The White People I Hate
First off, “hate “is a strong word. In fact, I refuse to use it seriously in any contexts. It makes for a good, clickable title, though.
Hate implies there are people worth throwing away entirely. I don’t believe in that. I do believe in protecting yourself when you need to from people who are terrible and would do you harm. But I don’t believe those same people are completely worthless. I even think Hitler, giving a good 120 years of re-training in hell, could probably come back as a relatively nice (albeit, occasionally controversial) fruit salesman or something. But, of course, once you bring Hitler into a conversation your point is already lost, am I right? So I move into my main point.
I’m a white guy. My wife is white, by today’s standards anyway. By that, I mean she’s Sicilian. She doesn’t speak Italian but her parents did. She is of Sicilian descent, shall we say. And there was a time not too long ago in American history where Italians, specifically Sicilians (you know, the brownish ones), were not truly considered white. Maybe the measure back then was, “Would they sell him the KKK robe?” And the answer in my wife’s parents’ case would be “No. Don’t sell those Sicilians this nice, fresh, white KKK robe.” See what I mean. Societal constructs, blah blah blah, etc.
So now that I’ve spent two paragraphs apologizing in advance, here are the white people I hate:
1. Old Money
2. Fraternity/sorority white people
3. Overzealous sports fans
4. Wearers of backwards baseball caps after the age of 25
5. People who call all of the city downtown
6. People who buy an entirely new polo shirt, khaki short, sandals combos to come downtown on the weekend
7. Anyone who, upon hearing about any crime anywhere, feels the need to respond, “Dude, you gotta get outta there!”
8. The ones who shake their heads incredulously way too much. (Come on man. Stuff you don’t know isn’t that incredible.)
9. The ones who have never striven to better themselves in any major way and are threatened by those who have
10. The ones who don’t understand or believe the unfairness of white privilege
11. The ones who aren’t actually all white but claim it and protect it with all their nearly white hearts
12. The ones who pretend to be another race because it’s cooler. (That’s the personality equivalent of #7)
13. People with way too many bumper stickers on their used car that they don’t maintain well, telling us everything we need to know about their opinions on every issue we didn’t ask them about
14. Guys who write about whiteness for digital magazines
15. Guys who apologize too much
16. Guys who never apologize
