Working outside in the June heat, we heard a fawn bleating for help, concluding that Tootsie the wonder dawg had found new prey. In recent weeks we found a young overturned armadillo and a desiccated squirrel: Tootsie protects the property from small mammals. Fawns, being helpless, are especially appealing — they can’t run, hide, burrow or climb trees.
Over the years since Tootsie arrived, we have made peace with her. Her original territory measured from the Missouri state line to US 62; now she protects our fence line, and often sleeps under our bed or on the screen porch, even when the coyotes yowl. She has traded in her wildness for select domestication, in order to be assimilated from a road dog to a house pet.
It occurs to me that the relationship of white America to people of color is exactly parallel. The USA enjoys Native Americans in their regalia; African Americans in sports, on the radio and the silver screens; Chicano comedians; Asian doctors; Muslim women in headgear with cute little children; beauty queens running for Miss America or cheerleader.
But as Tootsie must occasionally remind us that she is a dog, persons who do not ascribe to “Make America Great Again” sometimes jump out from under the bed and remind us that they are also an equal person, not just a play-toy to serve society at large.
Particular geniuses became prickly — why should I be judged first as a non-white man rather than for my talent? Paul Robeson, Jackie Robinson, Nina Simone, Muhammed Ali, Russell Means, Sherman Alexie, Barry Bonds, Spike Lee — they became prickly to the culture at large because they beat it at its own game. Persons who preached non-violence (Dr. King, Cesar Chavez) were given more credence than those who anticipated violence (Malcom X, Angela Davis). Alternative politicians gained notoriety but not power — think Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton. The word is still out on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“Ethnic” artists were given room to be prickly — Jewish comedians like Don Rickles or Jerry and Ben Stiller, Italian American film stars like Robert DeNiro — because essentially, they seemed white.
Writers who preceded their time (James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Ishmael Reed) are suddenly given fresh attention.
Yet not every person who is not a white Christian male is a celebrity. What about that guy who sells single cigarettes to make a few bucks? What about that guy who survived covid-19 but had his neck kneeled on for some eight minutes because he paid for cigarettes with counterfeit money? What about that guy who went jogging in a mostly white neighborhood and got shot for it? What about that guy who went birdwatching in New York’s Central Park and was reported for threatening the life of a white woman?
What about? What about? What about?
The list is endless. Many women in the USA (all around the world!) feel threatened walking a city street after dark, and sometimes in broad daylight. All black people know their life may end due to accusation, suspicion, unlawful arrest, or even sitting in their apartment, at the hands of vigilantes, police, or vigilante police. Gay people may be out of the closet, but they know where they cannot appear publicly. People who publicly speak a language other than American English may be harassed, punched, arrested, or deported.
What makes me better because I am a white man, born in the USA, mid-20th century? I didn’t choose my parents, their heritage, or my birthplace. I just got here, the same as any other poor unlucky soul who was ejected in Pakistan, Algeria, Haiti, Detroit or Manila. On every continent, Euro-Americans deemed indigenous people less than human.
The assumption that white heterosexual male is superior to any other life form has got to go. The dog will be a dog in the woods. The sports star will work wonders. The rapper will bust a rhyme. Kipling’s phrase about the white man’s burden takes on new meaning: the white man’s burden is to recognize all people who are not white men as human beings of equal value.
Kirk Ashworth
Well said!!