But, I Don't Want To Be A White Man When I Grow Up
Making The Case For A Role Worthy Of A Thinking Woman and Call To Action
by
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They were decent hard working guys, though a couple were just northwest of nuts. They were as curious, ambitious and strong-willed as the boys I scraped garbage with in college. Their frames had filled out and their heads weren’t as big, but the same low-slung sadness that came back with the garbage room boys from President Kennedy’s funeral hovered over them.
They had their prejudices. To my surprise they weren’t against black people. Their venomous attitude was directed toward Asians. They made no distinction between one Asian and another. Every Oriental that came on the lot was a potential Viet Cong. I stopped protesting when the crew chief pulled up his pant leg and showed me a hole in his calf the size of a tennis ball and reason he walked with a limp – complements of the Viet Cong.
Slowly I began to realize that people did come back from that awful place. I used to watch them come un-done on the sales floor and start to go off into daylight nightmares. It always made me sad when the General Manager, also a veteran, rushed down from the sales tower to put one in a headlock and literally drag him back. “Come back here Hoss. You ain’t goin’ nowhere. Come on back here Hoss! You ain’t goin’ nowhere today!” I began to see that some of the boys did come home from hell. Damaged as they may be, some of them did get back.
The white boy’s fate ain’t what people might think it is. I covered shifts with great drama and fanfare when somebody needed to get drunk for one or two days. I understood what they were going through and didn’t mind covering for them, however they were good o’ boys and my ‘drama’ was all I had to keep them off balance. When I’d go into one of my tirades they’d look at me and shake their heads like I was the one crazy. I think not. Growing up with brothers, I was just good with ‘drama’ and tirades.
I’ve proclaimed for decades that “I don’t want to be a white man when I grow up!” I’ve said this without one iota of resentment or the slightest intension of offending anybody. I’ve come to know and genuinely care about the group of men I respectfully disavow. The renunciation of my membership in the white male gender has nothing to do with white men on a personal level and I don’t reject becoming like them out of fear or doubt that I can, quite the contrary.
I know I can run with the big dogs, because I have. I can bark and rip things apart with my teeth like the best of ‘em. The other crewmembers were protective of me when I first started, but after that I had to hold me own. I made a living for fifteen years selling luxury cars and pick up trucks with good ‘o boys from
I’m as good at being a white man as anybody I know. I’ve certainly spent enough time around them to know how. Selling cars is 21st Century horse-trading and bare-knuckle mental fisticuffs - everyday! Oh, the tales I could tell. When they’d get on the second to my last nerve I would threaten to tell the world what they’re really like in some of my best dramatic performances. They’d say, “Go ahead - Do it! Nobody’s going to believe you anyway,” then one or the other of them would promptly hop on my last nerve.
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About the Book
Far too many women are willing to believe that a role for a thinking woman already exists when ‘his’-story shows that such a role does not exist, nor has it ever existed. American universities did not change their curriculums because large numbers of working-class females showed up in the mid-1960s. Consequently, women came out of 'state' systems of higher education prepared to do our versions of white boys because that’s what everyone was taught to do.
I can run with the big dogs because I have, but I want to make the case for a ‘role’ worthy of an intelligent woman in the home where children grow. The ‘role’ would give the Feminine a valid place in Western culture and everyone access to a new power source. But, I Don’t Want To Be A White Man When I Grow Up, speaks as frankly as possible about how such a ‘role’ can be created, and what it could mean to
For the first time in the American experience half the women of childbearing age are unmarried and no one is contemplating what this means. Human procreation deserves no less than the attention given to disappearing polar bears and glaciers the size of
This writing endeavor is my best effort to address this situation from where I was standing in the circumstances that created it. I don’t pretend to have all the answers for what’s happening to our young people. I want to argue for coming together to examine the merits of the answers I do propose, and possibly come up with even better ones.
About the Author
Sonny grew up on “8 Mile Road” in Detroit Michigan after her family migrated from Tennessee at the end of WWII. She directs a program for kids at-risk in Phoenix Housing Developments and for inmates in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s tent city - Arizona. But, I Don’t Want To Be A White Man When I Grow Up, is Ms Harper’s second book. The passion in her writing comes directly from her experiences with young people over the past 40 years, from Detroit, Michigan to Los Angeles, California. She is alarmingly honest about what she believes should be done to make sure young Americans can successfully compete and maintain our country’s place in the emerging global community.