Bear-Arms
Mentor
It's okay to put down white people
There are just not a whole lot of things that white guys are good at these days.
We can't jump, we can't dance, we can't flirt, we can't play sports.
It's just part of the territory, I guess. But the media love to remind us about it.
In director Peter Segel's remake of the 1974 film "The Longest Yard," Adam Sandler plays an ex-NFL quarterback turned prison inmate. As the story goes, Sandler's character is put in charge of assembling an all-convict football team to play against the prison guards.
When he asks Chris Rock's character if he ever played football, Rock replies, "Nah, I suck so bad, they used to pick me after the white kids."
And it's true. If one of us gets picked before you, then you must really suck.
But every once in a while, a white guy with talent will sneak in there.
The cover of last March's Sports Illustrated on Campus featured a picture of Eastern Michigan basketball player Henry Bekkering with a caption that read, "How does it feel to be a white guy with hops?"
Bekkering, whose dunks can be seen all over the Internet, apparently has bought into it, too.
"When people see me, they don't have any expectations. They're like, 'Oh, it's just a white kid,'" he told Sports Illustrated.
And what else would you expect? Everyone knows white kids can't play.
But imagine if the cover had featured something equally as stereotypical about another race.
What if MAAC Diver of the Year Chris Coles were featured on the cover with the caption, "How does it feel to be a black guy that can swim?"
Or Dallas Cowboys linebacker Dat Nguyen asking, "How does it feel to be a yellow guy that can tackle?"
Or what if PGA star Vijay Singh were on the cover and the caption read, "How does it feel to be a red guy that can drive a golf ball 300 yards?"
After his mandatory racial-sensitivity training course, the editor of the magazine would be looking for a new job tomorrow.
But it's all fun and games as long as it's white guys we are talking about.
Sometimes, the blind eye we turn to racist comments about white people isn't quite so innocent, however.
After the press conference for the 2002 Mike Tyson-Lennox Lewis boxing match broke out in a brawl, freelance sports writer Mark Malinowski yelled out about Iron Mike, "Put him in a strait jacket!"
In front of a room full of reporters, Tyson then accused Malinowski of being "scared like a little white p----" when he didn't take Mike up on his offer to fight.
As Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly later commented, "In American trash talk today, that's three put-downs in a row. Little. White. And p----."
But there was no demand for Tyson to apologize for his comments. Why would there be?
The only people Tyson offended were a bunch of white guys, and what were they going to do?
Unfortunately, the sports arena isn't the only place where it's in style to bash white guys.
A few years back, Al Gore's campaign manager Donna Brazile, a black woman, accused Republicans of excluding and denigrating other people because of their "white-boy attitudes."
With such a sophisticated argument, it's hard to see why her comments weren't taken seriously.
But imagine if Karl Rove made a negative comment about the Democratic Party and then blamed it on their "black-boy" attitudes.
It would have been on the front page of every newspaper in the country, and Rove would have been vilified on Capitol Hill.
Last week, white Tennessee state legislator Stacey Campfield tried to join the state's Black Legislative Caucus but was turned down because his skin wasn't dark enough.
Campfield claims that he wants to better represent his minority constituents, but Black Caucus member Larry Miller said he has no idea why Campfield wants to join "other than he is crazy and a racist."
Which may be the case. But it's hard to imagine an all-white political organization denying membership to a black legislator and then calling him the racist  even if it were Louis Farrakhan who wanted to join the group.
And even if white guys manage to do something notable, it gets passed over and downplayed by our modern PC society.
The famous photograph of three white firefighters  Dan McWilliams, George Johnson and Billy Eisengrein  hoisting the American flag at the World Trade Center ground zero was commissioned as the model for a $180,000 memorial statue. But when it came time for its creation, the artist changed two of the men's identities to black and Hispanic.
Hey, no one wants three white guys memorialized in bronze forever.
But it's cool. We've come to grips with it.
Things are just different when you're a white guy.
There are just not a whole lot of things that white guys are good at these days.
We can't jump, we can't dance, we can't flirt, we can't play sports.
It's just part of the territory, I guess. But the media love to remind us about it.
In director Peter Segel's remake of the 1974 film "The Longest Yard," Adam Sandler plays an ex-NFL quarterback turned prison inmate. As the story goes, Sandler's character is put in charge of assembling an all-convict football team to play against the prison guards.
When he asks Chris Rock's character if he ever played football, Rock replies, "Nah, I suck so bad, they used to pick me after the white kids."
And it's true. If one of us gets picked before you, then you must really suck.
But every once in a while, a white guy with talent will sneak in there.
The cover of last March's Sports Illustrated on Campus featured a picture of Eastern Michigan basketball player Henry Bekkering with a caption that read, "How does it feel to be a white guy with hops?"
Bekkering, whose dunks can be seen all over the Internet, apparently has bought into it, too.
"When people see me, they don't have any expectations. They're like, 'Oh, it's just a white kid,'" he told Sports Illustrated.
And what else would you expect? Everyone knows white kids can't play.
But imagine if the cover had featured something equally as stereotypical about another race.
What if MAAC Diver of the Year Chris Coles were featured on the cover with the caption, "How does it feel to be a black guy that can swim?"
Or Dallas Cowboys linebacker Dat Nguyen asking, "How does it feel to be a yellow guy that can tackle?"
Or what if PGA star Vijay Singh were on the cover and the caption read, "How does it feel to be a red guy that can drive a golf ball 300 yards?"
After his mandatory racial-sensitivity training course, the editor of the magazine would be looking for a new job tomorrow.
But it's all fun and games as long as it's white guys we are talking about.
Sometimes, the blind eye we turn to racist comments about white people isn't quite so innocent, however.
After the press conference for the 2002 Mike Tyson-Lennox Lewis boxing match broke out in a brawl, freelance sports writer Mark Malinowski yelled out about Iron Mike, "Put him in a strait jacket!"
In front of a room full of reporters, Tyson then accused Malinowski of being "scared like a little white p----" when he didn't take Mike up on his offer to fight.
As Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly later commented, "In American trash talk today, that's three put-downs in a row. Little. White. And p----."
But there was no demand for Tyson to apologize for his comments. Why would there be?
The only people Tyson offended were a bunch of white guys, and what were they going to do?
Unfortunately, the sports arena isn't the only place where it's in style to bash white guys.
A few years back, Al Gore's campaign manager Donna Brazile, a black woman, accused Republicans of excluding and denigrating other people because of their "white-boy attitudes."
With such a sophisticated argument, it's hard to see why her comments weren't taken seriously.
But imagine if Karl Rove made a negative comment about the Democratic Party and then blamed it on their "black-boy" attitudes.
It would have been on the front page of every newspaper in the country, and Rove would have been vilified on Capitol Hill.
Last week, white Tennessee state legislator Stacey Campfield tried to join the state's Black Legislative Caucus but was turned down because his skin wasn't dark enough.
Campfield claims that he wants to better represent his minority constituents, but Black Caucus member Larry Miller said he has no idea why Campfield wants to join "other than he is crazy and a racist."
Which may be the case. But it's hard to imagine an all-white political organization denying membership to a black legislator and then calling him the racist  even if it were Louis Farrakhan who wanted to join the group.
And even if white guys manage to do something notable, it gets passed over and downplayed by our modern PC society.
The famous photograph of three white firefighters  Dan McWilliams, George Johnson and Billy Eisengrein  hoisting the American flag at the World Trade Center ground zero was commissioned as the model for a $180,000 memorial statue. But when it came time for its creation, the artist changed two of the men's identities to black and Hispanic.
Hey, no one wants three white guys memorialized in bronze forever.
But it's cool. We've come to grips with it.
Things are just different when you're a white guy.
