To all the white guys in my life...

Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site

Dear white guys.

I truly hate the descriptive “white” as it is used to define some people. I’m using it today because I’m being forced to. Perhaps being forced will end up working as an effective tool for me. Coercion has always left doors open to big things, hasn’t it.

I’d like you to close your eyes and picture the people in your life who could be described by the term “white guy”. In today's understanding of it, try to get a good feel for who exactly that term could apply to in your circle. If it includes yourself, put yourself in there and just go with it. There’s no judging here- you’re just applying a label. You’re not actually making yourself or them into something different or changing who they innately are. Please remember that.

OK, so all of us have some folks in our minds who could get this label? You probably based your decisions on their looks or maybe you even went so far as to consider DNA. You might have used “balls and penis” to define “guy” and maybe you decided anyone whose family hails from Europe is what you call “white”. Maybe. Because over time, different parts of Europe weren’t considered “white” here in the US. Even today, folks whose ancestors were from Spain are labeled “Hispanic” and not “white” on a lot of forms, correct? And folks who came from some areas of Asia look “white”. Did you lump anyone you know whose relatives immigrated from Russia as “white”? Let’s not forget Jewish men or anyone who has historically “passed”? White? Does your vision of “white” include an assumed layer of Protestant Christianity? Hmm…

Let’s just leave that alone for now and move on. Much has been said in recent decades and into  2024 that the United States needs to go “back” to something. Some say we need to follow the “original” Constitution.

The Constitution was written incredibly vaguely to neither support or attack specific people. The definition of people was left to each state mainly because some of the dudes who wrote the Constitution and people they knew owned people. One thing we do know is that every single person who wrote the Constitution was defined in their time as 2 things: white and male. How did they get to these positions of power? Land and material goods manufacture. How did they get these things? Through generational wealth and the systems they and their families (headed by men) brought from Europe.

What about women? No term in the original Constitution applies directly to women. The document does not define state or federal citizenship. When it was written, women had little to no guaranteed rights or independence. We must remember that the colonials came from Europe and that was a predominantly patriarchal, land wealth-based system.  It was possible for a white woman to be independent, but rare. 

On July 11, 2024, Glenn Grothman, a Republican representative from Wisconsin said that if Trump wins reelection, the U.S. should work its way back to 1960, before “the angry feminist movement…took the purpose out of the man’s life.”.

Wisconsinite Matthew Trewhella preached to his Waukesha County congregation in 2020 that, “When you see sodomy running rampant, when you see women in government, when you see men behaving like effeminate little squirrels, judgment is in the land,”. Mr. Trewhella has become a prominent part of the Republican Party of Waukesha County according to a Propublica article posted by Wisconsin Public Radio on July 10, 2024. A quote from this article:

“To him, that [the law of God] means outlawing abortion and same-sex marriage, or even violently resisting the government if necessary, noting in his book that there are times when men “must redden their swords.””

What is Mr. Trewhella’s vision when he uses the term “men”? I am assuming that Mr. Trewhella is including himself in this group that must “correct” things with swords. Is he open to anyone with balls and a penis? Or is his definition of “male” and “men” affected by other things like skin color, ethnicity, religion, sexual preferences, favorite foods, preferred music, sports appreciations… The filters can go off into the weeds. Regardless, thoughts of Mr. Trewhella are being supported by a local political party.

In Mr. Trewhella’s and Mr. Grothman’s worlds, what if EVERYONE in your “white guy” category HAD TO- an actual societal expectation on them and obligation- HAD TO assume these roles or face shame, legal punishment, and/or familial disowning:

• Be a Christian of good standing

• Marry a woman

• Have children

• Never get divorced

• Financially support said woman and children for the rest of your life

• Ensure your children marry, have children, and your male children financially support their women and children

• Defend with arms or otherwise your means of supporting your woman, children, and income and that of other men locally and nationally

• Ensure everyone in your family maintains their statuses as Christians in good standing

As I recall seeing and holding my sons for the first time, I cannot imagine thinking to myself in that moment that the above list of things would be their goals. If they freely chose one, some, or all of these things would be one thing. But to have that brief list define their potential value and role? And in conjunction with that, have my own life and everyone else's (who in your world would fall outside that group of white guys you had in your mind?) structured by the ramifications of all that?

Absolutely not.

I’m reminded of Zen priest angel Kyodo williams and my thoughts on her On Being talk that I listened to and wrote about in 2018. That essay is called Spring and the Death of Denial.

If we work in a state of grace, we can face and transform beyond the past to the point where these artificial labels and denials of universal truths will fall away.