Peak white maleness – so why haven’t I done better?
As I approach the end of my 60th year I should be laughing. I should be celebrating the peak of my old white maleness. I should be toasting my 40 years of being on top and my decades of sailing through life with every advantage society can dish up.
But instead of congratulating myself and thanking my lucky stars, I’m feeling like a failure.
The reason is that I keep being told I should have done better. As an old white male, I’ve had an easy run. It’s been laid on for me. I’ve been spared all those unconscious biases, subtle put-downs and blatant prejudices that have hindered the success of just about everyone else in society. No glass ceilings, no ‘‘no jobs for the girls’’, no racial stigmas and no ethic profiling for me. Easy street all the way.
I should be wealthier, healthier, have more friends, admirers and privileges. More importantly I should be running things. I should be boss. I should be on boards, committees, management groups and at the centre of power networks.
Instead I’m a mug with a column. I answer to younger and female managers. I catch the bus to work. I have failed to live up to the image thrust upon me by all the people I have somehow disadvantaged. It’s one thing failing when everything is against you but quite another when nothing has stood in your way.
That’s the trouble with stereotypes. They create generalisations that work both ways. It’s bad being negatively stereotyped such as when a landlord assumes you will be a bad tenant because you are Ma¯ ori or Pasifika.
But stereotypes also make positive assumptions which can be just as destructive. The Dutch are thought to be good at business. A bankrupt Dutchman is going to feel worse because of the stereotype.
The Irish are generally regarded as gregarious and fond of a convivial drink so how is a sullen, introverted Irish person to feel. The Chinese are supposed to be good at maths. Ma¯ ori are supposed to be good at sport and being staunch. Pasifika are supposed to be devout churchgoers, Filipinos perennially cheerful and hard working, and Indians should all be owning small businesses. They are all being set up for failure. Stereotypes create expectations and no-one likes to disappoint.
So here I am at the zenith of my old white maleness and wondering where I went wrong.
I was already feeling bad because old white males are responsible for just about every evil in society. We have repressed women, made other ethnic groups feel bad about themselves and skewed society so all the benefits come to us. We have dominated, suppressed, bullied, ridiculed and feathered our own nests. And we are constantly reminded from the most unlikely corners.
Just the other week I was reading that Massey University money expert Pushpa Wood believed KiwiSaver was developed by ‘‘white, middle-class Pa¯ keha males’’ with little regard for the concept of collective family wealth.
There I was thinking that KiwiSaver was designed to enhance individual retirement savings to benefit both male and female earners.
But it’s the other side of the coin I want to emphasise today. Despite having every advantage in the way society has been run in the last 50 years I still couldn’t make it big.
According to my fellow columnist Michelle Duff, I have no excuses.
‘‘If you are a heterosexual, ablebodied, Pa¯ keha¯ man, you are the barometer of normality. You just are. Structural hurdles that exist for others do not exist for you,’’ she wrote in a recent column.
OK, she has added a few more adjectives but the telling phrase is ‘‘structural hurdles’’. You might think Michelle has been guilty of the same blatant stereotyping for which old, white males are lambasted. But of course Michelle is only telling it like it is.
So I’ve had 40 years of having the way clear. I should have been able to coast to success on the backs of the abnormal. What is the point of me riding roughshod over so many different groups if I didn’t, at the very least, end up with a few perks.
OK, if you must, I have, in a small way, had a few successes. So what does that say about all those old, white, male losers who couldn’t even do as well as mediocre old me? So hey you guys with your learning disabilities, tragic childhoods, terrible female teachers, depressions, disappointments, failed relationships, drinking problems and suicidal thoughts, celebrate your whiteness, your heterosexuality and your ablebodiedness.
It only remains for me to offer an even more fulsome apology than the one given by the great former Labour Party leader David Cunliffe. Can I just say how sorry, how deeply, viscerally sorry, I am for being an old, white, middleclass male.