The White Male Identity

A friend of mine—who attends graduate school in Boston—recently contacted me about a project she was working on. She was studying the white male identity—an identity she had admittedly struggled to connect with throughout her life. She wanted to hear my own thoughts about the identity that is my own. Had she asked me this question two years ago, I doubt I would have had anything substantive to say about it. But it just so happens that I’ve spent about a year and a half really dwelling on masculinity, and the past semester working on a literature study that focused on the white male, specifically.

I can't say I really grew up thinking about thinking about it. It was my identity in some sense, but it's not the sort of thing you consider yourself as until you encounter some sort of "other." Thankfully, I was forced into that "other" at a pretty young age in a good way. My two best friends going up were black in a very, white, rural town. But even then, I was a kid. I didn't think it unusual and it didn't cause much self-reflection until we went to high school in a more diverse setting and my black friends found other black people to be friends with, so our friendships sort of distanced. It was hurtful, but I can't say I really blame them for their choices.

I remember one time talking with one of them about our town, and I said essentially that I didn't think it was a racist town, that I'd never noticed any racism. One of them said, very tenderly, "Chris that's because you're not black."

So alas, I get to self -reflection about being white by noticing and being around those who aren't. There are other light bulb stories, but those are the first ones that come to mind.

The same is true for gender. I remember someone coming to my high school and presenting what I took as a very male-vilifying presentation about the realities of sexual assaults and such. Basically bringing awareness to the vulnerability, especially sexual, of most females in this world. "This isn't my problem!" I remember saying indignantly at some talk-back session.

Well, it is my problem. I began to see this as I encountered family members, female friends, and women that I have dated who have been taken advantage of sexually. Yes, it is my problem.

But still the defensiveness is there. I'm white, male, heterosexual, and Protestant: the stereotypical oppressor, at least in this country. While I didn't grow up in a family that possessed much wealth or power, I cannot deny (now) that if I wanted those things, they would be easier for me to acquire than so many others. Although it's changing (slowly), so there is also something at stake for me to lose. An advantage, so to speak. Sub-consciously, I don't want to lose it, because that makes me less in control, more vulnerable.

So there are all these movements--Feminism, Queer studies/rights, racial/ethnic civil rights, socioeconomic political movements (Occupy, for example), and so I am in this place where there is an awareness that I have something to lose with all that steam heading in other directions.

So what I argued in my an American literature paper this semester is that the white male has really been isolated in the last, oh, 50 or so years. While all these movements certainly have good things to say and some good things have come out of them, they are also worth critiquing, in my opinion. But the problem is, when one tries to offer some of those critiques, he (or I) immediately gets cast as racist/bigoted/homophobic/sexist. The result is a lot of numbness, a lot of existential confusion, and a lot of shame for white males.

If I could, a quote from C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man:

"And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive', or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."

This dynamic then leads to a lot of fatherlessness, which is a dangerous thing for any society. (Donald Miller writes about his experiences with this throughout his memoirs, if you're interested.)

I would suggest that we need the white male (we also need the white female, the black male, the Hispanic female, etc.), but that we're losing him in these efforts to regain others.

To counter this in my own life, I've been both fortunate and intentional about seeking out the wisdom and relationships of white men who seem to live well-integrated, purposeful lives. Men who love their families well, men who work at a job they love, men who lead, and men who show their vulnerability. At least three men come to mind as people who have played a sort of mentor role for me and probably a dozen or so others with whom I have intentionally related with and perhaps even a few for whom I have served as a mentor.

While mentors cannot replace an involved father, they are the best answer I have found in filling some of the gaps in our identity.