I am white, middle-aged and male therefore I am responsible for everything from the oppression of women and minorities to global warming and the decline in bio-diversity. If a moth goes extinct somewhere on the planet, it’s my fault. If a polar bear finds itself stranded on an iceberg in the Arctic Sea, I did that. The dodo is dead because of me. And as for my treatment of the rest of the human race – dear God, what an awful monster I am…
As an Englishman, over the last five hundred years, I have created nothing but pain. I am responsible for the reformation, the counter-reformation, countless wars, poverty, potato-blight in Ireland, transferring the population of Africa to my plantations in the Americas, ruling India, Australia, Canada and a host of unsuspecting islands. I made sure women didn’t get the vote, made sure they stayed in the home, created glass ceilings when they finally escaped, and have generally been obnoxious to them ever since. I’ve trampled on gender politics, torn down rainbow flags and drowned refugees in the sea. I am the enemy – feel my boot.
On a daily basis, I am reminded by the newspapers, by social media and by daily life, of the damage my kind has done and is doing to the world: white, middle-aged male politicians cocking-up the country; white, middle-aged male academics making inappropriate comments or white, middle-aged business-men impoverishing the world with their selfishness. I’m not any of those things and yet I’m guilty all the same. I am the enemy, basking in the privilege of being white, middle-aged and male.
And it’s not even true: I grew up in a rural village where they spoke with an accent I barely understood. I was the outsider. I was slightly better off at school but even here, where the emphasis was placed on the academic achievers and not the also-rans, I didn’t have a voice. At university, it was the black and Asian students who had all the money and I was just poor-white trash. As an educator, my bosses were women and I was in a minority. As a writer, I find it significant that among the authors I know personally, the women have been published and are profiting from their industry while all of the men are not. I know what ostracism, sexism and racism feel like, first hand.
And yet, apparently, I am the problem not the solution. Get rid of white, middle-aged men and the world will be a better place. History is now littered with fallen statues. Everything is being re-contextualised and re-written. If a white, middle-aged man stood on some foreign soil, he was clearly up to no good. Never mind we built railways across continents, created technology that took us to the moon, fought against terrible ideologies, battled against religious zealots, ended the practice of slavery which had been acceptable for thousands of years. Or created music, art, architecture, literature, films, philosophy and civilisation generally; none of that seems to matter in our current culture.
I am not surprised (though I am appalled) by the anger vented by so many like my kind on social media against those they perceive as getting a better deal than they are. They are misguided, they lack empathy and their rage is misdirected; I don’t condone their behaviour – to mis-quote Oscar Wilde, anger is the last refuge of failure. While they revel in their attacks against their targets, they fail to realise their acidic remarks are eating away at their minds and they’re making themselves sicker not better. But it demonstrates how unimportant, how invisible and how impotent they feel and for a white, middle-aged man, there is nothing more frightening.
As result, I suspect many of these trolls add guilt and shame to their other neuroses. And where do they do from there? A train-track? A bridge? The chemist’s shop? It can’t be a coincidence that suicide rates among men my age are rising. And as for us talking, sharing our fears and getting help – how? Who with? Who even cares? After all, these are the problems we created for ourselves. We are the guilty ones – the rapists, the colonialists, the imperialists, the ones who built a world for ourselves and wouldn’t share it with women or people of colour.
Even though I had nothing to do with any empire, never oppressed anyone or spoke against rights or equity of any kind, I am the enemy. As a result, I have a responsibility. But not to be part of the solution; I must relinquish all claims to wisdom or knowing any answers because clearly whatever was said in the past was wrong and whatever role I would take in the future should be done by somebody who isn’t white, middle-aged and male.
The shame of it is, if I say anything about inequality, injustice or unfairness, my words count for less than those with different sexual orientations, pigments in their skin or ancestors who were oppressed by mine. Even though I want women to feel secure and their abusers to stop, it’s not my place to say anything. Even though I want people to be free of their constant battles for identity, I am not the one to help. Even though I want everyone to realise race is a cultural, not a biological, label and we can choose not to use it against each other, my voice won’t be heard. And even if it was, in our strange new world, I can be accused of ‘saviour syndrome’ and my good intentions, despite being designed by nature to protect and provide, mean nothing.
I am the enemy – watch me limp from the battlefield defeated.
Comments