THE UNATTRACTIVE BEING OF WHITENESS IN HONDURAS

There is a great scene at the very beginning of “Goodfellas,” Martin Scorsese’s classic movie about Mafia life in New York City over the course of three decades. A young Henry Hill stares out of his living room window, wide eyed, in complete adoration of the corpulent Mafiosi who are hanging out across the street at a taxi stand, wearing expensive suits and even more expensive jewelry. A voiceover states how these “wiseguys” can park their cars wherever they want to without worrying about getting a ticket, can stay up late at the taxi stand partying loudly without any fear of the police arriving to break them up, can basically break any of the laws and conventions that mainstream society would be held accountable to.

“To me,” says the adult voiceover for young Henry Hill, “being a wiseguy is better than being President of the United States.”

Being a white American male (and a darned handsome one at that) in Honduras makes me feel like one of those corpulent mafiosi with a license to do whatever I wish, while the majority of Hondurans are the young Henry Hill, staring at me enviously, wishing they could have my unearned privileges, and wanting to attach themselves to my alleged prestige. Everywhere I look, girls are gawking steadily and boys are jostling for my attention. Adults treat me with a respect and deference that is so undeserved it is almost surreal. I have never encountered such an unconditional adoration of whiteness anywhere else in the world that I have been, and it baffles me. In Mexico, the way the term “gringo” is used is much different than how Hondurans use it. Mexicanos will say it with a palpable undercurrent of bitterness and resentment, and I began to grow accustomed to harsh and solemn looks from Mexicans of all ages, in particular those with darker skin. Hondurans, on the other hand, use “gringo” as a term of affection, and many have asked if the term is bothersome to me, just to make sure I won’t recoil if I hear the “g” word. How overwhelmingly polite can you get?

The problem is, being a Caucasian male in Honduras is not better than being President of the United States. I hate being gawked at, jostled over, just because of the sheer fact that I am the skin color and nationality that I am. In my opinion, the sheer accident of my race and national affiliation makes my existence something that must be justified to Hondurans. This is perhaps abstract, but on a very real and non-abstract level, the privileges and benefits I get from being White and American relate to the oppression of, and denial of hope and opportunity for, most Hondurans. I am privileged because I am White, and most Hondurans are disadvantaged because they are not, and my opportunities create their lack of them. This is how global capitalism works, in a nutshell-concentrating wealth and therefore power in a racially defined manner, and basing that wealth and power on what everyone in the world with more melanin in their skin does not have.

James Baldwin called white supremacy “the most successful conspiracy in world history,” but I am a willing player in that conspiracy, no matter how much I try to hide it. Would I really want to trade places with a Person of Color, after all, and put up with all the injustices that he must put up with on a daily basis, injustices that people who look like me are responsible for creating? Very few White males, especially so-called liberal ones, want to ask themselves this disturbing question. I remember reading about African-American professor Manning Marable asking a class of White high school students how much one of them would pay to be a young Black male. Various wrong answers were given, and then suddenly, a student remarked correctly, “I would not even pay one million dollars to switch places.” The ugliness and barbarism of White supremacy, that makes even the idea of being a Person of Color unappealing for most Whites, as if People of Color should choose to have a different racial identity. Implicit in Professor Marable’s question is the unmitigated complicity of the white students in maintaining the existing racial status quo.

For many years, I have tried to vainly overcome my racially defined privilege, to transcend the unattractive whiteness of my being. I almost had a minor in African American Studies in college, and most of my friends in high school were Black, Asian, or Latino. I joined all the right anti-racist groups, and read all the right anti-racist texts, and as a radical activist really pushed the idea of genuine cross-racial solidarity to the max. I once spearheaded a delegation to disrupt a KKK rally in Annapolis, the capital of Maryland, and remember at one point chasing down a particular un-sheeted kraka who for some suicidal reason crossed the line and tried to disrupt the protesters. I caught up to this man, trailed by many comrades, and began hitting him on the head with my water bottle. Three cops soon arrived to break it all up, and escort this devil back to his side, in honor of his First Amendment right to Free Hate Speech. I have mellowed out some since then, to say the least, but still believe in the John Brown approach to rectifying racial injustice, if that is the only thing that will work. A violent revolution in Cuba ended centuries of official racial discrimination and opened up new spaces for Cubans of Color to participate in society. Would the same thing be necessary in the United States, or Honduras?

Maybe I am getting off the trail here. I was talking about how much I dislike being treated favorably. The security guard at the bank in Cofradia always gives me a trusting glance, an extremely brief once-over, when I am about to enter the building, and never raises his wand to search my body for weapons or explosives. After I walked into the bank for the fifth time without being searched, I felt like stopping and asking him to search me, I felt like telling him not to assume that because I am White and U.S. American (euphemisms here for “rich” and “privileged”), that I should be treated differently than Honduran males. I would be a perfect terrorist or bank robber in Honduras, because I have been able to enter so many high-security areas without being checked. But potentially malevolent intentions on my part would be the last thing on the minds of the underpaid and under-educated security guards I encounter, who easily fall prey to comforting stereotypes about white guys like me, cloaked in a façade of almost prenatal innocence and instinctive goodness, myths that white men like to tell about themselves in order to be comfortable with the fact that their racial group and gender is responsible for so much of the barbarism and discontent of the last 500 years.

White supremacy-“the most successful conspiracy in the history of the world.” Is it possible to end this conspiracy, and create a new human society not grossly (mis)managed by Caucasian males? Let’s hope so, as the glacial ice melts more frequently and nature may be telling us that our collective number is almost up…