White Privilege

I wanted to bring some interesting stats to your attention about white men in the US and share my insights as a typical white male in the US. I’m the one on the right and the one on the left is my friend Justin. We are in our earlier thirties and as you can see we are white males.

1. In 2015 70% of suicides in the US were white (non-hispanic) males. https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/ 2. White people (non-hispanic) without college degrees now have the highest mortality rate in the US. The rate for this group has been consistently increasing every single year over the past 14 years. http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/23/521083335/the-forces-driving-middle-aged-white-peoples-deaths-of-despair

Justin and I have been buddies for about a decade and have a lot in common. One thing we talk about regularly is suicide.

His depression is the kind where rarely feels any joy in life. He is prone to lying in bed awake during his free time simply because there isn’t anything worth getting up for.

Mine is the type where I simply feel unwanted and unloved. I cannot forget the romantic relationships where women have accepted my attention, affection, money, gifts, favors, etc, only to casually walk away or suddenly become become unbearably mean. After more than ten years of spending time, money, and self-esteem on dating we have burnt out.

Despite having always treated women well we have been raised by our church and schools to identify ourselves as broken and perverted for having standard male sexual nature.

Despite being consistently employed, having good credit, paying our taxes, and never receiving handouts from parents of government, we are told on a regular basis by the media and our professors that we are privileged and that since we only make 30-40k a year then we must be very stupid or else ungratefully squandered our privilege. We each have about enough credits for an associates which we work on outside of our full-time jobs.

Despite having clean records we are blamed for gun crime in the country simply because we want a gun for protection.

We feel as if we have no place in society beyond that of making money to be taxed by our country that hates us, or by being a paycheck for a girl to have her “happily ever after” with a house, kids, SUV, extravagant wedding, and a nice phone to post it all to her social media accounts.