‘Othering’ white American women and children | Mike Jones

Barbershop (Young Brother): What’s up everybody! Hey Socrates, if you and the brothers wouldn’t mind, I wanna know if I can impose on you to get some feedback on something I’m trying to process?

Socrates:  Sure, young brother, that’s why the barbershop is here, gettin’ a haircut is just the second reason! 

The Barbershop (Younger Brother):  On April 5, you know what happened in Nashville? Those two Black state reps getting expelled and everything over school violence that happened the week before. Mike Jones’ column in the St. Louis American, “Where Are We In This” hit in response, and said we owe it to ourselves to reevaluate this relationship with America. Then that Friday, the federal judge in Texas with that abortion drug ruling got me thinking about how to think about America and white Americans at this moment. That’s what I wanna run by you.

Socrates: You got our attention, so explain what you mean.

The Barbershop (Young Brother): Suppose what we believe about America isn’t true for us, and more to the point, what if what white people believe about themselves isn’t true either. Just because people believe something and act on the belief doesn’t make that belief true, but the consequences of their action are just as real as if the belief had been true.

Socrates: That’s correct, an interesting predicate as well, I’m really intrigued about where you’re headed. Please proceed!

The Barbershop (Younger Brother): When you read the national papers of record, you know the New York Times and  Washington Post, and read about what’s happening in, let’s say, Israel or France, and you see how the people there are responding, their public response, to what the government is that they may object to. Then I look at what’s happening in America, and how white Americans respond, I think damn, what’s up with that? Oh, and I picked France and Israel because both are Western democracies.

Socrates: We got you!

The Barbershop (Young Brother): Israel has been going through a kind of similar political turmoil as the United States, fueled by the same thing, major changes in the demographic makeup of the Jewish population. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a radical conservative theocratic coalition wanna structurally change the status of the Israeli judiciary, but for distinct reasons. Netanyahu, like Trump, just wants to stay in power and outta jail. The radical theocratic conservatives wanna reshape Israeli society in their image and likeness sorta speak. The Israeli Supreme Court stands in their way. The secular Jewish population of Israel, which is at least half of the population, say they’re not having it and shut the place down, Bebe had to hit the pause button.

Younger Brother cont’d: People in France, literally everybody, can retire at 62 with a national pension and healthcare. See the French believe in work-life balance, you work to live, you don’t live to work. The French government wants to increase the retirement age to 64 and that’s caused a nationwide revolt, demonstrations, national strikes, the whole 9 yards. Been going on for at least a couple of years.

Socrates: So where do white Americans come into play?

Barbershop (Younger Brother): I’ve been thinking about 2 issues that overwhelmingly impact white people. Mass shootings in schools and women’s reproductive rights. 

There are about 73 million children in America under the age of 18, 52% of those are white.

A white child in 2023 America is more likely to die in a school shooting than any other cause of death. I said white children, their children. Yet there are no mass demonstrations or marches about ending school violence or outlawing AR-15s that make the carnage possible. White mothers and fathers are not in the streets demonstrating and demanding that their children’s lives not be at risk because they attended school today. White people haven’t shut down state legislatures until they pass legislation that will make attending school safer. It’s like people in France care more about retirement, than white people in America care about the lives of white children!

Now the abortion issue, women’s reproductive rights, whatever you choose to call it, disproportionately impacts poor women and Black and Brown women.  However, there are 64.5 million women in the United States of childbearing age, 15-44, and the majority, 54%, are white. Not only has the Supreme Court allowed states to eliminate a woman’s right to an abortion, but Republican, and mostly white male, state legislatures have further restricted access, potentially putting the life of any pregnant woman who experiences unforeseen complications at risk.  

Younger Brother cont’d: When Israelis were confronted with an existential threat from their democratically elected government, they pushed back with mass public demonstrations that forced the government to back off. In America, aside from talking heads whining on cable tv, crickets. This is even more stupefying when you consider that of the 231 million white Americans, over half are women. And none of the white men who are husbands, fathers, or uncles have come to the defense of white women.

 So, whether it’s school shootings or women’s reproductive health, white Americans have taken no action to make white women or children safer.

Socrates: So, what conclusions have you drawn?

The Barbershop (Young Brother): If these are the facts, Mike is right, we need a new theory of the case. Our arguments and strategies have assumed white America operates in a rational moral universe but excludes us. We have endlessly petitioned to be admitted and attribute our failure to the fact that we just haven’t made the right argument, or there’s some character flaw we need to correct. The reality is we aren’t admitted because that rational moral universe doesn’t exist, there is only MAGA America. My takeaway is white people in America don’t even care about the well-being of white people in America, so there’s no way in hell Black lives are ever gonna matter in a country whose cultural orientation does not matter!

Socrates: What y’all thinking?