I WILL Give You a Gold Star for Basic Decency

Along with my gratitude.

Are you a basically nice person? You don’t bully people or try to take advantage of them? You make an effort to learn about others and treat them kindly?

Thank you, and please accept this gold star sticker if you want it. If the sticker feels too childish, I hope the “thank you” suffices.

There’s this rhetoric that people, especially men and white people, “don’t get a gold star for basic decency” in relationships or advancing social justice. Another variation is “We shouldn’t thank [insert demographic here] just for recognizing that [insert problem here] exists!”

Now, okay, maybe you don’t deserve to be elevated to a pedestal. But if you’re really in it to be good to people and make the world a better place, that’s probably not what you want, anyway.

Still, maybe it would feel good to get a little acknowledgement that you’re trying, a little encouragement that you’re on the right track. Maybe it sucks to feel like you’re not good enough to be given any regard whatsoever and you’re starting to get discouraged that you’ll never be good enough.

Okay. Sit down next to me. I see your efforts, and I appreciate them. What you’re feeling is human and you’re not bad for feeling that way. That’s just how the brain is, bébé.

If it matters to you, despite my skin tone, I’m not “white.” Not genetically and certainly not ethnically/culturally. I’m not a man, and I don’t have a penis. Nope, not heterosexual either. So I’m not protecting my own identity and ego by telling you hey, thanks for being nice. It’s not a pretense in order to open the door for my own absolution.

Nor am I a pacifist or Pollyanna. I don’t love everyone. My principles include the notion that sometimes, you have to fight people for the sake of self-protection or others’ well-being. There are humans I’d like wiped from the expanse of this planet.

In response to the rising tide of feminism and anti-racism, some people have written to applaud “white men” as a whole for building Western society. I find that eye-roll worthy and I’m not doing that. Some white guys were pretty cool as individuals; I have a huge historical crush on Thomas Paine (or as I…

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