It ain't true, baby!

As a frequent contributor to BeachGrit, I was sickened to find myself associated with the left-wing apologist propaganda posted in the form of Beau Andrews’s recent piece, “White Men Rule the World.”

Oh yes, “White men rule the world,” says the wide-eyed child, half a semester into his first gender studies class and positive he knows it all.

“The books and teachers say I’m bad because of how I was born, never mind that I’ve no real life experience to draw from in order to make an informed judgment. Please, please, I need to know how to atone for the white man’s sins! There’s no one who can better tell everyone how to live than some self-hating, cloistered intellectual type!”

Guess again son. Let me tell you how hard it really is to make it in this world.

“You grew up relatively well off, were told you could do anything, got a good education and most likely, got a decent paying job. “

I’ll have you know that my wife works her fingers to the bone to earn my money. She slaves away in the local courthouse from before dawn ’til four-ish, dedicating her life to putting away the worst that society has to offer, unrepentant criminals who glory in their defiance of the compact we call society.

I can hear you now, “But the system is biased. Mandatory jail time and exorbitant fines for minor offenses only serves to create situations in which people become trapped in the system due to bad luck and lack of financial resources.” Well, then I guess you’d be okay living in a world where forgetting to renew your car insurance or being too busy to replace a lost drivers license is no big deal. Where maniacs driving ten miles over the speed limit on isolated country back roads is just fine and dandy.  Where law flouting minorities run rough shod over what makes America great – its ability to enact and apply bureaucratic requirements and consistently punish those who run afoul of them.

“…no one picked on you because of your race, gender or sexuality.”

Mr Andrews has obviously never encountered the racism rampant in our beloved Hawaiian islands. The word haole is dropped without a second thought on a regular occasion, perpetrators completely unaware of the pain that it causes. To be constantly identified and judged based on the color of your skin is an agonizing experience, a daily reminder of your outsider status.

The questions, “How are you enjoying your trip?” and “Where are you visiting from?” spill from smiling mouths, secure in their belief that I must be a tourist interloper. Fleece me and send me home, that’s all they really want to do. Guess what? I live here.  Just because I choose to dress in an aloha shirt and khaki shorts doesn’t make me some second class citizen. I’m a human being, I don’t deserve to be judged solely on my skin tone and fashion sense.

Let’s not forget the joy of eating out. All I want is some spicy ahi poke, a piece of fried chicken, and two scoops of white rice without being reminded of my inferior social status. Yet, every time, there’s the fork. The three guys in front of me get chopsticks, the lady behind too. But every time I go to pay, there’s that plastic fucking fork. I know how to use chopsticks, damnit! This is exactly what Bill Cosby meant when he talked about the subtle racism of lowered expectations.

Then there’s being forced to show identification in order to get a kama’aina discount… I can’t even begin to explain how the humiliation eats at your soul.

“…if you are dark skinned, stand with a wider stance, and don’t speak English well (in short, you are Brazilian), then you are likely to be vilified with a religious fervour [sic].”

Oh, how they are vilified! Forced to suckle the sweet teat of government assistance, qualifying for low-cost insurance coverage, being gifted section 8 housing in the finest of neighborhoods; that sure sounds terrible. Meanwhile I sit, an underemployed freelance writer who doesn’t get a dime, ostracized by the very system my wife pays into because we “earn enough to support a family of four.” Everything we have, we earned. We pulled ourselves up by the proverbial bootstraps, fighting our way out of a Southern California beach suburb, only a dream and sheer determination and parents who paid off our student loans to make it possible.

Your domination is under siege, so make the most of it while you can. 

My domain is under siege. There was a time when this country was great, when true men ruled the roost and the rest of the world knew to heed our demands or be punished. It was an age when the color of your skin didn’t matter, when anyone could achieve to the utmost of their potential. Life was a sink or swim proposition, the cream rose while the worthless masses supported the great.

We live in an era of excuses, where mollycoddled degenerates bemoan a fate created by their own bad decisions and lack of drive. I say to them, stop looking for a hand out, start looking to your betters. They are the stewards who will lead you to a brighter tomorrow.

And stop blaming my success on the color of my skin. My every day is a struggle and no one could possibly have it any harder than me.