By Major W. Cox
Last year, in an Austin, Texas speech, the president challenged the nation to begin an earnest conversation about race. This past spring in California, he announced establishment of a Presidential Commission to conduct a series of town meeting style hearings on race relations. It seems as if everyone in the country is talking about race.
While I find much of the conversation about race of little value, there are exceptions. One such exception is "5 White Guys Sitting Around Talking," an assemblage of five individual essays written by University of California graduate students. The five students, Sean Heron, David Keiser, Eric Rofes, Tony Smith and Matt Wray, selected the discourse surrounding affirmative action as their topic of conversation.
They come from varied class and ethnic backgrounds with different sexual preferences and work experiences. Together they share the common identities of white, male, and thirtysomething, graduate students (except Eric who is 41). However, in the course of their discussions, they found that those identities meant something different to each of them.
"5 White Guys Sitting Around Talking" is an example of how difficult discussions about race can be without first attempting to understand the overarching assumptions of whiteness. These students soon discovered that attempting to conduct a conversation about affirmative action without an understanding of whiteness is similar to trying to hold a conversation about sex discrimination without an understanding of masculinity. Just as maleness brings to mind our internalized assumptions about manhood, potency, virility, sexiness and countless other concepts; whiteness conjures up a set of values each of us have internalized deep within ourselves.
Until recently, the only voices that could be heard speaking about white males and their role in society were voices other than their own. When women talk about unequal pay and other unfair treatment in the work place, white men change the subject to women having babies. When the conversation is about the fairness of only white males being in most of the boardrooms of corporate America, white men change the conversation to one of qualifications. When the discussion is about the disproportionately high number of young black men under the control of the criminal justice system; white men talk about the crime rate. This attitude …white-male-denial… so long fostered among white men is beginning to slowly change. Some white men are beginning in earnest to discuss, debate, analyze and evaluate the usefulness of this socially constructed status in society.
A serious conversation about the status of white males in society will not consist of casual chitchat. Such a conversation will require each of us to look within our inner-self at how we have internalized the white-male status. I suspect many among us only see white men as racist and intolerant. Others see them as authoritative and arrogant. Some see them as sexist and domineering. Others find the status a paradigm of manhood: potent and sexy. While it is true that all of these images exist in the realm of the white male, none represent the actuality of the status. For us to really know and understand, that status needs to be the topic of discussion. And in a small way, "5 White Guys Sitting Around Talking" has initiated such a conversation.
These essays are a wonderful and hopeful beginning. They can be read and used as a guide for others willing to look in the only place there is a solution to America’s race problem; our hearts. That’s where the authors looked.
Eric, a doctoral student at UC Berkeley, observes that white men are most visible in the affirmative action debate in two ways: "as ‘angry white men’ celebrated and lionized by conservative commentators, or as ‘whiny white males’ demonized and derided by liberals." Recognizing both characterizations were little more than media stereotypes, Eric asked, "…who those white men really were … what if anything did they want?"
Sean, studying for a masters degree at UCLA says, "[he has] been yearning for the opportunity to discuss with other white males …what it means to be white and male." He wants to be proud of his whiteness without being a part of that which "gets its power and identity from the oppression of others."
The other guys, David, Matt and Tony expressed a similar need to discuss and analyze their white male identities. And I agree. Such an examination must take place before we can have a rational conversation about race. "5 White Guys Sitting Around Talking" begins this conversation.
Note: For the full text of "5 White Guys Sitting Around Talking," click here.
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Originally Published: 1 October 1997, Montgomery Advertiser
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