The Trial of a Middle Aged White Man

Epistemic monocultures and the problem of guilt by association.

Judge: You are charged with being a middle-aged white man. How do you plead?

Me: I plead bemusement. Is it now a crime to be a middle-aged white man?

Judge: I see you are trying to set the agenda again. I did not say anything about a crime. Can you answer the charge, please?

Me: Well, I am innocent in a legal sense. And I don’t want to feel morally tainted, but these days I’ve noticed that sometimes I do.

Judge: Ah, I see, so you are the aggrieved party. You are not guilty then?

Me: Well, it’s complicated. Aren’t we all guilty of something?

Judge: Some more than others, they say.

Me: Am I allowed to say that I find your tone harsh, and your terminology unkind?

Judge: Yes, but I will still judge you. That’s my job.

Me: Well, ok, but first of all I find ‘middle-aged’ pejorative. The term emphasises ageing and implies a sluggish mediocrity. I prefer ‘in midlife’ or ‘experienced’, ‘seasoned’ or ‘mature’, or, more playfully, ‘still enjoying the after party of my late youth.’

Secondly, I am Scottish and European, I live in one of the most multicultural cities in the world, I’m married to an Indian woman and we have mixed-race children. So yes I’m white, but please don’t reduce my outlook to a colour (that isn’t even a colour).

Thirdly, I am a man, but that’s a characteristic I share with about four billion people today, and many millions more dead or unborn, so I am not sure how much you can infer from it. We are not all the same.

Judge: You appear to be using your wife as a status claim, and I didn’t hear you mention her name as if she had a life of her own. I infer that you want brownie points for having apparently exotic children, you seem to think ‘European’ is a positive thing, and you speak of the unborn as if that makes you an egalitarian poet. And if you think London will help your defence, you need to take a closer look at all those statues of heroic murderers that line your salabrious streets. Read up on the slavery and blood and plundered loot your grandiosity was built upon. Yours is a city of Empire. As Sathnam Sanghera elegantly put it: “We are here, because you were there.”

Me: And you think that’s my fault?

Judge: Please. Let’s stop focussing on the letter of the charge. Focus on the spirit of it. Surely you understand why you are in the dock?

Me: Yes, Judge, I do. And to be honest it’s a relief to be here. For years now I have felt this residual guilt over features of myself that I cannot do anything about. Part of me has been waiting for this moment.

Judge: So why do think you’re here then?

Me: Because, historically speaking, and still today, people in my demographic category have a lot to answer for. While I don’t identify with them or speak for them, I am, in a sense, one of them.

If we consider different facets of power like who gets most the world’s attention and who has most of the money, and who makes the decisions, middle-aged white men get significantly more than their fair share. I remember Grayson Perry’s idea of ‘default man’ and I recognise how I might be seen as one of them. At the same time, it feels a little dehumanising to reduce people to categories like that, and then to pile on existential guilt simply for factually belonging to a category. And then there’s the throwaway line of ‘male, pale, and stale’ - mostly it’s cruel. These are just folk.

Judge: Those folk have been guilty before, and did not always acknowledge their guilt.

Me: Well I’ll acknowledge the validity of your general point if you’ll acknowledge the risk, laziness and cruelty of the generalisation.

Judge: Watch your tone. But yes, noted. Please go on.

Me: The racial dimension of the charge against me is about colonialism, and the brutal history of European nations plundering the southern hemisphere where people have darker skin.

The gender dimension is about the sociological idea of patriarchy and men dominating the public sphere and women not being enabled or ever permitted to shape the world in ways that would make it work better for them.

And the age dimension is partly about privilege and the relative affluence of people over forty who hoard much of the world’s wealth, often in property, but it’s also about being out of date and out of touch with the world as it is experienced by younger people.

There are also deeper philosophical issues examined for instance by Minna Salami in her critiques of ‘Europatriarchal knoweldge’ and by Vanessa Andreotti in her analysis of how and why modernity co-arises with exploitative colonial mindsets and cannot be disentangled from them.

To be charged with being a middle-aged white man is to be somehow guilty of each or all of these things, if only by association.

*

Judge: Thank you for starting to scratch the surface. Have you also noticed how - even in this very conversation - you try to seize the public space and talk as if what you are saying is self-evidently what people need to hear? Do you realise that you talk as if you spoke for everyone, but you are mostly just talking to yourself?

Me: *Blushes*

Well, I hope not. But I live with this kind of problem almost every day. I work in the world of ideas and I keep hearing or even finding myself thinking: “He’s great, but he’s another white guy.” We hear from lots of white guys, buckets of white guys, in fact. They are all different, many of them are excellent, others are good friends, and if what they seek is the chance to speak or write that seems commendable in itself.

Of course, we try to focus on the value of the substantive contribution and not the identity of the source, and we’re not interested in virtue signalling, but it’s not so simple. There is only a certain amount of space, time and attention available in the world and a certain kind of man can’t take up all of it, but it sometimes feels like they do. There is also a problem with intellectual monocultures, especially online, the same kind of conversation again and again, and the white guy hydra is part of that.

Judge: The White Guy Hydra?

Me: Sorry, this court could do with a little levity. I guess I mean if you ask one white guy to stop talking, another soon comes along to speak, and often before anyone else has ‘got a word in edgeways’, as they say.

Judge: And you see why that’s a problem…

Me: Yes. In a context where a certain kind of mind has dominated the conversation for decades, and where we’re ecologically deluded, politically sclerotic, and culturally stuck, there is a strong case for epistemic diversity and vitality, different stories of power, different forms of agency and leadership. In light of that need, it is not gratuitously racist and sexist to suggest white guys need to up their game, and if they can’t, or even if they can, to make space for others who have new things to say and new ways of saying it.

Judge: And do you do that yourself?

Me: I try to, but it’s not straightforward. Whenever someone like me makes way and apparently creates space for someone with a different sensibility from a different kind of background, that space is not always taken, and we are even told that it’s not the kind of space they need. Sometimes we are just asked to carry on. And then when we seek out someone who isn’t a white guy there is suspicion: are you just asking me because I’m not a white guy?! Mostly we are not, but sometimes we are, and sometimes that’s ok and sometimes it isn’t, and so the dynamic has become entangled.

And there’s another thing. I can’t speak for all white guys, but for some, it’s about creative expression and aspirational intellectual leadership. We have been encultured through education and societal feedback to behave this way and speaking and writing is our way of showing up to the world. It feels like natural. That drive to communicate may even evoke envy in those who would like to have such confidence, but don’t. When I hear that joke made by women: “Oh God, please grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man” I find it funny, but I have mixed feelings because the confidence, as such, is not really the problem. It’s just part of a wider ecology of expectations in which everyone is somehow complicit.

Judge: So you plead compassion for your kind and seek my sympathy for your plight?

Me: No, Judge, I seek your understanding. I also seek your recognition of my particularity, and therefore an appreciation for our shared humanity. My heart tells me I am ok. I like myself, believe in my work, and feel more or less good. That feeling of self-possession does not mean that I deny there is guilt by association with other white guys, nor that I am entangled and complicit in much that is wrong with the world.

Judge: Are you unaware that you seem to insist that others should see and feel the world the way you do, and that you assess people according to whether they do?

Me: Perhaps I am unaware of the extent of that behaviour. What I am aware of however, is ageism, racism and sexism, all of which can apply to the charge of being a middle-aged white man. Is it reasonable to expect me to carry the burden of the associations of colonialism, patriarchy and sexism? Is it fair to be treated not as an individual with a unique outlook but primarily as bearer of my sex, my race, my age?

Judge: Again, I see you feel you are the aggrieved party.

Me: Sorry, I don’t know how else to defend against what feels like misplaced charges. Is the kind of prejudice you evoke any different from, say, the notorious bias in the police force against the presumed criminality of young black men? If a young black man does not want to be associated with criminality, and it is unfair and racist to make that association, why is it ok to associate a middle-aged white man with privilege, colonialism, and sexism?

Judge: Oh, it’s very different, and what you call ‘associations’ can also be called ‘formative influences’. But I’m not here to answer your questions, nor to educate you. Nor is it my role to make you feel good about yourself. You’ve been diverting focus on your dominance with this kind of whataboutery for centuries.

Me: But I’m only 47. I refuse to carry the guilt of those centuries. That’s my point. And I’m hungry now, and I have other work to do, and a kitchen to clean and a son to collect from school. How did I even get here in this courtroom?

I guess I wanted this conversation, but on second thoughts, I don’t want to in the dock beholden to a young black female judge who seems to have decided I am guilty, and simply for being a middle-aged white man.

Judge: Now, now, Jonathan. There you go again. You brought yourself here, and I am a figment of your imagination. Believe it or not, I wish you well. I might even like you. Let’s talk again when you’re ready.