One advantage of being white, male, straight, and from Protestant stock, is that I don’t have any psychological or other need to belong to any group. While one of my grandparents was Italian, most of my lineage is German or English. You don’t hear people talk too much about English- or German-Americans, at least not since our wars with those nations ended some time ago.
I hear other people talk about WASPs, usually in either an envious or a condescending way, or a mixture of both. But I don’t run in the kinds of circles where WASPs talk about being WASPs. The luxury of being a WASP is that your “identity” isn’t really something you need to think about.
And, the passing of Julian Bond gives me another opportunity to rejoice that I don’t “belong” to this WASP group or have any responsibility for what they do.
Bond was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965, but his white colleagues in the House refused to let him take his seat because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. A year later, the Supreme Court accused the Legislature of violating his freedom of speech and ordered it to seat him.
Because if I did feel some kind of special affinity for this ethnic group and derive some sense of self-worth from it, I’d have a problem with them being the Bill Kristol of ethnic groups, always wrong, always behind the times, always kicking and screaming against even the most common sense baby steps towards more fairness and basic decency.
I don’t know whether it angers or amuses me more when I hear WASPs complain that every other ethnic group has a parade or special month to discuss their history or a department at the state university dedicated to studying their history.
It amuses me because it’s so blind about the advantages of being the dominant group, as if we’d rather have a parade than decide who gets to join our country clubs and law firms, or who gets to run the country.
It angers me because perhaps I’m just enough of a WASP to be embarrassed by other WASPs. I mean, it’s no surprise that I am not happy with white supremacists, even the peculiar ones who aren’t WASPs and have no memory of suffering religious, housing, or employment discrimination.
But the clowns in the Georgia House of Representatives who wouldn’t seat Julian Bond are supposed to be my ethic brothers, and I just find that ludicrous. I’d rather take up with barnyard animals than join in their race consciousness.
These folks will call me self-hating, which is really a form of projection on their part. I’d have to feel more a part of this group to actually feel bad about myself for being a member. You can pick virtually any political issue under the Sun, and WASPs (as a group) vote against what I believe is sane, just, or decent. They voted for Palin and they voted for Romney and they’ll probably vote for whatever moral reprobate the GOP coughs up at their Cleveland convention next year.
Letting them control things gives us things like the Vietnam and Iraq wars. I’m really not interested in more of that.
So, for whatever reason, I wind up cherishing the career and accomplishments of Julian Bond and shaking my head in disgust at the legacy of his political opponents who are supposed to be part of my tribe.
And, of course, I know I am being uncharitable to WASPs here, and I don’t want to denigrate an entire ethnic group for all the obvious reasons. It’s just that when you are discriminated against because of your skin hue or religion or ethnicity or sexual orientation, or gender, you don’t have a choice but to acknowledge that you’re part of a group. Unless I land in prison, I will never be forced to join in this group of mine, and I never will. That’s a luxury, and I don’t need a parade or a White History Month to tell me it’s a luxury.
