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What I got Wrong About My White Friends [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-09-19
I was raised as the sixth-generation on our small (500-acre) diversified family farm in northcentral Missouri. My rural high school’s student body was 100% Caucasian.
From there, I went to Basic Training (Army) for my first exposure to a diverse community. I returned to the University of Missouri, specifically, the College of Agriculture, where I joined an agricultural fraternity that was about 95% Caucasian.
Graduating with a BS in Forestry Resource Management, I drove south, attending Auburn University for an MS in Forest Biology. There was more diversity amongst the post-graduate student body, but the undergraduate community remained almost entirely white and male.
With degrees in hand, I entered the overwhelmingly conservative, Christian, white, male field of forestry in the southern US.
Racism was always there, where I grew up, to where I studied, to where I worked, but it took some time to open my eyes and recognize it. If a person grew up and existed for virtually their entire life in white conservative environment, you have the choice of recognizing the advantages of one’s skin color, or following the lead of my fellow Missourian Rush Limbaugh, and the recently deceased Charlie Kirk - you could lean into the “victimhood of white conservative men who are held back from their true potential by DEI/Woke policies.”
I started life in the latter category, and gradually evolved into recognizing how my prejudices were both inaccurate and immoral.
Over time, I could no longer remain quiet when hateful/prejudicial opinions were expressed around me. I spoke up, and over time, I heard less of these comments. I believed I was making a difference, but I was only teaching those people who surrounded me, to avoid voicing their prejudices while in my presence.
That was my first mistake.
My second mistake was in believing that even if my white conservative friends remained prejudiced against people of different skin colors, religions, and sexual preferences, they would place a higher value on their personal livelihoods, and the economic wellbeing of their communities.
That was my second mistake.
Because the headlines are focusing on the farmageddon threatening commodity producers across much of rural America, you may not have heard or noticed that the forest industry of the South is suffering an equally dire present and future, as paper mills and sawmills close at an unprecedented pace.
Because I remember the economics classes I took at Mizzou and/or Auburn, it seems like blowing up our established trade agreements and export markets might not have been such a good idea. I believe it is related to what happens to the price for a given commodity (corn, soybeans, lumber, and paper) when you maintain supply, but dramatically reduce demand.
I remain embedded in rural white conservative America, typing this missive from our humble abode on a dirt road in Lower Alabama.
The forestry community is sounding the alarm, as our export markets collapse and our prices for sawtimber, pulpwood, canterwood, and ply logs dwindle. And they have identified the culprits: efforts to fight global warming and not enough prayer. I am dead serious. These are the factors that they blame.
It’s not Trump’s fault. If it were Trump’s fault, then they would have to admit their complicity (votes) in this fiasco. That is not going to happen.
The mills will close, the farms will fall into bankruptcy, and they will cling to their pride, their religion, and their skin color.
I flew to Europe on January 20th, 2025, purposely choosing that date to symbolize my separation from what would happen in America.
I landed in Portugal, and a few days later, I started walking El Camino de Santiago. It was precisely what my soul required.
I met and befriended people from all over the world. Mostly, I avoided politics, but inevitably, my fellow pilgrims would ask some version of “How can America/Americans be so stupid?”
My answer was, “Rupert Murdoch, religion, and childhood lead exposure.”
Of course, there are other factors, but surely, my answer wasn’t too far off the mark.
[END]
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