Murdering white men and the work of white women
I want to do my work, but white men keep killing everyone. I have something to do with this, as I am a white woman, and I have a white male partner and a white son. I also have a white father, who was in the military and corrections.
So I know some things about this murderous place in which we find ourselves. I also have a white daughter, who will cultivate white male privilege or divest from it or wobble in between as so many of us have to no good effect.
Part of coming into conscious adulthood for me has been becoming aware that every week, white men will be in the news for trying to kill based on racism and sexism. We won’t name them as white men. And we won’t connect the dots to think about the systems of thought that animate their adventures in harm.
If we look just at the violent acts that have occurred in the U.S. and Canada since most of us have been in lockdown, it seems pretty clear: white men have murder on their minds. It can be police officers, or a man pretending to be a police officer. It can be a teenager animated by incel, or a man by his wife’s intention to divorce, but murder seems like a good option to many white men and they feel entitled to it.
COVID-19 time provides us two legal proceedings, one for the man accused of murdering many people with a van, and one who murdered a woman in a massage parlour. We can exceptionalize these cases, but hateful ideologies underpin most white male rage, whether it leads to date rape or targeting a mosque. It’s punishment of more vulnerable others as a guiding principle or a way of life.
Male institutions have been in the business of dehumanization, with state support and state training: military, corrections, policing. Most of the men who work in these institutions here are white.
These institutions largely provide immunity to employees, enabling or inviting violence. Can we connect this to the mass murder in Nova Scotia? A white man who wants to take lives dresses up as an officer and drives a police car to do it.
Actual police officers also can appear to take pleasure in harm, as stated by U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, after observing the murder of George Floyd. We can talk about training, chest cams — but these can’t change culture. White men have appeared on social media mocking Floyd’s death, or refusing to pay tribute. Many would rather lose their jobs than show respect.
None of this is senseless; it’s infused with sense, as African-American actress Skai Jackson illustrated with tweets from white actor Hartley Sawyer. Sawyer is an average young white man from Goshen, N.Y., who attended a liberal arts university (not just ignorance).
His tweets reflect dizzying antagonisms. He writes, “Superbowl! Almost 80% of the prison population is African American!” Or “Out at dinner and just exposed myself as a racist, AGAIN!” Then there’s “If I had a wife I would beat the hell out of her tonight lol” and “As a lad one of my favourite activities was kidnapping homeless women and cutting off their breasts.” Finally, apropos of what it’s unclear, he writes, “Just kidding, fags are fine but sports often makes me snore.”
Sawyer’s tweets encapsulate white male culture: they make racism, sexism, homophobia and violence against the poor appear as sources of pleasure. It’s a map of hate, expressed by a white man for public consumption.
Every white woman with a white father, husband or son should review these tweets with him. Settle in. Repeat them. Pass some significant time. Turn them over on your tongues, in your minds, till they saturate family consciousness. Wonder where they came from. Wonder where we are going with them. If we did this, we’d have less time to call the police on Black families picnicking, or Black men bird watching in the park. If the unending news of white men’s murders keeps me from my work, it signals the work I, and other white women, are meant to do.