White Supremacy + Male Chauvinism = Conservative White Males

Yes, to be sure, this means that males must separate themselves from the overwhelming influence of the feminine in their consciousness represented by their mothers. But this is the most obvious part of the male need to establish a specifically masculine sense of identity. However, when the male-child does not succeed in separating from the feminine in his consciousness, by working out a specifically masculine sense of identity, he may tend to feel threatened by strong women in his life. In short, male chauvinists tend not to have worked out a sufficiently strong sense of masculine identity.

 

Next, we need to understand that both male chauvinism and white supremacy are part of our American cultural heritage -- and therefore part of our American cultural conditioning. As a result, white American males over the years have indeed worked out their sense of specifically masculine identity within the larger cultural matrix of American culture. As Bruni points out, popular American culture today is awash in out-dated male chauvinism.

 

So if white American males today are undergoing an identity crisis, as I have suggested, where can they turn for examples of how other men have struggled to work out as specifically masculine sense of identity?

 

They could consider the well-known example of the historical Jesus. At a time when the Roman empire ruled the ancient Jewish homeland, he went about working out his specifically masculine sense of identity by preaching and teaching his fellow Jews. However, as is well known, he was executed under the authority of the Roman empire when he was only in his thirties. Of course, as is well known, in the 1960s, President Kennedy, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy also died at comparatively young ages.

 

Or white American males today could consider the example of Socrates in ancient Athens. He managed to live considerably longer than JFK or MLK or RFK. However, as is well known, his fellow male Athenians voted, on trumped up charges, to have him executed by drinking hemlock.

 

But what about the resources of imaginative literature? I'd be willing to consider looking at any male character who struggled to work out a specifically masculine sense of identity that transcended both male chauvinism and white supremacy.

 

For an example of a male character who did NOT struggle to work out a specifically masculine sense of identity that transcends both male chauvinism and white supremacy, we have Thomas Sutpen in William Faulkner's novel ABSALOM, ABSALOM! Indeed, Thomas Sutpen is a symbol of the problems that white American males today must face.

 

When we turn our attention to models of human maturity advanced by non-fiction writers, we could consider the vision of masculine maturity outlined by the Jungian theorist Robert Moore of Chicago Theological Seminary, most notably in the revised and expanded edition of the book he co-authored with Douglas Gillette titled THE KING WITHIN: ACCESSING THE KING [ARCHETYPE] IN THE MALE PSYCHE (Exploration Press, 2007).

 

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