Open Letter to White People

Forgive me for going out on a limb where I have no expertise and have logged no credit hours.  These are my own thoughts, born of personal experience and first-hand observation.  But today is the first day of February, Black History Month.  Martin Luther King, jr. said; “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”  With his words in mind and in light of current events,  I realize it’s not enough to gripe amongst like-minded friends and family.  To that end I submit the following to the public record.

I’m a baby-booming white male living in red-state middle America.  I grew up surrounded by Christian white people, was baptized and ‘confirmed’ in the Methodist Church in a neighborhood that was not ‘white trash’ but not quite ‘lower middle class’, either.  I’m an Eagle Scout and an NRA Junior Division Sharpshooter.  All this to say: I am not an elitist living in an ivory tower.  My bona fides land me squarely in the MAGA demographic, and yet I am unequivocally and unapologetically liberal.

How did this happen?

Growing up, I heard and told jokes at the expense of black, gay, and Polish people, Jews and women.  People with Down syndrome and physical afflictions.  Everyone around me did.  My uncles did, scout leaders did.  My grandfather explained to me one day why black people couldn’t be as smart as whites.  Looking back, I think that was the first crack in an otherwise complete indoctrination.  A subscription to National Geographic helped to wedge it open.  Souvenirs and photos my Dad kept from his Navy travels helped.   Jacques Cousteau helped.

We’ve all heard the same propaganda delivered as news and as fact from people in positions of authority with abundant unfiltered air-time.  I get it that many in my demographic are feeling ignored, cancelled, replaced—and that messages of anger, hate and fear resonate; promises of action sound appealing.  I want to speak to those anxieties.

Times are tough for aging white males.  I hear you.  I am one, remember.  But hear this: Boo fucking hoo.  We are white people living in a white people’s world and we have been—and still are—afforded unearned privileges and advantage.  Being white is easier.  How many times have you been stopped by police to explain why you are where you are?  How many in your family have been lynched?

‘White’ is not a quality or a value, it is a color.  It is not superiority, it is a color.  Critical Race Theory is not a Deep State conspiracy, it is a recognition that maybe there really is no such thing as ‘race’ except as social construct, a reason invented by one group of human beings to draw imaginary distinctions between and justify the subjugation of other human beings.

Instead of strutting around with the world’s highest levels of national pride, we—fellow white Americans—need to take responsibility for our actions, and the decisions we have made by ourselves for our own lives.  We need to accept that consequences are a truth in reality.  Did you skip classes and plagiarize papers?  Or drop out?  Did you spend your first earned dollars on a car instead of investing in an education?  Did you marry the first person you dated, have a child when you were 18, 19?  Have you remained unemployed, under-employed, unhappily employed through no-ones’s inaction but your own?  No savings?  A mountain of credit card debt?

Maybe non-white, non-straight people are getting a little recognition, respect and air time.  Maybe they’re even getting some preferential treatment.  Their parents and grandparents payed in advance, didn’t they?  Oppression, humiliation and all the other crimes suffered in the past are poor investments towards getting ahead in college placement or access to loans today.  

Instead of pouting and having hissy fits, how about let’s grow up and be adults.  Anger is poison.  Set the table and share the bounty instead of kicking it over.

—Aaron Dougherty, 2025 February 1