The Peripatetic Preacher Confronts His White Male Privilege

Judge Brett Kavanaugh and I have much in common, though that commonality on the surface appears highly unlikely. Obviously,  we swim in vastly different sized ponds. He went to an elite boys’ school, Yale College, and Yale Law School, and since his law degree has moved inexorably up the judicial ladder, arriving most recently at a prestigious Court of Appeals, and is now poised to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. I went to public schools through High School, albeit very good ones, went to a fine Midwest liberal arts college, then to one of this country’s best theological schools, finishing a PhD not long after. I did not move inexorably higher in my chosen profession, other than becoming a full professor and holder of an endowed chair, but did spend 33 years on the faculty of that same theological school, retiring six years ago. What then do we have in common?

We are both white privileged males in a society that places us at the top of the food chain. Kavanaugh and I are one generation apart, since he is 53 and I am 72, but, alas, society did not change all that much in his school days’ generation. In both my grade school and high school, right up until my senior year, I never sat in a classroom with a person of color. It seems little less than astonishing to write that sentence. In my senior year, an African-American girl enrolled in my High School, breaking a color barrier in a state, Arizona, that even in those days surely had a Latino/a majority. My college also enrolled very few non-white students, and even in that theological school, it was very sparsely integrated. In short, my brush with people different from me was decidedly spotty.

After finishing my graduate work, I became a pastor of an all-white United Methodist congregation in southern Louisiana. Fortunately for my emerging consciousness, after that pastorate, I became a faculty member of an undergraduate school in Ft. Worth, TX, that had the highest percentage of minority students of any school in North Texas, so in my large classes there were many faces unlike mine that proved very helpful for raising my knowledge of the world, however small that rise might have been in reality. Then during my years back at my theological school, increasing numbers of non-white students attended my classes, and increasing numbers of non-white faculty colleagues joined me, helping me even more move out of my white, privileged ghetto.

Though I admit to my shame that I am still a racist, perhaps not overtly, but still not fully aware of my powerful whiteness as a barrier to genuine community with all God’s people, I have become increasingly alert to that whiteness and the privilege it offers me. I know well how my white skin gives me instantaneous access to the world in which I live; my dark-skinned colleagues are forever judged the minute they exit their homes, a fact I can know but never fully appreciate. Yet I am daily coming to terms with my white power in the midst of a world of incredible diversity.

But, I must now say that my maleness and its power have been harder for me to acknowledge and to adjudicate. As a man, I have an extraordinary entrée and influence that have been denied to my female fellow citizens. I well remember an experience I had with a female student in one of my classes at the theological school. My teaching style tended to be quite freewheeling, and quite interactive, characterized by humor and much laughter. One day, during a discussion of some novel or other, I made some crack that contained a good bit of sexual undertone, the book we had read addressing the question of human sexuality quite explicitly. The students in the class were about half women and half men. I do not at all remember the content of my jibe, but I do recall a good bit of laughter at what I had said. I thought nothing more of it.

The next day I received a call from the dean of students, asking me to come to her office. After she closed the door, she told me that a student in my class had complained about my comment the previous day, having found it quite offensive. She had informed the dean that she was a survivor of sexual assault and abuse, and my comments had triggered old feelings that were still quite raw. I was stunned. I had always seen myself as a “good boy,” one who was always striving to make easy relationships with all people, and a person anyone could trust and in whom one might find a ready ear for careful and caring listening. I was shaken, and if the student decided to make a more formal complaint, I could easily have lost my position.

I went back to my office and immediately called the student and arranged a meeting. We met outside in a public place, so as to limit, I hoped, her discomfort with me. To my great relief, the meeting proved illuminative and healing. I apologized for my careless and hurtful speech, and she affirmed me as a possibly worthy person to help her in her journey toward ordination in the church and toward wholeness as a woman in the culture of an overtly male-dominated church. I hope I learned important lessons from this generous woman, but I know I have much still to learn about my privilege as a man.

Watching both his accuser, Dr. Ford, and the nominee, Judge Kavanaugh, made me wonder whether or not he still had much learning to do, as well, when it comes to his male privilege. I was struck by his second appearance before the committee, after Dr. Ford’s long and obviously painful revelations, how combative and defensive he was; even his tears appeared to me to be the result of defensiveness, not driven by any sense of remorse at any poor decisions he may have made. Instead, the committee and we, the audience, were subjected again and again to a litany of his wonderful, well nigh saintly attributes as athlete, community servant, church goer, hard-working academician. When asked whether it  were possible that he might have blacked out due to excessive drinking of beer, and thus was not able to recall the incident of his alleged assault of Dr. Ford, instead of reflecting on the possibility, he horrifically turned the question back onto the questioner, asking the female senator whether she had ever blacked out as the result of abuse of alcohol. Either he did not know, or had forgotten, but this senator had a too close relationship with the dangers of alcohol, having survived an alcoholic father and thereby was not at all a problem drinker. Though the judge later apologized for this appalling interchange with her, the fact that he reacted as he did was proof that his privilege had rarely, if ever, been challenged, and when it was, he reverted to invective and abuse to protect his long-held image as universally good.

I am in no position to predict how the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court will play itself out, after the brief FBI investigation of the several charges against him decades ago. But I can readily say, given our similar backgrounds of white male privilege, that this man, along with many other men, including me, have much to learn, and much to inculcate in their lives concerning their potentially abusive power. In addition, we men need to listen much more carefully than we have to women in order to move toward genuine equality. “In Christ there is no longer male and female,” says Paul in one of his earliest letters. By this memorable line, he does not at all imply that men and women are the same; they are not in many respects. What he implies is that the dominant male culture of first-century Rome was now in Christ no longer the way that society should be ordered. We are all one in Christ, he says, and those of us with our white male privilege are the targets of his startling call. As a professed Christian, I pray that Judge Kavanaugh will reflect long and hard on the apostle’s announcement.