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Whiteness Wednesdays: Addressing White Privilege, Fragility, & the David Hogg Drama, Part 2 [1]

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Date: 2025-05-28

I knew this was going to be unpleasant. I tried to give both men the benefit of the doubt, but they proved that sometimes people show you who they are the first time.

In Part I, the first entry in this series, I mentioned we’d be getting into this interview and here we are.

Going into it, I will say that I judge interviewers and interviewees partly by what they say/do and partly by their job.

For instance, the interviewer (Bill in this case) has the job of acting as the audience’s proxy: they are there to ask the questions the audience wants answered, to challenge what the interviewer is saying and get to the truth, and to not let their personal biases color the interaction but rather to let the dialogue itself do the job of swaying your audience one way or the other. If you’ve done your job well, the audience will draw conclusions based on the substance of the interview.

For the interviewee, the job is to get across the message you came to deliver, to do so effectively in the face of a possibly difficult or contrarian host, and to leave the audience with a perception of you (and whatever you’re there to present) that is positive or at the least leaves them wanting more and interesting in engaging further.

Those are the jobs of the two parties in an interview, more or less, and thus even if one or both of the people is a monster (say, Henry Kissinger interviewing David Duke), you can judge them by both what they say AND how well they do their job.

In that regard, I’m deeply disappointed with both of these men. This was a poor interview and a shameful one.

Before we go any further, I’m going to ask you to support me at my Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/…

I am struggling to pay my mortgage, and looking for a second job. Just $2,000 per month would be enough to cover that (after setting aside money for income tax to pay on it), so every little bit helps. If you like my writing, or anything else creatively I do and want to see more, that’s the easiest way to make it happen. I’d appreciate it immensely. I’m working on adding a monthly subscriber option to Ko-Fi, but I’m still finalizing what the subscriber perks would be, if any, and the pricing tiers. I won’t ask people for regular donations unless I like what I can offer in exchange.

If you would rather support Black America directly instead of a White Dude, maybe make a donation to the United Negro College Fund: uncf.org/…

Okay, back to the writing.

So,the bulk of the interview wasn’t bad, per se: David Hogg did well, and I think for the audience he overall left a good impression of himself and what could be coming from the DNC if he continues to be an influence.

The major issue in this interview is the core problem they agreed on, backed up entirely by their assertions as white men: that Democrats have become the scolds and prudes, and that young people (particularly young men) would rather vote for someone they can politely disagree with who doesn’t have their best interests at heart all the time than some condescending and arrogant moral purists who will pounce on you for the slightest misstep.

The problem with this framing is it entirely bullshit, and it’s a fundamental complaint white people (especially white men) have been making since they were first told to stop being bigots: this complaint that they are constantly being hounded for their behavior.

It’s unsurprising that a pair of affluent white men would agree on this issue, despite their decades apart in age. In fact, it’s almost too on the nose, because this is a generational issue that White People have ignored for centuries, and continue to ignore.

Firstly, there is likely some truth to that complaint that Whites and men are being scolded and hounded for their behavior more and more — in fact, Bill Maher himself points out the reason in his closing monologue when he talks about how the US has become a progressive beacon in the world: we don’t tolerate the same kind of “cringe” (read: offensive) behavior anymore. That happened because we scolded people who perpetuated that behavior.

We didn’t stop making movies with men slapping women on the ass and saying “Get us some drinks, toots!” because everyone quietly became Feminist: it took protests, public shaming, bold and daring people who risked it all to break the rules, and more than a few “over my dead body!” holdouts finally dying to get to the world we have today that is just barely making progress at sexual equality.

Yes, you have to be more careful about what you say and do, David and Bill...because we used to let you say and do things you never should have done and you clearly still haven’t learned why it’s wrong.

If White Men feel less safe to make jokes or talk to women, it’s because of one of two reasons:

1. They’re not allowed to behave badly anymore but still want to and fear getting caught if they try

2. They’re irrationally afraid of suffering false persecution.

See, all of this comes back to an unspoken (sometimes at least) fear of being falsely accused: accused of rape despite the partner consenting, accused of sexually harassing someone for a genuine compliment, accused of being a racist for making a harmless inside joke among friends, on and on. Note, in the above, I’m being sincere in those descriptions: people genuinely being bigoted and offensive fall under category 1, whether they would admit it or not.

We are talking about category 2: White Men genuinely worrying that if they say “Hey, you look nice today!” that they will be fired for sexual harassment, or if they offer a high-five to a Black coworker and say “Hey, what’s up!?” they’ll be accused of being a bigot.

When POC talk about white people centering themselves, when feminists talk about “The Male Gaze”, this is the kind of shit they mean: this assumption that all things, all issues, everywhere, revolve around them and their lived experience. Society conditions White people, especially men, to see themselves as the standard and norm by which all others are measured.

So, when they hear about someone accused of sexual harassment, or date rape, or making a racist joke, they automatically identify with the accused: the white person (usually man). They view dangers and risks entirely from their perspective.

See, David Hogg isn’t out telling racist jokes and groping women, so for him all this “wokeness” is just putting him in danger of being accused of something he didn’t do and having his good name tarnished. This is, you might recognize, a hypothetical danger.

All this talk of walking on eggshells, living in fear of the Woke Mob, it’s all based on “What if I end up hurt by mistake?”

See, they’re never arguing that someone who actually DOES say or do something bigoted shouldn’t face consequences. They’re afraid of suffering by mistake. They are mad at Democrats demanding they watch their language and behave because someone, somewhere, might get yelled at by accident.

Meanwhile, even if all we were talking about was hurtful words and behavior (it isn’t, as we’ll get into later), something very important is being ignored. Something that David Hogg and Bill Maher are forgetting, and in so doing showing just how damn white, male, and privileged they are.

Those hypothetical harms are not hypothetical for the oppressed.

You’re afraid of a joke being mistaken as a hurtful or bigoted one?

Black people are literally being subjected to racist jokes, slurs, hate speech, and hateful ACTS on a daily basis in this country. Every single one is a crime against someone who did nothing wrong...just like David Hogg’s poor, put-upon young white man who doesn’t want to be cancelled by accident.

Except unlike him, the Black person who gets to watch the light in their child’s eyes die a little after getting The Talk isn’t a hypothetical. That loss of innocence the first time some developing teenage girl learns that she is now, and forever more will be, in danger for the rest of her life is real, not simply a thing she worries may one day happen to her IF she happens to ever cross paths with a man who would catcall her or worse.

White men live in mortal terror of what could go wrong if, through no fault of their own, they suffer at society’s uncaring hands.

My White Brothers in Christ, THAT IS THE DAILY REALITY for everyone else but White Men. That is a perfect example of White fragility and privilege: two wealthy men, pontificating about the danger of being scolded for being misunderstood or misinterpreted, in a world where Black men text their families “I love you” when they see red and blue lights just in case they, too, are misinterpreted or misunderstood through no fault of their own. If they would think about anyone’s experience but their own, they might grasp why they’re being told to put up with it so the world can be safer for other people.

Get the fuck over it, White America.

This interview had even more, but I’m saving that for Part 3, next week.

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