Rusty Shackleford,
Sacramento, CA.
I’ve always been surrounded by diversity and never had any issues with it, or even noticed it. Growing up in a diverse area my best friends were Sikhs, Mexicans, Chinese, etc. As I became older and more aware of the world at large, I knew what diversity was, but it felt fine because it felt like it was just this organic thing.
Now I guess I feel.. Threatened? I feel ways that I would judge someone else for expressing when I was younger. Whites in America are honor bound to be colorless and to act as if race only exists for everyone else, and that by default everyone else needs our help, “The White Mans Burden” or something. This demonization by some of the more radical voices on the left of white people has, if anything, made me move further to the right. A sort of visceral survival reflex I guess.
Now I’m starting to actually recognize that yeah, I’m a white guy. I’m also starting to feel proud of some of the accomplishments of my ancestors in ways I never cared about before. As a reflex to the demonization of the straight white male, I start wishing we could turn back the clock, or at least hit the brakes on progressivism.
I start to think of how Europeans showed up in Central and South America, and were armed with ships and armor and guns, while the natives only had spears and clubs. When the europeans showed up in Africa, they had ships and armor and guns, and the Africans only had spears and clubs.
It horrifies me to feel these feelings, I feel guilty about them, but maybe on some level our society we create *is* objectively better? First western europe conquered most of the known world, and then europeans conquered the entire north american continent and split the atom, and with that established our own silent hegemony over the world which we are losing our grip on.
I’m terrified that I think that’s cool. I know I shouldn’t feel proud of that, or is that ok? American values seem to be in decline proportional to this increase in diversity and progressive values. I think white people being less racist in America is an objectively good thing, but I think as the gatekeepers and protectors of American society, our demographic decline is an objectively *bad* thing.
My wife is Mexican, and I have a son. I love both of them, but a part of me is feeling guilty for a new reason now, that maybe I’m part of that problem? I yearn for an America I never knew, one which looks like a Norman Rockwell painting. It’s silly and perhaps even shameful, but I think that’s how I feel.
