Unemployed, Well-Educated, White, Male

As a currently unemployed, well-educated, white, male I love what Tim Wise says in this video.  The myth of entitlement Wise speaks about in the closing minutes of this clip is a powerful witness to the reality of privilege and racism in American society today.  And if I'm honest and I reread the first sentence I just typed, I can point out that a mere three words in to this post I display, without thinking twice, that same pathological entitlement.  Because, you see, I'm just "currently" unemployed.  It would be hard for me (too hard) to believe in a world where unemployment for myself would be an ongoing, persistent, and debilitating issue.  And it's funny because sitting here (in all of my flagrant white privilege) I live in a modest house where I just mowed the grass and have internet access in order to comfortably sit on a seat at a kitchen table so that I can compose this post...white privilege.

It would be a mistake to think Tim's comments are without sympathy for someone in my position.  But Wise isn't addressing the pain of unemployment or the feelings of inadequacy and frustration or the current climate of the world's economic systems.  Wise is giving us a reminder, a proof if you will, that what we think about the unemployed (that they are lazy, that they WANT to be on welfare, that they intend to leach off of the government until our government and society implodes on itself) is a narrative and picture that has been painted by the people in society who look like me.  And as Wise says, "[it] is ironic, and it is sad, and it is tragic," because those are the people that have bought into this myth of meritocracy.  It is that same White Protestant ethic that I can hear in the back of my brain, "god helps those who help themselves," as if all you need to do is work for what you want.

I'm privileged that my days are filled with endless applications and going on the occasional interview.  I'm not excited about it, I'm not happy about it and at times I can feel quite depressed about it, but at least I still have the luxury of searching for employment in a field I would enjoy working.  And never in that process has my status as a natural-born citizen of the United States been questioned (This might have something to do with the fact that I'm not a high profile public figure but I'm also fortunate enough to be white with an acceptable Anglo sounding name).  We need only look at the top rung (THE VERY TOP!) of a hierarchy of public service to see the plague of racism and privilege that continues to permeate this country.  Birthers, was it really the fact that President Obama never released a satisfyingly official document (at least to your unbiased eyes) to assuage your fears of a foreign-born Black Nigerian Muslim with a funny name taking over "our" country or are you just bigots?

There are days I would like to paint myself so that when these people say these things, these people who look like me, I can hide for a few days (at least).  There are days when I wish I could wash off the legacy of slavery and Jim Crowe and reservations and smallpox in blankets and Tuskegee even though I know that would help nothing.  Beyond the laughter President Obama shared at the beginning of his most recent news conference to address the claims of the Birthers, I was honestly and utterly ashamed of myself, of white culture, of privilege, of this country, of all of it and all of us even though I know the shame and the hiding doesn't do anyone much good.  Instead, for now, I'll simply say I am an unemployed, well-educated, white, male and I can admit what our brothers and sisters of color have known and lived with much longer than me, that sometimes it doesn't matter how much you work or how much you know; sometimes the only thing that matters is whether your name sounds white enough or your skin color is light enough.

Why I Love the Word Fuck

Some of my favorite words are curse words and not least because they tend to convey emotions far better than other words.  There is something visceral and real about curse words that, for me, tend to break down pretense in conversation.  I also realize that curse words can do the exact opposite for some people and I'm okay with that, I guess.  But I also feel like there is a component that is both psychological and physiological when exclaiming fuck or shit or some interesting combination therein.  Sometimes, it just feels good.  And I know, we're taught to be wary of things that make us feel strongly one way or the other, and we tend to demonize those things or at least control those things so people don't feel TOO good or are TOO angry.  But fuck it.  Thankfully, I can rest on the laurels of scientific inquiry.  Timothy B. Jay (a personal hero and, I'm sure, a wonderful human being), a professor of psychology, relates through the research he's done that curse words fill a vital role in society.  Namely, curse words alleviate anger and help prevent people from physical violence.  This, of course, is what I try to explain to my partner when someone cuts me off in traffic.

Besides all of my personal feelings and preference for the vulgar, the history of curse words is a fascinating trip through social change and etymology.  Curse words change over time, are different from place to place and carry with them a history of dissent and revolution that appeals to me on a human level.  Many words that we find completely harmless today draw their etymological heritage from religious imagery that would have been offensive to contemporaries of its conception.  Zounds, for instance, was an oath of anger that meant, "by God's wounds" and was offensive because it made light of the crucifixion.  I always thought zounds referred to some imaginary large number.  Who knew?  Well, I guess those English speakers living around the time of Shakespeare did, but that was like eleventy billion years ago.

I guess there is a part of me that wonders to what extent curse words become the scapegoat of controlling emotional outburst or keeping some arcane notion of public decorum.  Because, I assume, it would be a bad idea to reveal so much of ourselves to the world.  I mean, we all feign some level of public outrage when our role models or public leaders are caught using some vulgar language.  This is not to say, however, that words shouldn't mean something when we use them.  Few days go by that I'm not reminded of the power of words when reading about the newest back and forth political pageantry from the tea party, republicans, or democrats.  Words are powerful things and I'm not discounting that; my problem is that society has chosen to care about some words that are basically harmless.

Cursing in the past revolved mainly around religious imagery.  Even today, saying something akin to goddamn is a near capital offense for some people.  Most of our other common curse words refer to the body or acts of the body and I can't help but wonder what the words we choose to vilify say about our society.  Religion and sex, sex and religion (why is it always one or the other?).  We can't talk about sex so we convince ourselves if we just preach abstinence things will be okay.  We can't talk about religion without pissing someone off so we hear explanations of religious practice and theology from mainstream media that is sterile, ancient and meaningless.  So, conversations in the public realm about these things tend toward the safe and non-confrontational instead of the places where actual discussion is not only helpful, but desperately needed.  It's frustrating, even maddening at times, but here we are.  Maybe if we could interrupt those conversations once in a while with a little anger management in the form of a good curse word...

Space

If it is at all possible for us to grasp the actual distances that make up the universe and the mind boggling numbers of celestial bodies and galaxies that exist within it, then there are two conclusions I feel are especially poignant.  First, there are other worlds out there, somewhere, in which intelligent life evolved, exists and thrives.  Second, we will most likely never meet them.

The journey to realization of others in the universe was profound for me.  As a child I would take flashlights outside at night and beam little messages into the sky hoping that someone might see them.  Those messages usually consisted of an S.O.S. as that was the only actual signal I knew (come to think of it, it's still the only signal I know that could be used over distance).  It could lose myself for hours attempting to "contact" something beyond our little world always with a deep yearning of wonder and possibility.  My childhood mind was given to imaginations of different people (who sometimes looked just like us but usually didn't) one day visiting Earth or perhaps welcoming us to their own Earth.  And yet,the more I learned about the universe the more I came to realize that, for all my hopes and dreams of others that might be out there, we exist in a cold emptiness of scientific limitation that all but guarantees we'll only ever know this one planet.  It's a thought I've never really been able to shake; that slow, inexorable rise to understanding of the immense size of space and the limitations of our knowledge of the universe laid waste to my childhood wonder of who else might be out there.

It's also a thought that spurred me to begin looking at my own place on this planet differently and more critically.  If this is the only place we'll ever be (or at least the only place we'll be for a very long time) then it would probably be a good idea to be a little more honest and prudent about what we do here.  I guess it's a bit odd really, space tends to make me wonder more and more about what it means to be human.  I feel like, if nothing else, we should be able to look at the sky at night and admit that there is at least one thing we all hold in common.  Against a backdrop of war, xenophobic attitudes towards immigrants, divisive rhetoric in politics and so much more that tends to make us think about our differences as bad things, I want to believe that a backdrop of stars, comets, and nebulae can remind us that our differences are what makes us human.  We all call the same place home.  

The day my dad bought a Mag-Lite and I got my hands on it I was convinced I was finally going to have something strong enough to actually make contact with some kind of extra-terrestrial intelligence.  I nearly dropped it when I was carrying it outside, my hands were sweaty with anticipation.  I took my time.  After all, if this was going to be the moment of contact I wanted to collect myself and my thoughts.  I realized at that moment the glaring problem with my plan.  My feeble S.O.S. probably wouldn't cut it for actual communication, in fact, nothing I could think of would cut it.  Instead, I decided on a slow steady pulse.  I clicked the button to examine just how powerful this beam of light was.  It was substantial, light saber substantial.  I chose the brightest star I could find and began pulsing the flashlight towards the sky.  I don't remember how long I sat there, probably to long, but I was determined.  At one point the star twinkled slightly and my excitement reached a fever pitch.  Alas, there was no contact that day with the Mag-Lite.  It was another blow in my quest to contact aliens with a flashlight.

For all the realistic expectations and precise calculations, there is still something romantic about space.  There is something that calls to me, that reminds me to continue to push forward, to learn new things, to explore not just the world around me but the world within.  The questions and possibilities of what is and what was and how it all came to be continue to fascinate me.  I still like to think that one of those beams of light could reach someone else out in the desolate expanse that is the universe and that one day we'll know more than life on this singular pale blue dot.