My son is beginning his senior year in high school and he is getting serious about applying to colleges and thinking about a career. I've counseled my son to earn his degree and then leave America.
No, I'm not a communist. No, I'm not anti-American, I have counseled my son to leave the United States and live elsewhere because I think he has a better chance of knowing equality, happiness and opportunity in another place. I have spoken to many "white" people who feel the same way. Many of us are searching for a place to go. For me, the American dream has been dying for years and I feel as though I have largely been a victim of the failing ideology that once governed our place on the continent.
Long ago, the democracy established in Athens lasted about 200 years. America is overdue for a change. More to the point, I don't want my son to be a victim of American policies and politics. I want his playing field to be more level than mine has been. I want him to leave America and plant roots somewhere else where he is not hated for the color of his skin or for the policies born before him.
It's not my fault that slavery existed, and that history is not my son's bill to pay either. I didn't invent or establish immigration policies, and my son is not responsible for the design of any border. I've never denied a woman a job, and my son has not had the inclination or occasion to do so either, and yet I've been held responsible for all these indiscretions during my time as an American citizen. As a friend who coaches recently told me, "Sometimes it's ok to quit the team if the coach doesn't favor you and the player is being emotionally damaged by the coach's approach." I believe the time has come to find a better team.
I was born in the year, 1957. One of the first moral lessons I learned was that "black people" had been enslaved and treated poorly. I was taught that the word "nigger" was a bad word. I never said the word "nigger" in anger towards another. I respected the lesson. I always have. And yet, I have paid the bills of prejudice all my life. As a white male I have been constantly scorned by "people of color." I have been actively scorned by African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Asian-Americans, by women of all races and creeds, by Europeans, Jews, Muslims, Hawaiian-Americans... I have been an enemy of my own demographics all my life. The world has happily made an enemy of white men. The pendulum has swung so far to the right for so long that I no longer see the point in claiming a country that hates me to the degree that American does. I want to live in a place where I can get through one day without feeling the slings and arrows of reverse racism and gender contempt. I absolutely want my son's life to be better than my own. The only solution I can conceive is for him to leave for greener pastures where his skin color will not automatically determine the nature of his associations within the community he occupies.
Over the summer when my kids were away on vacation, I filled some of the time by attending a few ACA meetings. On one occasion I went to a local church and sat in on the discussion. There were twenty women in the room and the meeting hour was spent by hearing each of these women, one-by-one, speak about how terrible their fathers had been to them. At the end of the meeting I was given 30 seconds to introduce myself and speak. I was the only male there. Although empathetic to their expressed sentiments, I told the women that I wouldn't be coming back to another one of their meetings. I told the women that I didn't feel that placing myself in an environment wherein the women had so much contempt for men was necessarily "healthy" for me as a man. When I said this, one woman interrupted me and stated that she knew of a "men's group." I interrupted her in turn and told her I "didn't believe in segregating the sexes, or any group," which again, is the lesson I have learned as an American growing up in the latter part of the 20th century in America.
But, when you think about it, not only is placing myself in a group of women who have contempt for white males unhealthy for me, concordantly - the action of placing myself within a nation that has such contempt for me is not a healthy environment for me either, and it is surely not a healthy environment for my son. The general climate of this nation includes the ideology that white men are inherently evil, discriminatory, the and root of all society's ills. Ok. If that's the way you feel America, then maybe the best choice is to love it and leave it, as I don't really believe that the climate of contempt for white men will change in America. Why not move on? I am anxious to leave any who would hate me as a means of profit or design. Since sovereignty is so marketable here, there is little hope that America will again embrace "white" men and elevate them as we do other groups as a national doctrine. I am not giving up or giving in, at least no more than our forefathers gave up or gave in when they came to America. What I am doing is looking forward-
I am older, and my future is less important than my son's future, but I want him to find a new frontier where white males are appreciated and respected. Why wouldn't I want that for him? America has convinced me that my white son will never get a fair shot at being confident or noble here. When you then consider the economy and the fact that American imperialism has made enemies of peoples all over the globe that now want to annihilate us, and with the knowledge that those people are actively looking for the opportunity to harm America, at this point in time I think the best solution for my son is to consider immigrating elsewhere in order to insure that my son and his children grow up in a place where they are not hated as a norm, and where they can live through a day without being victims of the commercialized, unresolved angst that is constantly directed at white people living in America.
Caucasians founded modern America by seizing the opportunity to steal the Colonies from the English crown, by usurping the land from Native Americans, by populating the south with slaves from Africa, and by securing the Western frontiers by promoting unrestricted immigration from South America so no European country would invade our Western shores . All the opinions we express as citizens in this country are a direct result of white men forming a "more perfect union" in which to grow capital and live by nefarious means. The trouble is, the freedoms Caucasians primarily guaranteed to everyone are now secular in application and those freedoms are promoted specifically to those sovereign groups who would collectively agree to scorn the "white man." There is nowhere for the "white man" to turn in America without being blamed for simply existing. Maybe the bills are coming due and the contempt is warranted, but I don't care to pay those bills anymore. I don't care to live in a climate wherein I am the constant enemy of my own state because I am a mixture of Welsh, and Swiss, and Belgian, and Flemish, and Moore. I dream of a place where my son can stand tall and be proud of who he is regardless of his genetic configuration. I can imagine a place where my son's children will never perceive that their father is being undignified because he is a descendant of someone white.
For me, the American dream is over. The courts are corrupt, the politicians are faint and egotistic, our commerce and policies have made an enemy of every civilization on the planet, our capitalism has polluted our landscape beyond repair, and racism has turned inward like a black hole sucking the gravity of humanity into regions of undiscovered aggression. I say, go and explore other places, my son. America is innately pitted against you. Try to find a pocket of rich soil not tainted with nuclear waste, polluted streams, polluted thinking, and racial contempt. And go forth knowing that finding a new and better place to settle is exactly what your white European ancestors did a few hundred years back. The core idea of immigrating from an oppressive landscape to a free land of expression was sound. Learn from the mistakes of Jefferson, Hamilton and Washington. Make a more perfect union for yourself. America is decaying and lurching upon itself exponentially. And remember son, when you do leave, the new constitution you create... is equal and proportional to the union of love and humankind - you inevitably take.