This is my first diary on Daily Kos, and I honestly don't know if it will get any response. One little gold star would be nice. But what I'm about to say may anger people into response before they even finish. It's okay, I can take it; I've actively commented on YouTube. So why do I think things might go south?
I'm a white, male resident of the US who was born into the upper-middle class, and have strong views on many social issues.
My full story, and why it shouldn't be dismissed out-of-hand, below the little orange bomb-shelter.
Let me start things off simply: I am not saying I can directly relate to a Black man growing up in the ghetto. I am not saying I have personally known the plight of a woman raised in an extremely misogynistic household/society. I am not saying I have felt the confusion, fear and pain of trying to move into a whole society that actively hates me just because I come from another country and have slightly browner skin.
I've seen people outright saying that, because I'm an adult White male, that means I need to shut up. In fact, one person explicitly told me I have "no room to talk" in any conversation about racism, because I'm not the victim of institutionalized racism. But there's more than race going on here. I was born upper-middle-class, yes. Because of some choices that proved unsound, my family's business ended up closing down. While we never went bankrupt, after selling our large house and getting a smaller one to pay off various debts, we never really had a TON of extra money around.
That continued on after my mother died and the family split. I am currently taking care of myself and my spouse on, roughly, $28K a year in an area where the cheapest apartment is $1200 a month. Much of my portion of the inheritance went into paying off the remainder of both our tech-school loans. Ironic that we went for the same things (computer programmings) but two different schools; his was just half a scam done by Fannie May. Oh, right, I should point out that I'm married to another man. Well, "civil union" until we get around to actually getting the full marriage certificate now that it's legalized in NJ.
So now, yes, I'm a White Male American in a fairly affluent portion of New Jersey. I'm also just barely scraping by month to month, I've only seen my savings go down in the long-term over the past 6 years since my husband lost his job and hasn't been able to find steady employment since, only brief periods here and off-the-book jobs there, so I know the pain of having to go without while my co-workers and superiors flaunt all the extras they can constantly get. My husband was raised in the Bronx, literally the only white guy in his school at the time he went and his family was the only white one in the neighborhood. Even if it wasn't on an institutional level, he knows first hand that "Black people can't be racist" is as much of a misunderstanding of reality as saying "Well the law says you can't discriminate so cops aren't racist."
My mother was raised in Brooklyn in the late 40's/early 50's. She danced the Twist with Chubby Checkers in the Peppermint Lounge. Her family was comfortable without being rich, but she had what would then have been called moxie. In her words, "I didn't need the women's lib movement to act on my own." True story: she once slapped a mob boss in the face for harassing her in a bar, and when she was told who he was her only reaction was "Well he still can't grab my ass!" Needless to say I got a LOT of my personality for her.
My father was raised in a town in South Dakota so small, you can zoom in as far as you can go in Google Maps and almost still have the whole thing in-frame. By his own admission, he never even SAW any minorities until he went to college. Fortunately he was smart as a whip: he was part of the team working at Bell Labs that, depending on who you ask, more or less invented the modern personal computer. I got my smarts and my love of technology from him.
One thing I got from BOTH my parents was a good grounding. They both started, if not poor, then "average at best." Even after making it big, they never let it get to their heads. Oh yes we had plenty when I was young, but my folks never acted "nouveau riche" and they made sure I had a good head on my shoulders. More than anything, they both instilled in me a self-confidence to not just accept what society SAYS is right, and do what's ACTUALLY right.
That's why when I see stories about police brutality against minorities I get furious, even though I'm not a race that gets "targeted." That's why when I hear news about a woman getting raped in college and the football stars responsible going free while SHE gets harassed into suicide, I want to start knocking heads, even though I would never get that harassment. That's why I see reports about income inequality, and want to personally evacuate the bank accounts of multibillionaires who are bemoaning the fact that their stock revenues are getting taxed at all.
I want to make this world a better place, by myself or with others. I want equal civil rights for all, and I want them on more than just a piece of paper the people in charge can craft into nothing but loopholes. I want people to have the freedom of religion as well as the freedom FROM religion. I want people to understand that we have the right, almost the OBLIGATION, to disagree on topics and to hash them out in reasoned debate, but that you don't have the right to try to turn your own solitary opinion into the law of the land when more than half the people of the lend are telling you how stupid it is.
Most of all, I want everyone to understand that we can ALL work to make this world better together. Compartmentalizing people into "worthy" and "not worthy" to speak on certain topics when they're trying to bring other "not worthy" people over to your cause is completely self-destructive. Because if the major problem with civil rights is that the majority won't listen or talk with you, WHY are you going to turn away those in the majority that will?