reflecting on identity, privilege and communal harm in trump’s america | w[h]m pt.4

White American men were thrust into the spotlight and put under widespread scrutiny following the election of President Trump in 2016…

Thanks to his expression of masculinity, privilege and even white supremacy, there became a strong delineation in the way that white cismen conducted themselves in our society. On one hand, there were those who aligned, felt represented and even emboldened by Trump’s unwavering and unapologetic rhetoric and demeanor. Many of the older men related to me fell into this camp. On the other hand, I think there were white men like me. The ones who found ourselves in a reactive and almost defensive posture, trying to figure out the most effective way to differentiate ourselves from the persona of our most prominent public figure, while still trying to maintain some sense of assuredness in our self and identity.

From my perspective as a white man, I think that support for Trump was essentially a retaliation; some have referred to it as patriarchal whitelash. One of the earliest epiphanies I had around this came in the late hours on election night in 2016, when I acknowledged the correlation between Trump supporters, and the number of Americans who did not see themselves nor their interests represented by our prevailing progressive movements. On a personal level, what I had come to understand, believe and advocate for in more fundamentalist social justice spaces was not reaching everyday people, rather it was causing them to organize, resist and fight for nostalgic greatness, the perceived status quo, or an alternate future vision for our society and nation. I felt the biggest threat to our society was the fact that these opposing movements were occurring in ignorance to and isolation from each other.

This realization was a primary driver for me leaving Detroit to endeavor across our county in pursuit of forming better relationships and offering up more nuanced and complex narratives. Frankly, my identity as a straight white male allowed me to do that effectively; it put me in a position to bridge the gap between folks who predominantly looked like me and folks who predominantly thought like me, as that was one of the most polarizing divides we faced in the Trump Era (and today).

Plain and simple, I carried the privilege of perceived and assumed neutrality until self-declaration that comes with my visible (and perceived) identities. It’s a privilege that I have leveraged throughout my life. The way that I understand our society is built - on the cornerstones of patriarchy and white supremacy - straight-presenting, white cismen like me rarely have our presence questioned or challenged in spaces, especially if we present ourselves as amenable and in-line with the contextual status quo. The fact that I was able to walk the streets of Trump’s inauguration in DC one day and then participate in the Women’s March the next without any harassment or interrogation is indicative of that.

I learned about that ability some time ago, and I wanted to see how that privilege would play out in rural and rural adjacent communities within broader conservative contexts in America, where people were more likely to look like me than not, yet philosophically disagree with me more than any of the communities I had previously lived in as an adult - Beloit, Wisconsin, Boston, Massachusetts, and Detroit, Michigan. I wanted to be a conduit in places where my minority, marginalized and even more progressive-minded friends and peers didn't feel welcome and therefore safe enough to go. I wanted to dispel the problematic, broad-sweeping generalizations that we use to identify and dismiss entire communities, states and regions of the country, further distancing, consolidating power, and harming them in the process.

Truthfully, I wanted to show up more authentically in my work as well. I had begun to struggle with how to effectively show up fully in spaces where my identities were so entwined with the understood nature of hierarchy and oppression in America, especially as I struggled internally with the reality that being white in our country doesn’t actually ensure inclusion, safety or belonging within our own racial group. I had the urge to trace back to the lessons and conditioning of my upbringing in an apathetic and agnostic, middle-working class suburban household, where my extended family primarily held more moderate to conservative values, and reconcile them with the progressive beliefs and values I had honed in my early adulthood and career. I thought there might be alignment for me to work more in predominantly white communities reckoning with their own problems and possibilities in response to that.

I was right. My dominant identities - white, straight, college-educated and male - allowed me to show up, be permitted and hold an open mind; the people I interacted with opened up to me as a result. Some willingly offered up their prejudices and bigotry, while others shared their desires and vision for racial equity and progress. Somewhat surprisingly, on a case-by-case basis, I wouldn’t know which sentiment was going to come out of a person’s mouth until it did either. There was the barber in Arkansas who told me that having a gay [Episcopalian] man run for president meant that we needed more Jesus in our lives. There was the maintenance worker in West Virginia who told me that he stood in solidarity with Flint and Standing Rock because he knew what it was like to fight for water rights and sovereignty. The Republican school board candidate in Northeast Tennessee who expressed ignorance, yet empathy for police brutality in urban Black communities because she saw the same treatment extended to poor people in her own community. The chemical engineer running a Thai restaurant in his backyard with his Thai wife just down the road, who expressed that he was more concerned about monocropping than climate change, and felt that we were due for another civil war because, “we had forgotten what it takes to fight and survive on our own soil.”

My Great Aunt Sue despondently told me a story of a local, gay small business owner in the nearby LGBTQ-enclave of Eureka Springs, who permanently withheld payment for over $1,500 of flowers she had delivered to him from their nursery. When he found out she was a Trump supporter, he felt threatened enough by her politics to break the business agreement. I think her telling me the story on multiple occasions was indicative of how hurt she was by his retaliation, not just from a business perspective, but in her ability to trust and be in relationship with others.

…my position of perceived neutrality exposed me to the reality that we don’t understand how our beliefs, decisions and reactions can perpetuate endless cycles of interpersonal and societal harm.