08-09-2019, 03:53 PM
I was a little surprised to find no mention in the forum's archive of Ijeoma Oluo. She's a fantastic writer and cultural critic, and I re-read one of her essays today.
It's a great read that discusses, but does not center, how white men can become dangerous victims of a system designed to privilege them, and how perceived harm is amplified and distributed onto Black, brown, and female bodies.
It's a great read that discusses, but does not center, how white men can become dangerous victims of a system designed to privilege them, and how perceived harm is amplified and distributed onto Black, brown, and female bodies.
Ijeoma Oluo wrote:
I was never told by this society that I could be anything and I could have everything. I was always told to settle for less. And my anger and the anger of so many other marginalized people has always lied in that reality. The truth of the situation.
But white male anger is steeped in a lie. It is fighting for what they were never going to have. For the promises that were never going to be fulfilled. White men are the only people allowed to fully believe in the American dream and perhaps that is the cruelest thing to have ever been done to them and the world that has to suffer their anger as they refuse to let go of a fantasy that we were never allowed to imagine ourselves in.
