Throwback Thursday: The Oppression of White America
In 2018, we explored the data, research and evidence to answer a trending question: Are white people under attack?
This article was originally published on June 22, 2018.
I was abused as a child.
Growing up as the only boy in the house, I was constantly attacked by women. First of all, I had to clean my room every single day. Meanwhile, my three sisters could split their bedroom cleaning duties between them. Sure, I had a bedroom all to myself while my three sisters shared a bedroom, but my daily cleaning mandate still didn’t feel fair.
I was also the family errand boy. It was my job to run to the Piggly Wiggly whenever my mother needed someone to run to the store. Yes, I was the only one of my siblings who had a bike. But was it my fault that my mom spent twice as much on my birthday present than she did for my sisters because I begged for the Evel Knievel BMX for an entire year?
Then there was the “boys mop the bathroom” rule.
While my sisters and I shared kitchen cleanup duties, for some reason, it was my job to mop the restroom every day. When my mom came home from work, she expected the floor of our home’s only lavatory to be sparkling clean…
Until the March on Washrooms.
On this historic day, I decided to stand up to my mom’s unconstitutional executive order. When my mom came home and noticed the distinct absence of Pine-Sol in the bathroom air, she launched immediately into one of her famous rants. If cleanliness is next to godliness, according to her, I had insulted Jesus, the ancestors and my entire family. If an atheist like me wouldn’t mop his own bathroom, how could she trust me not to burn down the house, murder my sisters or even worse, date white women?
In the face of this long-winded toilet tyrant, I remained resilient. “The mop bucket ain’t that heavy,” I spoke truthfully to my mom’s power. “Everyone who lives here uses the bathroom. If a girl can mop the kitchen, then why am I the only one who has to mop it?”
After a lifetime of hearing her threaten to “beat the Black off me,” I was fully prepared for life as a Caucasian child. At least I was sacrificing my melanin for a cause.
My mom didn’t even acknowledge my historic civil rights speech. Instead, she called my sisters, who were eavesdropping from their spotless room. They had never met a time traveler, so they quickly assembled to watch my mom knock me into next week. But instead of turning her fist into a time machine, she simultaneously dismantled my radical restroom movement and my shining moment in Black history. Pointing at the microscopic droplets on the floor around the toilet, she posed one question to the entire household:
“Whose pee is that?”
After marinating in humiliation, my sisters’ giggles and a few droplets of my own urine, I filled the mop bucket, grabbed the Pine-Sol and began mopping. And because our household rules banned me from hitting my sisters, they stood and cracked jokes while I mopped the bathroom.
For the rest of our childhood, whenever one of my sisters entered the bathroom, they would scour the area around the toilet and facetiously ask:
“Who mopped the bathroom?”
White people are oppressed.
Stop laughing. It’s true.
In recent years, a narrative has formed and spread among the masses that asserts that white people in America are being subjected to reverse racism, ridicule, public scorn and discrimination. Before attempting to examine (and ultimately dismantle) this preposterous hypothesis, we should acknowledge all the ways in which this premise has manifested itself in mainstream society:
In October 2017, a poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard revealed that 55% of white Americans believe there is discrimination against white Americans. More Americans agree than disagree that “white people are under attack in this country,” according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. Numerous studies have shown that “racial resentment” was the overriding factor for people who voted for Donald Trump.
Anecdotally, there are cases like the recently approved White Civil Rights rally coming to Washington, D.C., sponsored by the same activist who organized Charlottesville, Va.’s Unite the Right march; the rise in claims of “reverse racism”; and the main refrain in the white national anthem: “Not all white people.”
Not to mention the white-tears-induced furor over people of color who blatantly discriminate against the Caucasian masses by using heinous racial slurs like “wypipo,” “colonizer” and—no, this is not a joke—the actual word “white”:
Their monuments to the Confederacy are being dismantled. Their potato salad is subjected to ridicule. People even poke fun at their dancing just because they choose not to adhere to the racist tradition of moving to the rhythm. Who among us will fight for the downtrodden, forgotten Caucasian victims of racism?
We will.
Well ...maybe.
If we want to end the oppression of white people, we must attack it in every sector in which it exists. Any kind of discrimination is wrong, including the newly branded form of bigotry referred to as “reverse racism.”
But first, unlike police officers who respond to 911 calls and people who watch Fox News, we must investigate the veracity of these white people’s allegations.
Are white people really oppressed?
The previously mentioned data proves that most white people feel that they are being attacked and oppressed. But if we accepted white people’s “feelings” as fact, we’d have to believe that Taylor Swift was better than Beyoncé, Jesus was white, and Donald Trump was an economic genius in perfect health whose inauguration was attended by invisible supporters who lived in the once-great part of America.
As a victim of reverse sexism, I wanted to know the truth about my marginalized brethren.
Here’s what I found:
Economics
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the “not seasonally adjusted” Black unemployment rate in May 2018 was 5.7%, almost twice the not seasonally adjusted white unemployment rate of 3.2%. When numbers were controlled for education, Pew Research reports that white males outearned every group of men except Asian men, and white women make more money per hour than every group of women except Asian women.
When the Center for Investigative Reporting and Reveal News looked at 21 million home mortgages in 2015 and 2016, it found that whites were more likely to be approved in almost every region of the U.S.
Not only does white homeownership outpace that of Blacks, 72% to 43%, but Blacks are routinely subjected to higher interest rates on car loans and higher payments on car insurance, even when they have the same financial qualifications as whites.
When it comes to wealth, the wealth gap between whites and Blacks continues to widen. A white household headed by someone with at least a bachelor’s degree is 11 times wealthier than a Black household headed by a college graduate, according to Pew Research.
I wish I were that oppressed.
Education
White people might have an economic advantage, but what about when it comes to education? Everyone knows that affirmative action has made it tougher for white kids.
A 2015 study shows that the larger the Black population at a school, the less funding that school receives. This wouldn’t be troubling if not for the fact that a UCLA study shows that American schools in the South are more segregated than they were 50 years ago.
On the college level, Black students are more underrepresented at the top colleges and universities than they were 35 years ago. While the college enrollment rates for both Blacks and whites increased from 2000 to 2016, the moment a white kid graduates, he owes less money and earns a higher income than his Black counterparts.
Politics
Non-Hispanic whites make up 62% of the population in the U.S., but make up 81% of Congress and 89% of federal judgeships and hold 49 of the nation’s 50 state governorships.
Even at the state level, in 2015, 81% of legislators were white, and there was no state legislature where whites were underrepresented in their state government as a percentage of the population. Whites control the U.S. Supreme Court, both houses of Congress, the White House and the judiciary. Aside from ordering Ben Carson’s office furniture, they control every imaginable seat of power in government.
People in white neighborhoods also don’t wait as long to vote. They don’t travel as far to vote. They are less likely to have polling places closed, their registrations purged or their ballots rejected.
The data is clear: If you’re white, it is easier to vote, have your vote counted and get elected.
I can’t even imagine how hard that must be.
Criminal Justice
Every city, county, state or national research project that evaluated police stops found that whites are less likely to be stopped or searched by law enforcement, but are more likely to have contraband. Even though whites use and sell drugs at about the same rate as Blacks, Blacks are more than 2.7 times as likely to be arrested for drugs and more than five times more likely to be incarcerated for drugs.
When it comes to all crimes, Blacks receive sentences that are 20% longer than those for whites who commit the same crime. Whites are even granted bail more often than African-Americans and released on their own recognizance more often than Blacks.
Although Blacks are less than a quarter of the white population, in 2017, police killed more Black people who were unarmed and not attacking than they did whites.
White oppression is a myth.
No one is attacking white people. What is happening is that people of color are increasingly unashamed to point out discrimination and racism. Combined with the legitimate measures taken by some people and organizations to untilt the playing field, any attempt at fairness might feel like an attack on whiteness.
So calm down, white people. No one is coming after you. You’re fine.
The truth is, you have been perched on your pedestals of privilege for so long that fairness feels like abuse. The overwhelming sense of unfairness that you’re lamenting is just the lack of privilege. And, to be fair, I can imagine that flying first class feels disrespectful if you’ve spent your entire life on a private jet.
But that’s not oppression
That’s fragility.
Whenever white people whine about affirmative action, reverse racism and our unwillingness to help them make America great again, I always want to know:
“Whose pee is that?”