PROBABLY FUTILE CALL TO 'FELLOW' PALE MALES

 So now MAGA and their Orange Julius Caesar have served notice on us: NO more heroes of color, no female heroes or exemplars to be held up AT ALL! And pale male mediocrities (maybe I should apply for a post; more than one person might see me as such a critter) will be promoted over better qualified women and people of color! And saying to all the out-groups, your excellence will no longer earn you anything; only saying 'Sho' Massa!' loud enough and long enough may get you a few picayunes!
But to all those pale males who think, perhaps with tremulous near-ecstasy, they are about to be restored to their 'rightful' position with the lowest of them still better than the best people of color, let me let you in on a secret which today's 'planters' will probably chase me down for telling you:
The new rule for women and people of color that excellence will gain you nothing but the blindest obedience may get you something also applies to....y'all! To all us pale males without money, connections or social capital!
Yes, that's right! We too are now subject to the same rules the oligarchs are reinstating for women and people of color. But no one, except women and people of color, are telling us that!
And how do I know this? I know it because of memories which came out in therapy decades after my dad erected a firewall against them by means of hypnosis. Memories of seeing my father rankly abused by his planter of a boss at the small Midwestern women's college where he worked and on which campus we then lived. I also know it by hints he dropped about his being let go from another business a few years later. Whether there's a connection between the two I don't know and don't expect to know in this world.
But I do know that my dad did what was expected of him and he still got knocked in the head. Maybe twice. And he was a white Southerner of mixed British ancestry (English, Scots, Welsh) Our family name is of impeccably English origin. Maybe what knocked him askew is that we come from the Southern whites the ex-planters called 'scalawags' during Reconstruction.
That is, Southern whites willing to work with the freedmen and the Yankee Carpetbagger transplants in the Reconstruction state governments. The ones with antebellum memories of being squeezed and muzzled by the greedy, arrogant and prideful planters. The ones who know why no Southern state had any public education for anyone of any color until Reconstruction. And the ones who knew that, already by 1835, no Southern state was any kind of democracy even for white men! Only for rich white men!
So two colors determined whether these states were democracies: white and green! Or, back then, white and gold, as coin was still 'specie' as was said. That fits better as white and gold were also the colors of the prerevolutionary French monarchy--and we all know what happened to that!
Probably that's a big part of how I got to be a second-generation Southern white anti-racist.
I used to wonder why my dad had such a passionate hatred for 'whiteness'. The sixteen years, and much of what I've seen and heard during them, have answered that question most emphatically. Today, I share my dad's deep hatred of the falsehood called 'whiteness', possibly with interest.
Anyway, 'fellow' pale males, I have pathetically little hope of you. I have little hope that you won't take the devil's bargain which, once again, the oligarchs offer you of doing their dirty work in exchange for lying to yourselves and thinking yourselves one of the ruling caste when you're not. You're only their bitches doing the work they consider too nasty for their delicate, inbred, palsied hands!
Mind you, I would never be happier to be mistaken in this than now. If you wise up and join with people of all colors and all women to build a strong working people's coalition capable of demanding what our country needs and seeing it done, I will be very pleasantly surprised!
Prove even LBJ mistaken when he said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him someone to look down on and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Prove both me and LBJ mistaken in that! You call yourselves Christians; so show yourselves so by not needing to look down on anyone!