How dare you poke holes in my personal superiority?
I just know that it is true and don’t you dare ask me to explain myself. In the first place I cannot admit that I live in ignorance of or disinterest in cultures, ideas, or people outside my own experience. In other words I own the only true way to perceive reality.
Otherwise, I would have to admit that others around me have valid views.
If others have valid views then my ignorant expectations for my own racial comfort are weakened. I would be revealed as having little strength to face racial stress.
Even a minimal challenge to my white privilege place in life becomes intolerable. I get triggered. I go to my supply shelf to pull down defensive moves of my denial. Invalidation of my sacred place in life forces me into argumentation.
In my immature fears I fall into silence. I withdraw from discussion and whine about being attacked and misunderstood. What I’m forced to do is reset my circumstance to the unconscious smugness of my life.
I absolutely must reinstate my own white equilibrium so I can maintain what looks and feels to me like control.
I was born into a racial culture of control.
It sounds like liberal whining when I hear that this great country was forged by many Fathers who owned slaves, took them for granted while buying and selling them with no regard for their humanity or family togetherness.
It sounds like liberal whining when I hear that the Manifest Destiny that extended our shores from sea to shining sea involved an attitude of racial superiority and purity over Native Americans.
It sounds like liberal whining when someone tells me that what it means to be American is what it means to be white first and foremost.
As an American I am free to express my hurt feelings, my resentment of those who challenge my notions. White folks who are told their whiteness is their own curse and scourge become victims of the very identity politics upon which I thrived as a white boy.
Don’t tell me my whiteness has shielded me from growing to maturity in the way I insist non-whites are obligated to.
Why?
Cause those with the biggest mouths are still leaning on it to make it through their own lives.
What anyone else does should not threaten us privileged and fragile personalities as we try to remain hidden in our high castles.
