Why Am I Never A Victim?

The plight of the white male is something you never really hear about.
Why?
Because it doesn't exist. Any time someone of the white persuasion who happens to be male feels that they are under served, discriminated against, or otherwise beaten down because of their race and sex they are accused of having entitlement issues, or narcissism, or some other such thing.

The truth - as many would have you believe it - is that all white men are part of a deceitful cabal who complain about being passed over for jobs, given worse grades, or not having enough scholarship opportunities as a way to deal with their loss of power in a world rapidly growing more diverse.

I suppose that makes sense, in a way. I mean, if this were still the 1800s.

Listen, I wanted McCain to win over Obama not because one was white and one was black, but because I don't want to be taxed into poverty, nor told what to do. I was pissed off when illegal immigrants were given in-state tuition not because they are Mexican (or Salvadoran, or Ecuadoran, or...) but because I lived here 16 years and yet just because my parents moved I was no longer considered a resident, except when it came to taxing me.
This isn't because these people are all part of a class that I used to be able to grind under my boot heel. I'm a child of the 90's, for Christ's sake. I never knew a world where we had segregation or Jim Crow laws. I went to school with people of all races, ate with people of all races, lived near people of all races. I have no glorious white-dominated past to fall back on. I just happen to have an opinion.
To some people, however, these opinions I hold are considered to be racist. Well sure, the object of my disdain happens to be of a different race, but let's be honest, I hate white people, too!
Zac Effron for instance. Or Stephanie Meyer.

Oh, you say, so you hate the female writer, eh? Because she's a successful independent woman?

No! I shout from my golden mountaintop, because she's a terrible author! I'd hate those books just as much if a man wrote them. And I don't care if she's black or white, either. If she was a black woman I would hate the books just as much as I hate them now! My disdain is equal opportunity!

In fact, as a white male in a society that practices an alarming amount of self-segregation I hate about 20 individual white people for every individual of another race that I hate.

But could I ever try to explain that to someone? No. No I can't. Because as a white male, the only excuse for me thinking that 50 Cent's music is complete tripe is that I am a racist.
Well guess what, I love Miles Davis, the Drifters, and NWA. (I'll take a moment to allow people who know me to recover from the fact that I find NWA enjoyable. Ok, time's up.)
Why is it that we as a society have to worry about our personal opinions being interpreted as racist? Why can't we trust that people will understand that tastes and ideas vary, and sometimes race and sex have nothing to do with it.

I hate Tyler Perry movies. Not because they have a specifically African-American focus, but because I hate watching movies where men don fat suits to pass themselves off as old women. I hate Hannah Montana because... Jesus, do I even have to explain? Moving on...

The problem with racism and sexism in modern America is that it is sort of our modern day witch hunt. Salem played out on a national scale. We were so afraid of witches and the evil that they sowed that if we couldn't find one outright we had to suspect that they are just hiding it very well. So we looked for any small sign and blew it out of proportion. Our fear of the witch was so powerful that our minds created them out of thin air.
The same can be true of most modern day cases of perceived racism and sexism.
I say "perceived" because we do live in a world where a number of people still practice hate professionally (I'm looking at you, Aryan Nation) and those people are disgusting. What "perceived" denotes is racism or sexism without intent. Someone says something and means it one way, but someone thinks it is racist or sexist and suddenly it is.
It's intellectual alchemy. Turning innocuous-banter coal into hate-speech gold.

Like this statement: If women want equal rights, they should have to be called up in the draft, too.

Holy shit, you just said, that's terrible! You're only saying that to scare women and keep them in their place.
I'm not. I am saying that because if we're to believe all this "Equal Opportunity" talk that gets thrown around then that means taking the good with the bad. You don't get paid as much as a world-renowned heart surgeon without having to go through the hell of med school and residency, after all.
If all you're asking for is the same rights and privileges as someone without all the responsibilities that go with it, you're really just asking for special treatment, which is more sexist than getting nothing at all.

"Aww, the little girl wants to make more money and be a CEO. Ok, sweetie, but don't worry, you won't have to fight in the big bad war because we know you don't wanna mess up your makeup."

Sexist.

"Ok, welcome to the club. Here's our list of pros and cons. Read 'em, love 'em, get to work."

Equal.

Yet because of the fact that every self-serving, publicity hungry Equal Rights Activist is looking for a new racist or sexist to burn at the stake, people self-censor to the point of hilariousness. I've heard friends start stories off with, "So I was serving this table of black people, and you know I am not racist, I mean, my best friend is black, and I love Beyonce, so, you know, but anyway..."
Come on. Stories live or die by their details. I don't start a story off with, "So I was chatting up this blond girl, and I mean, you know, I don't have a problem with blonds..." State the details so I can get a clear picture and move on. Stop apologizing.

(Also, just like hating one black person doesn't make you a racist, liking one black person doesn't make you not racist.)

I was a waiter. I hated serving tables of black people because they were, in general, terrible tippers. Now, of course there are always exceptions to every rule, and I have been stiffed by white people too, but on the whole if I had to choose one of two tables, I'd go for whitey any day of the week.
Does that make me racist? No! No it doesn't! It makes me adept at pattern recognition and playing the odds.

In fact, if you look at me and hear something I say and assume its racist, that makes you racist because you are making an assumption of my beliefs based on my skin color.

Which brings me to my original point.

I am currently up for a job working for a man who hires pretty, blond sorority girls. He's got a goddamned harem working in his section. When people heard about me interviewing for this job, they openly stated, "Good luck on that one, man. Maybe you should try growing some tits for the interview."

Now imagine this. I am a black man working for someone who hires white men, and when I tell friends I am going for the job they say to me, "You might wanna ask Michael Jackson how he got so white, because that's your only hope."
You'd have a CNN breaking news story on your hands. You couldn't keep the press away. A person who openly discriminates against black men? Queue up the specialized graphics and theme music.

But if I tried to sue over sexual discrimination I would get laughed out of court. Why? Because I am a white man, and nothing bad ever happens to me. I don't get mad because I feel genuinely discriminated against, I get mad because I can feel my racial and gender supremacy slipping away. I am hopping on the band wagon, acting offended by injustice when really I just wanna get my White Man's Club Card punched one more time.

Bullshit.

You know what? My families' roots in this country begin in the early 20th century and I'm Irish and Italian, two ethnic groups that were treated like shit when they first got here. I mean, the Irish were subjugated by the English for hundreds of years. We weren't even allowed to speak our own language in our homeland!
So I am not some redneck whistling dixie and talking about the good old days when a black man knew his place and a white man couldn't spit on the sidewalk without getting a job offer.
In fact, that statement was heavily racist against southerners, but I bet no one out there got offended.
I am just a man who has ideas that sometimes put me on the opposite side of the idealism-dividing-line from people of other races and genders. I am just a man who can tell when he is being treated unfairly, like any other human can.

What I am saying here, in short, is that equality works in both directions. We're either all equally capable of being victims and perpetrators, or no one is. If I am capable of discriminating, then I am also equally capable of being discriminated against. If you give one group special treatment and more opportunities while shutting out the formerly dominant group, then you aren't being enlightened, you're being condescending.
Put bluntly:
Level the fucking playing field, but don't fix the game.