NO COUNTRY FOR OLD WHITE MEN

How did this come to be? I'm now in the most despised social group in society. I'm an old white man. In this age when people are repeatedly told not to discriminate on the basis of skin colour, gender, and age, I'm still in society's bad books.

Fighting discrimination was a noble goal back in the sixties. The rights of non-whites and women were routinely violated in the past. Now it's old white men who are being discriminated against by the vary ones who once suffered discrimination.

Do two wrongs make a right? Discrimination on the bases of innate characteristics is obviously wrong. Why then do African-Americans such as Jeremiah Wright and Al Sharpton spew such vitriol toward fair-skinned people, most of whom never did them any harm? In the same way, it's wrong for far left politicians to blame folks like me for the wicked actions of people in the past.

To me, it's the content of one's character that matters, not externals such as gender and skin tone. I've never made friends to please social reformers. Whomever  I liked, I befriended and whomever I didn't, I didn't.

I also remember how one woman tore a strip out of the Boreal Electro-Acoustic Music Society (BEAMS) because we had only one female member. Though I experienced no fallout from the article she published in a local magazine, her illogical argument showed her abysmal ignorance. The reason BEAMS had so few female members was because only one woman wanted to join. We had absolutely no policy barring women or anybody who wasn't male and white. In fact, we would have warmly welcomed them had they applied.

Though that incident happened in 1989, there are still people in the press who make false allegations about groups dominated by white males. These folks regularly assume that females and dark-skinned people are automatically excluded when in fact they aren't.

My hope is that the irrationality of these press pundits will be obvious to all thinking citizens. Prejudice is still prejudice, no matter who is guilty of it.

As a legally blind person, I've experienced plenty of accusations and prejudice. My Deliverance from Jericho memoir describes in a matter-of-fact way the discrimination I suffered as a child. Read more about it on my Bruce Atchison's books page.