Some days you just have to count your blessings.
I am really grateful to be a white, Christian man living in America today. There are of course, all sorts of reasons for this—but today I’m reminded of one specific benefit.
It’s a comfort to know that should I one day find myself so fully unhinged, so completely bereft of sanity, that I am driven to amass an arsenal of military grade weapons, perch myself in a high-rise hotel room, and indiscriminately shower strangers with bullets—I’ll never have to worry about being called a terrorist by this President. At worst, I might be labeled a “troubled soul” or a “lone shooter,” but it’s more likely I won’t be specifically mentioned at all, as the Commander-in-Chief will find himself on the back nine by noon the following day, leaving his cohorts to attack my critics for “politicizing a tragedy.”
If one day, I am so filled with blind hatred and religious-fueled fear, that I assemble a crowd of torch-bearing, pipe-wielding, epithet—screaming white men to assail a small town, and one of us hops into his car and plows down people walking in the street—I can be certain this Administration will never call it a hate crime, never name sat it was racially motivated, and certainly never invoke the word terrorism. Many of us will even be labeled “fine people” by this President, as he even lays partial culpability on those we’ve assaulted.
In fact, if one day over the next few years, I should jettison any semblance of morality, I know I can commit all kinds of twisted, God-awful violations against humanity with guns or bombs or vehicles, and be assured that my pigmentation will shield me from ever being labeled a white terrorist—because such things are less plentiful in this America than unicorns and leprechauns.
It’s a relief to be a white guy in a place where white terrorism simply does not exist; to know that such loaded labels are saved for brown people, for immigrants, for non-Christians, for those for whom English is a second language. I rest in the reality that no matter what abominations I and others like me will ever generate—it will be their misdeeds that earn this Administration’s specific condemnation, that merit instantaneous, incendiary Tweets from the President, that solely serve as a catalyst for immediate legislative reform.
I certainly have no current plans to do anything but be a loving, compassionate presence on the planet. Over the next 3 years I hope and pray I’ll never be so polluted by a narrative of my own oppression or so consumed with unmerited contempt for the non-white world that I decide to shoot up a music festival or drive my car over a collection of strangers. But should such a horrific day come and I do find myself unleashing unfathomable violence on this country—it’s good to know that this President and this GOP will always have my back.
It’s comforting to realize that no matter how I brutally I terrorize my fellow Americans with guns or vehicles or pulpits or legislation—I can count on them to stay silent, to misdirect the public’s attention, to keep the world focused on the really bad people with dark skin, strange headwear, and Middle Eastern birthplaces.
It’s good to wake up in a country where you can be as hateful as you care to be, and never be called hateful.
It’s a real blessing to be a white person living in a land where white terrorists simply don’t exist, and where I can rally to make lives of my complexion matter.
(White, Christian) God Bless America.
Order John’s book, ‘A Bigger Table’ here.
