“I’m not prejudiced, but by golly, a white male in this country has very few rights, and they’re getting took more every day.” —  Sevier County, Tenn. County Commissioner Warren Hurst, 2019

I could probably make a reasonable argument that I drew a short straw when it came to health. Near-sighted, slew-footed and lazy-eyed before 8th grade, I contracted diabetes before my freshman year of high school (Type I diabetes, not that fat ass wussy diabetes, Type II).  Then came the eye surgeries. Then the double-organ transplant.

But my eyes aren’t so shot that I can’t see how goddamned lucky I am. I need look no further than my own mother —  whose immune system attacked her with “birdshot retinapathy,” rendering her legally blind — to realize just how fortunate I was in the draw. Whatever you got, throw a stone; it’ll pass someone worse off before it touches ground.

That notion, though, seems to have been lost in the country’s recent swell of white nationalism. And if the allegations are true, the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed black man in Brunswick Ga., was a lynching, straight-up — and tacitly endorsed by this administration. Even if the defense of the accused father-son team is true, it underscores the misplaced anger at displacement that rots our nation still.

 

Arberry was killed Feb. 23 after jogging in Brunswick.  The men arrested for his death, Gregory McMichael, left, and  son Travis McMichael, claimed that Arberry was running from their neighborhood and they suspected him of burglary. After a confrontation, the defense lawyers claim, Arberry was killed in self-defense.

Consider for a moment what the suspects are claiming. That they witnessed a crime and, instead of calling police, tooled up with a shotgun and .357 Magnum and took off in hot pursuit. And it just so happened their buddy came along for the ride and videotaped the killing to…livestream justice? County police even let the men go home after the shooting, leaving it to higher ranks to arrest the men more than two months after the slaying. THAT is white privilege.

This weekend, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation reached out to Bill Barr’s Justice Dept. to weigh in on whether a hate crime was committed. It leaves the Trump administration in an interesting position: investigating a crime it incited.

To be clear: Our president has never instructed his base to go a’ hangin.’ He’s just convinced them that they’ve been left that way.

Consider the above quote, from a dim-witted Tennessee politician who was arguing for his county to become a Second Amendment “sanctuary city,” whatever the hell that is. While the designation may be murky, the motive is not. For the past three years, Trump has been a dog whistle incarnate for two of America’s least-stable geniuses: rabid Christians and Confederates. The Charlottesville protests amounted to a Trump rally with swastikas. David Duke has publicly thanked Agent Orange for bringing America back in line. A new Pew Research poll found 27% of Americans believe Trump’s presidency is part of God’s plan. Apparently, the Lord is feeling gipped, too.

Jews will not replace us! is the conical hat of the New Confederacy of Dunces. Never mind that 20 million manufacturing jobs around the world could be replaced by robots by 2030, according to Oxford Economics. Robots don’t take offense. Scapegoating only works if the goat knows it’s being scaped.

And if the tiki-torchers are to be believed, jobs are being wrenched from our very hands. We white men aren’t free to speak our minds about race, gender, politics, etc. Our guns are in peril. When Barack Obama won the presidency, Fox blowhard Tucker Carlson notoriously noted: “This is not the America I remember.”

So is this what you remember, Tucker? Or do you agree with your Tennessee supporter that the white man is seeing more took away everyday?

Because I’m not sure what you’re seeing. And as a white, American male, I get to speak about privilege. I still count plenty:

• I don’t get suspected when a house is broken into in my neighborhood.
• I don’t get stopped driving in a neighborhood because of my skin.
• If I am stopped, I don’t worry about getting shot.
• I don’t get a percentage of another person’s paycheck.
• I’m not viewed as a threat if I’m strident.
• I’m not forcibly restrained for talking back.

Which brings me back to health. Short straw or not, I don’t have birdshot retinapathy, either. White privilege, like health, money, education or anything else that happens to go your way, is not about what you get. It’s about what you don’t get.