martial and cruel prior to the 1492 and with the unplanned population implosion due to the introduction of the diseases of peoples with domesticated animals it was in transition and harsh.
Pizzaro didn’t kick the Inca’s ass with an A-Team of a few dozen conquistadors- his allies were tribes rising up against their oppressors; classic game theory, the enemy of my enemy.
On a personal note- I’m 3rd generation American, all of my people came to the US in the 20th century and landed in coal mines- so I feel no onus to consider reparations to anyone.
“Why is it that everyone seems to be criticizing men these days,” he said, “and no one takes the time to thank us or to celebrate us and all the we’ve done. Look around; more or less everything you see around us, we’ve built. Where’s the celebration for us?”
I honestly think the guy has a bit of a point. In terms of talking about people as collective seem to a collective only when its time to call us privileged or to say that we are responsible for bad behavior.
On to the comment about building everything we see. First, it’s hard to know exactly what the man meant by “we” but given that all appearances suggested he was male and of largely Anglo descent, the comment struck the group (at least those who responded to me afterward) as speaking in part on behalf of white males.
What makes you so sure about that white part? It’s possible that that guy meant “white men” when he said “men” but at the same time he may have very well been asking about men in general.
That being said yes you can say that most of the leading roles and positions have been held by white guys (but isn’t it just nice how “most of the folks in power are white guys” so seamlessly turns into “white guys have most of the power”?) and yes a lot of that leadership came through unjust force.
But leaving the racial part of it aside (because from your telling you seem to have gotten that from speculation and not from what the guy actually said) I think he may have a bit of a point. With that in mind I don’t think it’s as perceieved as you say.
A man uses his life’s savings to build a charity he is not celebrated because he is a man. A man comes along and massacres the people in the main office of that charity and suddenly the fact that he is a man is front page news.
It would be an interesting experiment to see who could say “Men, as a group and as a gender, have done and accomplished many great things” without choking.
I agree with Danny and J.A. Drew Diaz… there were many non-white men who contributed and helped to build this country….to ignore this is to ignore a huge part of history (hello, we learned this back in high school, too!)….for example, the railroads were built with many Chinese workers who did many menial and dangerous and back-breaking jobs that other workers would not do…later, the anti- Chinese violence erased their presence from certain towns in northern California and the Pacific Southwest….you have to read beyond what is told in your standard high school textbook ….and more deeply…
I agree with Danny and J.A. Drew Diaz… there were many non-white men who contributed and helped to build this country….to ignore this is to ignore a huge part of history
the reason it gets ignored is because in today’s politically correct discourse about oppression it goes like this. Women of color are mistreated because they are women and because they are of color while men of color are mistreated ONLY because of race and race only, gender plays no role in the mistreatment of men apparently.
@Leia- think you missed my point- I’m talking about Euro Caucasion Males who weren’t “White”, Race is a social construct…
I’m talking about Euro Caucasion Males who weren’t “White”, Race is a social construct…
Self evidently false. Why do you persist with this obvious silliness? You do realize that it only makes white men laugh at you, don’t you?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/opinion/catholics-then-muslims-now.html?ref=opinion
@van Roinek- because that is no it was.
“But the more common way to deal with our resemblance to monkeys and apes then was to fob it off onto other ethnic groups — typically black people, or sometimes the Irish.”
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/race-sex-and-the-trials-a-young-explorer/#more-80213
, the railroads were built with many Chinese workers who did many menial and dangerous and back-breaking jobs that other workers would not do
The transcontinental railroad was built by Chinese starting in the west, and Irish from the east, til the lines linked up in Utah. The subways of New York were dug by Irish, because they took the jobs that free blacks wouldn’t do.
The idea that the Irish “weren’t white yet” is the stupidest trope I’ve ever heard on the internet. As my great grandmother might have put it: Pug mo thoin.
“I wonder how the comment sounded to my Native American friends in attendance, whose land was stolen out from under them to built all we saw around us.”
Perhaps they felt some frisson of pride or guilt as there is growing evidence that native North American culture encountered in the 16 th century is the remnant of an earlier European immigration and cultural takeover by the Clovis culture??????
This is all so reminiscent of the night I walked out on Gil Scott Heron- I’m certainly going to own none of the Amerind genocide or the Middle Passage.
What is the amnesty date for the sins of the fathers?
Cite please?
@Sarah – my alarm goes off in 7 1/2 hrs this will have to suffice tonight.
http://standup2p.wordpress.com/2012/07/13/clovis-people-probably-not-alone-in-north-america-nytimes-com/
the NYT article says only that there may have been several different migrations to the Americas from Siberia
http://smithsonianscience.org/2012/03/ice-age-mariners-from-europe-were-the-first-people-to-reach-north-america/
Maybe I have it backasswards vis which direction the peoples oF the America’s came from f tbut human history is people pushing other people out. I have no doubt that no one crossed the Bering bridge and hung a left for the article circle- rather they were pushed there later.
Do you believe native americans lived in a kum ba yah existence of harmony with nature and super cooperation among the tribes? Look at the Aztecs- they brutally subjugated EVERYONE around them….The Comanche used “horsepower” to dominate the tribes of the plains… I can go on if you’d like. The original inhabitants of this continent spent quite a bit of time kicking each others’ asses and “stealing” land.
To the author- Explain how its more immoral for a group of white people to do something than it is for a group of native americans….
Sarah I would suggest 1491 to get a snap shot of what the western hemisphere was like.
read anything you can by & about Samuel Hearne with particular attention to the Bloody Falls Massacre.
great book suggestion- also try Empire of the Summer Moon for a great look at the Comanche society.
What is the amnesty date for the sins of the fathers?
Amnesty means pardon. Those who are not guilty, don’t require pardon.
“The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.” Deutoronomy 24:16
All I see is the same old cognitive dissonance.
Consider this line:
“I wonder how the women felt, both those who have sustained families with love, wisdom and myriad material provisions, as well as those engineers, manual laborers, scientists and architects who, too, have built what we enjoy and use every day.”
I absolutely agree that women have also built everything we see around us. This is 100% true.
But it also means that when we consider ideas like “patriarchy” we need to acknowledge that women share equally in the blame. After all, if you helped build the system, then you are also responsible for it. Yet how often have we seen women blamed for society’s ills?
Even when some enterprising individuals attempt to introduce a word like “kyriarchy,” it still misses the point. Women built the system because it benefited them. To many people, the position of “trophy wife” can sound pretty good, and a system that ensures those positions exist is desirable. Yet this basic reality is never recognized; the benefits to men are called out and blame assessed, and the obvious benefits to women are ignored.
Does this mean all women want to be trophy wives? Certainly not. But it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that a large enough subset desire the job, ultimately causing a significant contribution to the creation and maintenance of the “patriarchy” system.
But of course, the same could be said of men: a great number of men have no interest in politics and would probably prefer being left alone. Yet a significant enough subset of men exist such that they will ensure the creation and maintenance of the system we live in today.
The difference is we blame the men while ignoring the women.
The cognitive dissonance comes into play when someone can see that women participated in building the system, but then does not acknowledge that with participation comes blame, and women are not receiving their fair share.
You know, I consider myself pretty far left of center and had this been the 1990s, I would be inclined to agree with the author, but I think this position is no longer appropriate in the 2010s. Men and boys face far to many unique social challenges owing to their normative gender roles that continuing to popularize whatever privileges masculinity provides simply serves to distract attention and deprive men and boys of needed support and resources. We are at a point in history where it should be acceptable, even encourage, for us to celebrate the accomplishments and contributions of men as a gender in art, science, politics and enterprise while we simultaneously embrace the costs and responsibilities that history bestows.
I also think the popular compounding of race and gender, as the author has taken the liberty of doing here, has not been helpful to understanding either social force. Extrapolating on racial oppression into gender has been a false extension. For starters, it tends to deny the historical reality that men, owing to their gender, have tended to occupy both the top AND the bottom of the social strata simultaneously. You cannot separate historic male privilege from historic male subjugation, they are two sides of the same coin. Second, it has tended to deny the exploration or acceptance of privileges provided women, and historic obligations those privileges bestow, by the gender system. The framework has been frankly, apologist, when it comes to the role of white women and slavery or conquering of Indian peoples.
Quite right Random. I would hypothesize that the author uses a bit of chicanery in stating: “A white male states ‘we built this country’ “.
The tag is a designation of the speaker, not a quote of what he said. The commenter being quoted never appears to have said that “white men built this country”. The author is stating that a white male is quoted as saying “Men (of all races) built this country.”
This article is so full of preconceived and misguided notions of power it’s hard to know where to begin. I also noticed the attempt to slip in yet another wage gap myth.
The simple fact is men *are not* paid more for *the same work* than women. Study after study proves conclusively that when women make the same decisions to sacrifice family for work that they make as much or more than men.
If anybody would like citations of that, please let me know.
Good point, Random. But these outdated attitudes are still with us.
So a man (who happens to be white) wonders why we don’t celebrate men more often and suddenly he’s racist and misogynist?
I think you may be projecting a bit here, Christian.
And you are ridiculing the idea of talking about the good men have done and the things they have built…on a website called the GOOD MEN PROJECT!?
If minorities had been given an equal opportunity to contribute the construction of (American) society in high publicity positions, they would have. But they were not. Nobody celebrates slaves for their unpaid construction of the American economy and infrastructure. Let’s not even get into the losses that American Indians experienced in order for modern American society to exist. The Chinese (before Asian-Americans were deemed the model minority by Ronald Reagan), and even Italian, Irish, and Eastern European immigrants were treated as subhuman before they were deemed white enough to integrate have also been overlooked. The issue of overlooking the contributions of former and present minorities is a transcendental problem.
To be clear, I am grateful to have been born into such a prosperous society, even if it does have its problems. But let’s give credit where it is due. Celebrating a particular group whose success has been hoarded historically is a celebration of supremacy, and that groups supremacy has been defined through the subjugation of others.
The poor uneducated white men who were elbow to elbow with minority men in bleeding and dying to build the infrastructure. It is the exploitation of men due to their *gender* (not race or income) that people like the quoted speaker are trying to raise.
Also, the headline is misleading: the speaker never said that “white men” built this country. The author is simply stating a white man is stating “we (men) built this country”. The oppression of black men should be talked about in terms of the oppression due to race *and* gender. Put another way, George Zimmerman *may* have fought with and shot a white intrude just as he did a black man. But what are the odds GZ would have fought with a woman of *any* race.
Many people don’t want to talk about the oppression of men *as men* (instead of centering on the exclusive narrative of talking about minority or poor men being oppressed and claiming it’s *only* due to their race or class, and not being male).
28,000 men died building panama canal of all races. Exploitation of men is not something unique to only men of color.
Here’s what I’m noticing. People that are openly saying they don’t know what the real intent was of the speaker and then following up by saying that he spoke from a place of ignoring white male privilege. (“We don’t know what he really meant but we know it coming from a place of white male privilege!”) I’m wondering if people are ignoring what he is actually saying (not to mention his intentions) in order to execute their preprogrammed rant about white male privielge. (not to mention the name calling).
Many people don’t want to talk about the oppression of men *as men* (instead of centering on the exclusive narrative of talking about minority or poor men being oppressed and claiming it’s *only* due to their race or class, and not being male).
I think this reaction is a side effect of the constant declaration and assertion that men cannot under any circumstances be considered oppressed over their gender, thus causing a rush to chalk up what happens to them as being anything else under the sun.
(I’m going to remember this the next time someone says that men have the privilege of being treated as individuals.)
I suspect this is directed at me. And even if it isn’t, I’d like to respond by saying that within the context of the talk at the event, his awkward question couldn’t help but cause confusion. He actually began his question by saying “I hear all this stuff about men being knuckle-draggers, being neanderthals, and what I want to know how come nobody is CELEBRATING men? I mean, we built, basically, everything. Look around! Why is nobody celebrating men?” We had been discussing male archetypes and what masculinity looked like nowadays, and nobody had been throwing around stereotypes like “neanderthals” other than to decry them, much earlier in the talk. It came off as awkward, confrontational, shallow and off-topic, one of those weird provocative questions designed to hijack a conversation and fuck with the speakers… “I know you’re talking about such and such, but why are you not acknowledging and validating the thing *I* care about?”. At least that was my impression. Does he have a point? Maybe, but who knows? The way he popped off, there was no way to be certain. It certainly created the impression, as I mentioned earlier, that he didn’t think there was such a thing as male privilege, or that the current discussion we’d all been listening to for the last hour was worthwhile, or possibly that he didn’t understand what was going on. Which, in my opinion, completely justifies the use of the term “knucklehead”. It’s textbook knuckleheadism. I’m occasionally guilty of it myself. Fire away.
It was only partially directed at you but only in the sense that you seem to be one of the folks that didn’t know what he thinking but are able to tell us the readers what he was thinking.
We had been discussing male archetypes and what masculinity looked like nowadays, and nobody had been throwing around stereotypes like “neanderthals” other than to decry them, much earlier in the talk.
While that may be true inside the conference you had going is it really that hard to wonder if he was talking about how men are spoken of outside that conference? The fact that you folks had to create you own space to have that conversation where such talk wasn’t going on I think attests to the fact that it is happening in the outside world.
Question, did you by chance question him on this stuff at a later point?
A closer reading of what I wrote would doubtlessly reveal that I wasn’t telling anybody what he was thinking, I was articulating my reactions to what he said, which is, near as I can tell, what Christian was doing with this piece in the first place.
And in answer to your question, no, I didn’t. It was a conference, the talk was over, and we all split up and went on to the next activity, which was (for me, anyway) a 12-step meeting. There were 700-1000 people at this festival, and this was just one of many talks on various spiritual topics.
Here’s a question for you, Danny. The man who asked the question wasn’t shouted down, booed, excoriated (certainly not to the degree that Christian has been for this article) or abused in any way… yet you seem to be setting up our questioner in your imagination as some kind of misunderstood straw man, at a event you didn’t attend, whose comments you didn’t hear, within the context of a article you didn’t write. I’m wondering why?
And in answer to your question, no, I didn’t. It was a conference, the talk was over, and we all split up and went on to the next activity, which was (for me, anyway) a 12-step meeting. There were 700-1000 people at this festival, and this was just one of many talks on various spiritual topics.
Ah no need to get that forward about it. Besides there is a chance if you had questioned him it might have gotten ugly and like you say there were a lot of people there so even if you wanted to you might not have gotten the chance.
….yet you seem to be setting up our questioner in your imagination as some kind of misunderstood straw man, at a event you didn’t attend, whose comments you didn’t hear, within the context of a article you didn’t write. I’m wondering why?
Because I was curious about his intentions just like the other people commenting in this article. It’s certainly possible that he is a privilege denier just as it’s possible he’s not. Obviously you aren’t trying to imply that since I wasn’t there I must be wrong are you?
no, not at all. i was just wondering if the questioner was you. anything is possible on the internet.
Ah. I see yes that would be a possibility.
But seriously though if I had been there I may not have asked the question as directly as he did but I have to say it would have been on my mind and I probably would tried to find some way to bring it up. Maybe not in those exact words but in some way, shape or form.
If I had asked the question I wouldn’t have maybe framed it in terms of “men are hot shit, we’ve made everything”. I would have framed it more in the idea that poor blue-collar and minority men were horribly exploited by “the system/culture” to create a lot of our infrastructure.
Look to any damn, suspension bridge, tunnel into mountains, mines to get raw materials, or skyscraper and you will see the deaths of men to build society.
Then I would have (attempted to) moved the conversation from conventional concepts of privilege (white, male, straight, able-bodied) to show that this exploitation centered on these mens gender as much as it did their race or class as zero women were exploited in this way.
Put another way 28,000 men died building the panama canal and …………………………ZERO WOMEN. Why do we insist on only calling out the race and class of the exploitation of workers and not their male gender?
Yes there is male privilege. There is also male oppression, and female privilege. Getting people to acknowledge those last two will typically involve an outright battle.
“Celebrating a particular group whose success has been hoarded historically is a celebration of supremacy, and that groups supremacy has been defined through the subjugation of others.”
Sorry- I don’t buy that. You cannot prove that another INDIVIDUAL would have done what any INDIVIDUAL did. You cannot say there would have been a minority or female George Washington, Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Beethoven, Merryweather Lewis etc… These men took risks, made discoveries, created beauty or developed world changing thoughts. In my book it is a-OK to celebrate their greatness.
I am absolutely committed to ensuring people of all genders and races have the opportunity to achieve their maximum potential but I and many other “knuckleheads” just like me aren’t about to throw the baby out with the bathwater in the name of political correctness.
Celebrating a particular group whose success has been hoarded historically is a celebration of supremacy, and that groups supremacy has been defined through the subjugation of others.
What a load of crap. Sactually HARMED the economic fortunes of most whites (by devaluing labor) while benefittiing only a few elites. Prosperity grew a lot faster where free white labor was the norm.
De Tocqueville had some interesting observations on this:
A century had scarcely elapsed since the foundation of the colonies, when the attention of the planters was struck by the extraordinary fact, that the provinces which were comparatively destitute of slaves, increased in population, in wealth, and in prosperity more rapidly than those which contained the greatest number of negroes. In the former, however, the inhabitants were obliged to cultivate the soil themselves, or by hired laborers; in the latter they were furnished with hands for which they paid no wages; yet although labor and expenses were on the one side, and ease with economy on the other, the former were in possession of the most advantageous system….
Undulating lands extend upon both shores of the Ohio, whose soil affords inexhaustible treasures to the laborer; on either bank the air is wholesome and the climate mild, and each of them forms the extreme frontier of a vast State: That which follows the numerous windings of the Ohio upon the left is called Kentucky, that upon the right bears the name of the river. These two States only differ in a single respect; Kentucky has admitted slavery, but the State of Ohio has prohibited the existence of slaves within its borders.
Thus the traveller who floats down the current of the Ohio to the spot where that river falls into the Mississippi, may be said to sail between liberty and servitude; and a transient inspection of the surrounding objects will convince him as to which of the two is most favorable to mankind. Upon the left bank of the stream the population is rare; from time to time one descries a troop of slaves loitering in the half-desert fields; the primaeval forest recurs at every turn; society seems to be asleep, man to be idle, and nature alone offers a scene of activity and of life. From the right bank, on the contrary, a confused hum is heard which proclaims the presence of industry; the fields are covered with abundant harvests, the elegance of the dwellings announces the taste and activity of the laborer, and man appears to be in the enjoyment of that wealth and contentment which is the reward of labor
There you have it. Free white labor built the country. So says the eyewitness.
Sactually
That’s weird. I typed “Slavery actually….’ … Whatever…
I was there when this happened. The guy asking the question was sitting down from me and to my left. I also cringed when he asked it, but it didn’t induce rage in me. It was a very awkward question, presented awkwardly, certainly, from an older white man, but I don’t know what was really in his heart. All I know is it kind of smacked of being oblivious to the point of the conversation to that point, which was about the changing masculine role(s) in society. It struck me as oblivious to the notion of male privilege that was under discussion. So yeah, we have a long way to go, but knuckleheads like him belong in the conversation.
well put Todd. Thanks.
There is also male oppression as women have a sizable if not equal role in creating the culture that oppresses everybody.
Women are 56% of the voters, and control 80% of consumer spending. When you stop examining the very top of the elite, it can be demonstrably shown that it is men who overwhelmingly sink to the lowest ranks of the power pyramid.
Men dominate the lower rungs of the power pyramid in about equal numbers as they do the top. The reason being that the inflated sense of agency men are falsely expected to have (hyperagency) is exacerbated by extrapolating from the top and saying “men have all the power”.
The simple fact is the vast majority of men have just as little agency as women, and millions have much less. But, due to the hyperagency of men perspective when these men complain of their very real problems they are called a bunch of whiners. ON a radfem site a man was complaining of depression due to his children being taken away from him, and that he was thinking of committing suicide. Many feminists on this webpage were egging him on to commit suicide, calling him a waste of human trash.
This is what this hyperagency perspective does–it nullifies men’s experiences of pain. It tells men that if they are foolish enough to voice their pain they will be mocked. This is why men in peril get much less systemic help than women. If individual women are viewed as weak or lacking agency (similar but not the same as children), then people will want to help them.
But, when the counter-story for men is “they have all the power”, many people feel justified in refusing help, or even working against men getting help.
Men are 80% the targets of violence (proving that there are no streets unsafe for women, but safe for men) , 90% of the incarcerated, 95% of on-the-job deaths, 80% of suicides, 35% of college enrollees, are 44% of the voters, control 20% of all wealth, and fathers win primary custody to mothers about 1/13th as often. When anybody mentions this in most feminists spheres they are usually derided with the slur: “what about teh menz????”
I too am a bit frustrated by this. Sometimes I want to try having Europe build everything AGAIN, without coerced or willing outside help, just to show that it can. (can it? I don’t know). But I suspect that a lot of people do not know what it is like to have all of one’s ancestor’s achievements analyzed away, when the deconstructors do nto apply that to themselves.
Sometimes I want to try having Europe build everything AGAIN, without coerced or willing outside help
Europe built a great civilization all on its own, between the fall of Rome and 1492.
I think his point may have been that is white men publicly display any pride about their great influence on this land, post like this come up,shouting him down in the name of political correctness.
Also where in the world did you get the idea Black Americans were colonial subjects of America? Black Americans were victims of the transatlantic slave trade not colonialism. But I see we were grouped in with the Latinos. All us brownish folk are alike!