White Men Rule [View all]

[redqueen]

http://blogs.bostonmagazine.com/boston_daily/2012/03/26/white-men-rule/

I have been a white male all my life and to tell you the truth, I have found it to be a pretty sweet deal. If you doubt me and would like to see a demonstration of just how sweet it is to be a white guy in modern day America – just come with me and stand in the visitor’s gallery of the U.S. Senate sometime when they are all gathered for a vote and look down upon that fleshy sea of men. Of the 100 members of the U.S. Senate, just 17 are women. And in the entire history of our country, only six African American have served in the Senate. White men rule.

(snip)

Wherever you look and by almost any metric, any statistic, it works out to be a pretty sweet deal to start out life as a white male. And if I ever become deranged and suddenly start to kill all of the people who annoy me on Facebook with a potato peeler, I have the comfort of knowing I will stand a lower chance of being executed for my crimes just because I am white. If you’ve seen Facebook these days, you know what a relief that can be.

So I cannot, for the life of me, understand why so many white men like me can be found whining about how tough it is to be a white man. It’s a mystery to me how they came to feel so beset on every side by feminists, minorities, and “the system.” When in fact, the system is so stacked in our favor, it’s almost embarrassing. It’s like our mothers set up the world for us. For white men, life is almost like T-ball. We are almost guaranteed to get on base. But lately, some of us seem to be having issues with self-esteem.

(snip)

So it’s especially strange to see white men like Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and various “Men’s Rights” groups complaining bitterly about the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which may come up for a vote this week. Grassley and the far right don’t want to see it pass in its current form because it extends some of its protections to LGBT victims, Native American victims, and some illegal immigrants. Because of what? Because it should be OK to brutalize them?

(more at link)