Bill. Perhaps he isn't the average old white guy, but he's close. I guess I wouldn't say he's totally average because he tries real hard to be hip, sort of. He wears birkenstocks to class, rain or shine, and some days he ties a navy blue bandanna around his big wrinkly forehead.
The class I have with him is a graduate level course and he was originally supposed to be there only as an interpreter for a Chinese foreign exchange student who was doing an audit of the class. She's not there any more, yet he still attends. He is constantly interrupting the instructor for pretty pathetic reasons, like telling the class what exactly a metaphor or simile is (third, fourth year, and graduate level English students, mind you) and reminding us how Emerson and Whitman were popular for the same themes we are covering now (this is a Native American literature course, so I'm guessing that those two just might have borrowed here and there and maintained their popularity through white privilege, just a shot in the dark).
How disrespectful of him to treat the rest of us as a bunch of know-nothing boobs. In addition to his disruptions, he likes to bring up what "his generation" had to go through. I'm sure he's in his 70s and gets around pretty well; good for him. But what did you do for us? Look where we're at now! You expect me to respect you by virtue of your age/forced military experiences alone? That's like me expecting him to respect me just for menstruating--neither of us have had choices in the matter and it's been a bloody mess.
Bill is a microcosm of the idiocy white, patriarchal America represents to me: bullheaded preaching of an outdated message (what can you do for your country? ad nauseam) and woman, you better be thrilled about the freedoms we've allowed you to have.
I cut him off at every opportunity, and I can't tell if I'm doing it to piss him off or to help preserve the few strands of sanity I have left. To his Emerson comment, I said of course literature as written by white males was popular and that they ripped off oral traditions as heard from members of various native nations. Every time he starts to bring up WWII and whatnot, I start with what we've recently discussed about native cultural memories such as Wounded Knee and the Trail of Tears. Maybe's he's getting the hint. While discussing the transient feminine presence in Momaday's House Made of Dawn (because the sporadic female characters represent more than just the physical beings in the story, IMO), the class headed toward the predictable "well she's the Madonna and the whore here!" discourse. I said that some of those behaviors are just inherent in some women (not all as we are individuals too) and that just because women act sexually or aggressively doesn't make them whores; likewise, if they act naively or innocently in some aspects, they're not necessarily angelic virgins either. He turned to me after I said that, with his jowls a-quivering, and barely murmured a "But-". I gave him a sharp, satisfied look and he turned right back around, silent.
Some may say that I'm sexist. I don't think that's possible. I will say I have a prejudice against most white men over the age of 50; that's a fair statement. For me to be sexist, however, is to imply that I have had an equal playing field as most men have had--both academically and in the workplace. As far as we have progressed as a society, American women still can't claim that and it took me a while to admit that to myself. I can give you three times when I've been passed over on promotions because of my sex and at least two professors who judged me based on my sex alone. It gets old. I hope this clears up the why and what for about my disenchantment with old white men.
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