Five Myths About Straight White Males
- Straight while males are a monolithic group defined by a variety of economic, social, and political privileges. This myth ignores the tremendous diversity that exists among straight white males. They are rich and poor, young and old, highly educated and lacking in formal education, Republican and Democrat, Italian and WASP, Catholic and those not affiliated with an organized religion, employed and unemployed, veteran and those with no military background, and on and on. Not viewing straight white males as diverse feeds into tunnel vision, stereotypes, and discrimination.
- Straight white males do not engage in covering. People assume, that because of “white privilege,” straight white men do not need to hide who they are. And yet research reveals that this is not the case. According to a survey by Deloitte University Leadership Center, roughly half of straight white males report covering at work. For instance, they found that a white male employee might leave work early to take his child to a doctor’s appointment, but might “cover” by saying he is seeing a client.
- Straight white males are not members of minority groups. Typically, we hear people talk about minorities as opposed to straight white males. White males typically assume a variety of statuses, some of them minority. For instance, straight white males can be poor, Muslim, Jewish, elderly, and/or disabled. Individuals cannot be neatly divided into majority groups (those with power) and minorities, or those who are put at a disadvantage.
- Straight white males have “got it made.” In other words, the American Dream is within their grasp. If they do not take advantage of their preferred status, that is on them. Using a baseball analogy, they are all born on second or third base, and have much less ground to cover to reach home plate. As one of my students once said, you have got to be really clueless to remain a poor white male in this society. Straight white males encounter some of the same individual and institutional barriers to upward mobility as Blacks, Hispanics, and members of other racial and ethnic groups. These might include receiving an inferior education, being taught values that keep you poor, and being stigmatized.
- Straight white males and unconscious bias go hand-in-hand. While straight white males need to become more mindful of their unconscious bias and how it might affect their attitudes toward others and decision-making, the same is true of virtually every other social category. Psychologists who created Implicit Association tests to measure unconscious bias discovered that we all have unconscious biases, and we tend to be unaware of them. Any discussion of unconscious bias should not be limited to a single group, even if that group is a majority or seen as the oppressor.
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This post seems to contradict white privilege (WP). I am a white male with historically misdiagnosed bipolar disorder. I have had serious bouts of homelessness; and health problems because of malnutrition growing up poor. Because I was poor and looked a certain way, there was a time in my life that I was pulled over by the police on a weekly basis. This had nothing to do with the color of my skin. I was also destroyed by a woman with Borderline Personality Disorder who abused me in almost every way imaginable (and unimaginable). Yet there were no resources for me, no shelters, legal aid, nothing. In fact, I was looked at as the abuser, and she received all of the resources. This is even with the current peer reviewed literature that indicates that women are as violent if not more violent in domestic relationships. I am a survivor, I worked my butt off and now i am a doctoral student studying quantitative psychology at an R1 school. I changed the way I dress and talk, and now people treat me differently. Yet there were no scholarships or financial packages for people like me. Kurzban, Tooby, and Cosmides (2001) effectively show that coalitional affiliation supersedes race in experimental studies. Given the nature of this article, does it not conflict with the idea of WP? Also, there is evidence today that the impact of ideologies such as male privilege (MP) and WP has the same impact on white males today. They don’t join in conversation for the same reason that women and blacks didn’t in the 50’s because they will be labeled as having WP, MP or being insensitive. This is equivalent to the 50’s where if a woman or african american complained about her sexist or racist boss then the entire weight of the organization and society came down on them for not playing their part, and being uppity enough to challenge the real power. I believe this is why Trump was elected. How do we achieve homeostasis? Is it not racist to label an entire population based on the color of their skin?
(Kurzban, R., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2001). Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(26), 15387-15392. doi:10.1073/pnas.251541498)