Generic White Men (GWM) Status Update
and Ijeoma Oluo's book Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America
In this post: The literary trope of the GWM has been around this here newsletter for a while, haunting our minds and enraging our hearts.
Last week: Why we shouldn’t only blame men, prayers to offend white women, the patriarchy, and to indoctinate your very impressionable students.
Next week: I comment on the teacher crisis, the teen mental health crisis, and the Texas Board of education, plus another GWM award recipient.
“Right now, across the country, there are thousands of heavily armed groups of white men eagerly awaiting the chance to declare war. On anyone. Anyone they view as blameworthy for their dissatisfaction with their station in life. Anyone who seems to threaten the power these men have been promised.” - Ijeoma Oluo in the forward to Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America
If there was ever a time to pick up a copy of Ijeoma Oluo’s Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, that moment is now (if you haven’t already).
Who is the Generic White Man, you ask?
Why, he’s everywhere, he’s probably your boss, definitely a few of your coworkers, he may even be (gasp!) your partner or brother. GWM’s happen to all of us, and they typically make themselves known through an unearned sense of confidence, inflated (and thus very fragile) egos, and more rights than the rest of us (at least here in the good ole U.S. of A).
The GWM is, in a sense, the Everyman. The term ‘everyman’ comes from literature, and Wikipedia defines as: “The everyman is a stock character in fiction. An ordinary and humble character, the everyman is generally a protagonist whose benign conduct fosters the audience's wide identification with him.” The GWM is also a stock character in the genre I just invented of everyday reality horror.
As Ijeoma Oluo makes clear in Medicore:
“White men lead our ineffective government with almost guaranteed reelection. They lead our corrupt and violent criminal justice system with little risk of facing justice themselves. And they run our increasingly polarized and misinforming media, winning awards for perpetrating the ideas that things run best when white men are in charge. This is not a stroke of white male luck; this is how our white male supremacist systems have been designed to work.”
This post is dedicated to those of us with too many GWM in our lives.
As we all move through the stages of rage, grief, terror, and back to rage again, I don’t know about y’all, but I’m having a hard time listening to anything white men have to say to me. In fact, I was checking out at the grocery store, and one dared interrupt me to explain he needed to see my ID because I was purchasing wine. I shit you not when I say that I looked at him the way I looked at the racist principal I used to work for (with cool fury at being interrupted and a mildly arched eyebrow, as if to say: “bold, sir”).
We all must be on edge, and white men must be feeling particularly guilty of late because he immediately apologized for inconveniencing me and didn’t even make me show my ID (probably because I’m 35, but I’d like to think it’s because I put the fear of God in him with a look).
My point in sharing this banal anecdote is that right now, none of us are really ok. Except for Generic White Men, as per f-ing usual. The news is phantasmagoria of horror, unarmed Black men are still being shot down by a police squad, angry white men are shooting up 4th of July Parade to the backdrop of persistent calls to ban birth control, to ban Trans life, to repeal Gay marriage, to arrest women’s healthcare providers for attending to women’s bodies, and despite Grandpa Biden’s wifey being a teacher, there has not been much movement on educational equity, or even just improving education for the white kids. WOOF!
Hopefully NSFS can provide some sardonic balm for your weary patriarchy-oppressed souls. And for those of you white men still reading: y’all know what you need to do. Close your damn mouths and take out your goddamn check-books and just start off-loading your money, because you know you got more than the rest of us. See the bottom of this post for GWM Reparation Opportunities.
Generic White Male Award of the Week:
It being awards season (I think), it’s time to dust off NSFS’s lauded and critically-acclaimed GWM Award. With so many strong contenders of late, you won’t be surprised to learn that it was a hard decision to determine who had really earned the title.
Florida Governor Ron Desantis' "Don't Say Gay" bill went into effect this week, making him a top contender for NSFS's GWM award
Option #1: Ron DeSantis
The obvious pick would be our man main Ron de-fucking-Santis: Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill is now in effect. (read NSFS’s statement on Don’t Say Straight for reference). The bill’s actual name, Parental Rights in Education Act, literally doesn’t make any sense, so it didn’t surprise me to read that trying to comply with it has left educators scrambling. Stupid is as homophobic does, after all.
As a lesbian and empassioned educator, I wanted to give Ron deSantis the GWM Award this week, if only because I know the importance of providing a safe space for queer students, and making a safe space for gaybies (baby queers) has been one of the highlights of my teaching career. You can read about my Gay Art History Club on my old blog Post-PhD.
But, the thing is, the bill makes no damn sense (I’ve read it), and I think it’s giving our boy Ron too much credit here. So, I had to reluctantly move on to the next GWM candidate.
Option #2 J.D. Vance
My personal pick would be J. D. Vance, that racist hillbilly fuck for whom there should be no elegies. I know he won the Ohio election a while ago, but I was dying in Mexico from Montezuma’s revenge, so I was unable to be timely. Regardless of temporarily lags, here’s my axe to grind with this cherub-faced GWM:
As an embittered southerner, I too was forced to read J D Vance’s self-indulgent memoir Hillbilly Elegy as if it were canon. What it really is is a glorification of poor white southerners and all their self-destructive racism. I loathe books about the south that do not mention that pesky issue of white supremacy and its accompanying racism, because of course, it slides too perfectly into the GOP’s voting constituency. I wish J. D. Vance nothing but the worst.
But, J. D. Vance has nothing to do with education, the topic of this newsletter, and is literally yesterday’s GWM, so deep down, I knew the award for this week couldn’t go to him.
Option #3: Republican senator Roger Marshall of Kansas
While it was a difficult decision to determine whom should be the recipient of NSFS’s lauded GWM Award, ultimately, I decided to go with a petty, small man because he is, in a sense, Everyman* (don’t @ me, some of my best friends are white men, my dad is even one and I love him very much):
Republican senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) said last week that he is considering holding school lunch programs hostage because he doesn’t agree with new federal guidance banning discrimination against LGBTQ+ students.
If that isn’t some petty, weak-ass shit I don’t know what is. CLASSIC GWM. So, here’s looking at you, Roger Marshall, I hope you choke on a dick.
Xoxo,
Allison
GWM Reparation Opportunities:
Make sure that side-check you knocked up can get an abortion: donate to Planned Parenthood
Make sure less people who look like you become lawmaker’s: donate to Emily’s List
Reader Poll! Who should be the next recipient of the NSFS GWM? Let me know!
