The Tiny World of Tissue-Paper Tough Guys
One of my favorite stories about my mother is something you might not expect. She was the "math coach" at my school when I was there, which meant she chose the students who would go to all the various math competitions. My senior year, she had more students interested in the annual contest at Terre Haute's Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology than there were slots available, and so she decided to give us all a test to see who got to go. I assumed that since I was her son, I'd get preferential treatment, and so I didn't take the test seriously. As a result, I made some silly mistakes and scored below several of the other students. And yes, my mom left me at home.
Naturally, I wasn't very happy about that at the time, but now that I'm older and wiser, I think it was one of her best parenting moments. She taught me to check my privilege - not in those words, of course, because people didn't say that in the early 1980s. But she reminded me that I'm not a big shot, that I can't assume something will be handed to me just because of who I am. Such lessons need to be taught over and over again, and so I'm sure there were plenty of other times when my parents had to tell me that, but this particular instance is the one I remember.
I don't read many news headlines these days, but a lot of the ones I do read tell me there are plenty of people around who haven't learned my mother's lesson. A lot of them look like someone's idea of a bad joke.
The next Star Trek series, Star Trek: Discovery, hasn't even premiered yet, but already trolls on the internet are decrying it as "white genocide in space" because the new starship's captain and first officer are both played by women of color. In Austin TX, men are objecting to the Alamo Drafthouse theater chain's special women-only showings of the new Wonder Woman movie. And in the neverending saga of Wall Street's Charging Bull and Fearless Girl statues, we now have the "Sketchy Dog," a small statue of a pug lifting its leg on the Fearless Girl, meant to express solidarity with the sculptor of the Charging Bull, who is very upset over the way he thinks the Fearless Girl has damaged his artistic vision. The Sketchy Dog was quickly removed, though, because (just like the Charging Bull) it was placed there without a permit from the city.
It's all a bunch of silliness, or at least it is until people start getting violent about it. It's silly until someone running for Congress assaults a reporter, and a "Christian" radio host cheers him on, saying Western civilization needs "a more violent Christianity." It's silly until someone shows up heavily armed at the Phoenix Comic Con, wanting to shoot up the place. It's silly until people get stabbed to death trying to protect Muslim women from harm.
If you look at the statistics, the biggest terror threat to the United States doesn't come from al-Qaeda or ISIS. It doesn't come from any real Muslims, either. It comes from straight, white men. If you really want to use racial profiling as a means of threat assessment, then I belong on a terror watchlist more than the local Imam does.
What's the matter with us? For all the ranting and raving you hear about "snowflakes" and the insistence on "political correctness," it's us white guys who seem to be the most fragile, the ones most likely to be offended by someone else's words or actions, or even their mere presence. What's up with that?
Writer Rebecca Solnit recently observed that, "we gain awareness of ourselves and others from setbacks and difficulties; we get used to a world that is not always about us; and those who do not have to cope with that are brittle, weak, unable to endure contradiction, convinced of the necessity of always having one’s own way." Research has shown that in controlled studies where people are verifiably being given equal treatment, the white men in the group feel like they're being discriminated against. It's like they're all taking my mother's math test and assuming she'll pick them just because of who they are.
That's how you get to be a tissue-paper tough guy. You can dish it out, talking big and trying to bully people, because people who are different seem less than human. But you can't take it, because you don't expect those people to have their own thoughts, and you certainly don't expect them to talk back, let alone resist you. Anyone who does is an affront to your tiny little world where you're in charge. You've got to fight back somehow. Lucky for us, most people choose silly responses like boycotting Starbucks over cups that aren't Christmassy enough. Unfortunately, too many others choose more violent options.
But do you know what else happens? Being a tissue-paper tough guy makes you vulnerable to charlatans and con men who will prey on your fragility and use it to make you do their bidding. "The history of America," says writer and activist Tim Wise, "is the history of rich white men telling not-rich white people that their enemies are black and brown." If they can frighten you enough, someone might even convince you to put on a Make America Great Again hat or give him the Nazi salute in the middle of a campaign rally.
The bigger world full of people who are different from you can be scary, yes. It can be hard, too. Disappointing and frustrating. But it's also much more interesting, even wondrous. And the perseverance it teaches you leads to a much better life than anything you can have as your own tiny emperor.
I wish I was better at convincing people of that. One of the hardest parts of dealing with the Trumpocalypse is the way Trump supporters often retreat even farther into their bubbles when presented with facts. What we need is some kind of message that gives people hope in the real world, so they'll want to risk coming out and seeing it for themselves. Maybe that's a new challenge for me to work on.
Naturally, I wasn't very happy about that at the time, but now that I'm older and wiser, I think it was one of her best parenting moments. She taught me to check my privilege - not in those words, of course, because people didn't say that in the early 1980s. But she reminded me that I'm not a big shot, that I can't assume something will be handed to me just because of who I am. Such lessons need to be taught over and over again, and so I'm sure there were plenty of other times when my parents had to tell me that, but this particular instance is the one I remember.
I don't read many news headlines these days, but a lot of the ones I do read tell me there are plenty of people around who haven't learned my mother's lesson. A lot of them look like someone's idea of a bad joke.
The next Star Trek series, Star Trek: Discovery, hasn't even premiered yet, but already trolls on the internet are decrying it as "white genocide in space" because the new starship's captain and first officer are both played by women of color. In Austin TX, men are objecting to the Alamo Drafthouse theater chain's special women-only showings of the new Wonder Woman movie. And in the neverending saga of Wall Street's Charging Bull and Fearless Girl statues, we now have the "Sketchy Dog," a small statue of a pug lifting its leg on the Fearless Girl, meant to express solidarity with the sculptor of the Charging Bull, who is very upset over the way he thinks the Fearless Girl has damaged his artistic vision. The Sketchy Dog was quickly removed, though, because (just like the Charging Bull) it was placed there without a permit from the city.
It's all a bunch of silliness, or at least it is until people start getting violent about it. It's silly until someone running for Congress assaults a reporter, and a "Christian" radio host cheers him on, saying Western civilization needs "a more violent Christianity." It's silly until someone shows up heavily armed at the Phoenix Comic Con, wanting to shoot up the place. It's silly until people get stabbed to death trying to protect Muslim women from harm.
If you look at the statistics, the biggest terror threat to the United States doesn't come from al-Qaeda or ISIS. It doesn't come from any real Muslims, either. It comes from straight, white men. If you really want to use racial profiling as a means of threat assessment, then I belong on a terror watchlist more than the local Imam does.
What's the matter with us? For all the ranting and raving you hear about "snowflakes" and the insistence on "political correctness," it's us white guys who seem to be the most fragile, the ones most likely to be offended by someone else's words or actions, or even their mere presence. What's up with that?
Writer Rebecca Solnit recently observed that, "we gain awareness of ourselves and others from setbacks and difficulties; we get used to a world that is not always about us; and those who do not have to cope with that are brittle, weak, unable to endure contradiction, convinced of the necessity of always having one’s own way." Research has shown that in controlled studies where people are verifiably being given equal treatment, the white men in the group feel like they're being discriminated against. It's like they're all taking my mother's math test and assuming she'll pick them just because of who they are.
That's how you get to be a tissue-paper tough guy. You can dish it out, talking big and trying to bully people, because people who are different seem less than human. But you can't take it, because you don't expect those people to have their own thoughts, and you certainly don't expect them to talk back, let alone resist you. Anyone who does is an affront to your tiny little world where you're in charge. You've got to fight back somehow. Lucky for us, most people choose silly responses like boycotting Starbucks over cups that aren't Christmassy enough. Unfortunately, too many others choose more violent options.
But do you know what else happens? Being a tissue-paper tough guy makes you vulnerable to charlatans and con men who will prey on your fragility and use it to make you do their bidding. "The history of America," says writer and activist Tim Wise, "is the history of rich white men telling not-rich white people that their enemies are black and brown." If they can frighten you enough, someone might even convince you to put on a Make America Great Again hat or give him the Nazi salute in the middle of a campaign rally.
The bigger world full of people who are different from you can be scary, yes. It can be hard, too. Disappointing and frustrating. But it's also much more interesting, even wondrous. And the perseverance it teaches you leads to a much better life than anything you can have as your own tiny emperor.
I wish I was better at convincing people of that. One of the hardest parts of dealing with the Trumpocalypse is the way Trump supporters often retreat even farther into their bubbles when presented with facts. What we need is some kind of message that gives people hope in the real world, so they'll want to risk coming out and seeing it for themselves. Maybe that's a new challenge for me to work on.
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