white men, you're not as safe as you think you are
i have news for you, dude
At least three different white men have said to me this year something along the lines of, “I’m a white straight male, I’m going to be fine.” Or, “I’m a white straight male and even I’m afraid right now.”
The conclusion is different but the belief rises from the same wrong place. They announce this, I think, in an attempt to name their privilege, which to be clear, exists in spades. It makes them at most a passive ally, but more notably it fails to capture the entire truth about their condition: white men are not as safe as they think. Or rather: the lie of whiteness is what’s keeping them safe and a lie can never offer total safety unless it keeps getting told.
I’m thinking of this line from writer Alyssa Cole’s novel, “An Extraordinary Union” in which a Black woman and a white male detective serve as spies for the Union army—her, undercover as a slave, him, as a Confederate soldier:
He was able to play many roles and she was only able to play one. But what would’ve happened had he been found out by that Confederate family?1
Sitting in a coffee shop across from the first white guy to say this to me, I was baffled, amused:
“You do realize white people were lynched in this country?” I said. He nodded, but it wasn’t clear to me that he had known that.
I wasn’t trying to center white pain or diminish the scale of his privilege, but to clarify what privilege actually means here: it means more opportunities to fall in line for the chance to attain safety. That line reads jumbled and convoluted on purpose. If you’re safety is contingent on a trait over which you have no control, relies on arbitrary rules not changing, on you doing your part to uphold the illusion that keeps you safe, then you are safer but never safe.
The safety of whiteness depends not only on maintaining meaning but refining its definition. It needs to let more people in (Irish, Italian, Jewish) to have new groups investing in it, but keep people out to protect its meaning. Similarly with maleness, the definition must be restrictive to carry power.
What happened, though, to the Northern Irish, what happened to the Jews? Whiteness means everything until it suddenly means nothing.
White progressives are grappling with this as their privilege proves shakier than they’ve previously understood. And yet, they still say this puzzling thing, full of confidence, having read the right books, internalized the right lessons, “Well, I’m a white straight male. I’m fine, but I’m worried about [insert nonwhite, queer, women]. In other words, worried about people like me.
The irony is, if they were out with me in the wrong state in the 1950s, they might’ve gone to jail. It’s not enough to be white, you also have to behave white.
It’s a snappy headline: All you have to do is be born white and male. But the fine print says that’s just the first thing you have to do.
You’ll likely get away with your insurgent ways for a time, that’s the privilege. But the problem with chances is you never know when they’re going to run out.
By now, we’ve all seen this poem by Martin Niemoller on Nazi Germany:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
It’s “they” who are the only safe group named. But that safety comes with a clock. Don’t forget how this story ends: with trial, execution. Don’t forget that Hitler shot himself in the head. All “they” did was make everyone unsafe, even the narrow group they violently protected using the most extreme weapon: genocide.
There’s many lessons from this, but here’s the biggest one: anyone promising a safety that relies on the extermination, enslavement, oppression, domination, of another group is a snake oil salesman, a vampire offering you immortality in exchange for your humanity, satan offering you power in exchange for your soul. This is a trade that can never keep you safe.
If you believe you are truly safe because you’re a white man, then you are going to move like someone who thinks their safety is guaranteed. This may mean you’re willing to take more risks on others’ behalf. More likely it means your sense of urgency around the question of safety will always be impaired, not-enough.
No one moves faster than a person who is being chased. And no one moves slower than someone who thinks no one’s coming for them.
I cannot find this line in the book ANYWHERE help!!!!