YES ON CALIFORNIA 209!
Angry White Males:
The "Squeeky Wheels" on the Leveled Playing Field.
by
Michael F. Rivero
"'One always bakes the most delicate cakes.
Two is a really superb masseur.
Three sets your hair with immaculate care.
Four's brandy goes to the Emperor!
Five knows each trick of advanced rhetoric.
Six bred a beautiful brand new rose.
Seven can cook every dish in the book,
and Eight cuts you flawlessly elegant clothes!'
Do you still believe that these eight could find
happiness if each one could climb so high, but no higher
before banging his head on equality; If each could be but
a link in a long and heavy chain?"
-- The Persecution and Assassination of John Paul Marat
as performed by the inmates of the asylum at Charenton
under the direction of the Marquis De Sade!
PART 1 - INTRODUCTION
Imagine, for a moment, that you live in a world where the moment you're
born, your future life is decided by the color of your skin.
No matter how hard you work, jobs and promotions will go to others
less qualified.
Imagine, for a moment, that you live in a world where members of
your sex are considered second class citizens, prone to crime.
Complaints of sexual harassment are automatically discounted, because
"everyone" knows your sex is far less honorable.
Imagine that you are a male, and that your skin is white.
Imagine being categorized as a "potential rapist" by women.
Imagine being given reduced access to educational opportunities
and jobs because of your white skin.
Imagine that those people given privilege and preference over
you by Affirmative Action programs, respond to your complaints
by calling you a "poor sport" or "angry white male", the
inference being that you should just shut up and accept your
reduced status in life as "just compensation" for being a
potential rapist or the descendent of slave owners.
Not very pretty, is it?
PART 2 - HOW THE HELL DID WE GET HERE?
Let's get a couple things straight. I am a white male (and damned
proud of it).
I've never raped anybody.
I've never discriminated against anybody.
So THERE! (Deal with it.)
That having been settled, one is left wondering why this
present societal situation, steeped in sexual and racial discrimination against
white males, came about.
Part of the problem lies in the second paragraph of the
Declaration of Independence (signed by an ancestor, Josiah
Bartlett). That paragraph commences,"We hold these truths to be self
evident, that all men are created equal," etc.
I will not debate whether or not nature does stamp us out of the
same mold. Common sense and our own eyes assure us that this is
not true. Each of us is born with differing gifts in differing
degrees. Were this not so, there would be no need for a separate
women's category in the Olympics.
What the Declaration of Independence had in mind was not
some socialist's ideal of a classless, faceless mass of humanity
but a society in which people were not born into wealth and
power (or born out of it), but were free to attain it through
dint of hard work and dedication. And if they did not want
to expend the effort, they were free to spend their lives
that way as well, so long as they didn't create a burden on their
community.
But that wasn't good enough. The lazy and the indolent looked back
at the phrase "all men are created equal"; and while nobody will
claim equality with lesser individuals, ALL claim equality with the
rich and the powerful. Those who had worked less hard looked at the
lives of those who worked harder and demanded their fair share of the
bread and circuses. Politicians, knowing full well that
nature evolved far more "C" students than "A" students decided to
mandate that everybody should be equal, "C" and "A" (and "F")
students alike. And it was made so! I.Q. tests were outlawed
in 1971, and since inherent equality could no longer be tested for,
equality of OUTCOME was dictated. This played right into the
hands of political opportunists.
PART 3 - FEMINISM AS A PROFIT CENTER
Few organizations have voiced unquestioning support for
Affirmative Action more loudly than the feminist movement.
The feminist movement made great deal of the fact that
women were not reaching the achievement levels of men. The claim
was made that women were discriminated against. That claim
overlooked a very real fact of life. Simply, that as both men and
women walk that tightrope of life from birth to death, women may
step off of it at any time into marriage and child rearing, but
for a man to step off means homelessness and death. The male doctor
may marry the female nurse, but when was the last time you saw
a female doctor marry a male nurse?
Ignoring this simple social reality made it possible for
women to be whipped into a fury of resentment over what they told
was a deprived state, but which was very often their chosen
life path. This was encouraged by corporations who knew full well
that in a family where the earner and the spender are separate people,
if the spender HATES the earner, they will spend MORE (which is why
American women spend 30 billion dollars a year on beauty
products while their fellow human beings sleep in alleys and eat
out of trash bins, and why feminism's major contributors are
cosmetics and fashion companies.)
This single "profit booster" relegated males to little more
than "cash objects", walking wallets treated as if paying for the
elevated lifestyles of their mates was the measurement of equality.
Along the way, we males got to hear women on TV (invented by
a White Male) pick up those microphones (invented by a White Male)
and unjustly accuse us of being rapists and child molesters.
Women who had no real cause for hate called themselves "potential
rape survivors", and picked up the telephone (invented by a White
Male) or used a FAX machine (invented by a White Male) to call
radio (invented by a White Male) talk shows to complain how men
were worthless and only suited for parallel parking the
car (invented by a White Male).
The root derivation of the word "arrogance" means to claim
ownership, or "a regeancy" by divine right. And it certainly seemed
to many men that women were becoming arrogant in claiming the
benefits of a world mostly constructed and invented by men.
PART 4 - RACISM
In the civil war, my ancestors ran a station on the "Underground
Railroad". This was a loose network of private homes in which slaves
were hidden during the daytime. At night, the slaves would be moved to
the next house northward, night by night, up to the Canadian border.
One of my relatives still lives in one of the houses with a
hidden "slave" room. To reach it, you have to climb up to the
attic, through a trap door and down besides the chimney until
you reach the room between the dining room fireplace and the
front room fireplace. It's very dark and spooky. I can imagine how much
worse it was with the clump of the slave catchers' boots tramping
up and down the halls.
It was hard on my ancestors, I'm certain, when those
same slave catchers would savagely beat them, or assault the
women, or burn the houses down.
Given all that, can you imagine how foolish I would look if I
mailed every descendent of those escaped slaves an invoice for
my ancestors having freed their ancestors? And yet, much of
the racial prejudice AGAINST whites is based on the assumption that
the descendents of those slaves NOT fortunate enough to escape are
owed societal "back pay".
Racism is wrong, in ANY direction.
PART 5 - THE IMMEDIATE COSTS
Let me cite a personal anecdote here, and encourage others
to post similar stories.
I work in special effects. I've been doing it for most of my (REDACTED)
years.
In High School I was the fat kid with a slide rule on my belt
that the football players would beat up to do their homework.
I built a computer out of telephone relays, earned spare cash fixing
neighborhood TV's and ground the optics for my first telescope.
In junior college I did effects for the school planetarium, some
of which wound up used at the Griffith Park planetarium. I've been
working professionally in the field for 18 years and have been nominated
for an academy award.
About 3 years ago, I went head to head with a feminist over a
job supervising computer effects for a feature film. By comparison,
this woman spent HER years in high school chasing the football
players and watching them beat up the fat kid with a slide rule to
do their homework. In point of fact, she had never used a computer
at all. In comparing our relative experience levels,
this woman used the then politically correct expression "leveling
the playing field" and declared that the only way females (she) would
GET experience equal to males (me) was if she was hired ahead
of me. She was. The quota-fillers at the studio were happy. She was
happy. Women in Film (a local feminist organization) was happy.
Everybody was happy (except me, but that's not germane to this
narrative.) She offered me a job subordinate to her. I won't work under
anyone who knows less than I do. She called me a poor sport and an angry
White Male. I head for another film project (which turned out to be a lot of
fun anyway).
Six months later, her feature film was in trouble. The effects
were over budget, and detracted from the rest of the film. The quality
of the final film was degraded. Worse, it's release was delayed,
resulting in the film missing it's target demographic, with
a significant loss of revenues.
Losing a supervisory job to this woman, well that's
"fortunes of war", and I can shrug that off; but to lose a
supervisory job to a far LESS qualified person because of
Affirmative Action and then have the art form
itself degraded by their performance: that is a slap in the
face of everyone who helped create the single most complex
art form in the history of the world. Were it just one
film, that would be acceptable "growing pains"; but the
indications are that Affirmative Action-inspired hires
have become a major cause of problems in studio CGI departments.
The studio heads, themselves less than fully familiar with
the new digital technologies, are incapable of discerning when
they are being lied to. Unfortunately, and with entire careers at stake, they
are being lied to a LOT.
The studios suffer for it.
The films suffer for it.
The audiences suffer for it.
PART 7 - THE LONG TERM COSTS
It seems as if our nation has crawled to a standstill.
Having allowed the government to stand "in loco parentis",
We The Sheeple now wait for the government to decree that
the janitor is the equal of the scientist, the housewife the
equal of the doctor (a good reason to practice Christian Science).
Many ethnic communities are paralyzed, refusing to grow,
pinning all their hopes on an eventual government mandated
redress for discriminations both real and imagined. Such
was the case in South Central Los Angeles, in which Korean
store owners found success in the middle of a black community
held in poverty more by their own belief in their oppression
than by real discrimination. (Needless to say, the Korean owned
businesses were specifically targeted during the Los Angeles riots).
Affirmative Action strips all motivation to excel from our
young people. Time and again they watch as unqualified people
are hired and promoted above highly qualified people simply
because of gender and skin color. Those in the privileged
genders and races feel assured of their ascendancy no matter
what their grades are in school. Those who are NOT so politically
favored can hardly be faulted for seeing all academic pursuits
as an exercise in futility. Excellence in academic studies
being un-equal, is now UN-American. For every bumper sticker
proclaiming a parent's pride in an honor student, there are
ten proclaiming an equal pride in a child capable of beating
up that honor student.
Adherence to political agendas has replaced excellence in
studies. That kind of climate leads to a willingness to join
ANY political group, no matter what they stand for, simply
to get an "edge" unachievable by any other means. The productivity
of the society has become politicized.
Yes, I'm an angry White Male, but not just for myself. I am
angry for all those dispirited and dis enfranchised people who
have discovered they are but links in a long and heavy chain;
who have spent their lives to climb as high as they can only
to have banged their heads on mandated equality.
Remember when America built cars that the whole world wanted?
Remember when NASA actually sent up spaceships that worked? Remember
when America built the world's best computers?
Remember when Affirmative Action became the law of the land?
