This voice says: Shut up. This voice says that nobody wants to hear from another broken white man. This voice says that there are people who suffer more than you, people who face obstacles so large that you can’t even imagine it. This voice says there have been enough white men talking. It’s time to…
Author: Clio
Why There’s No ‘White History Month’
This week marks the beginning of Black History Month. Every February, black educators around the country deep-dive into the contributions of African-Americans while the mainstream white-centered media pulls out the same five Famous Black People to profile over and over. If you’re white, that means you’ll hear about Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X,…
Hoodies, Hats, and Cultural Nuance
I am a high school teacher. A decade ago, I was in a corporate job, working as a market research analyst. If you’d asked me then what a teacher had to worry about, I would have mentioned content knowledge, administrators, parents, and homework. What would I not have mentioned? Hats. Hoods. The things students wear…
Boys Do Cry
In responding to Michael Wolff’s new book about him, Donald Trump tweeted that Steve Bannon “cried when he got fired.” I’m not a fan of Steve Bannon. Based on what I’ve seen, I doubt that he really did cry, at least not in front of Donald Trump. I think this because, as older American men,…
Dividing and remainders
As a high school teacher, I struggle routinely with getting students to understand that \(x/0\) is undefined. Students don’t seem to understand that division with a remainder is incomplete. I have long attributed this to the way that division is taught in the elementary school years. For instance, \(17\div 5 = 3R2\) is considered perfectly…
The Only Way Out is Through
As I write this, it is the last day of 2017. This is the fiftieth Good Man Project article I’ve written this year. Thank you for reading. I’ve been thinking a lot about labyrinths lately. This year, my stepmother sold the house and land she and my father had bought decades ago for their retirement….
How I Overcame the Christmas Blues
When I was a child, I loved Christmas. I loved the gifts, of course, but it was also a time for togetherness. Along with Thanksgiving, it was one of the two times a year that my family was obliged to act like a loving, healthy group. We would visit other relatives, too. I had cousins…
Three Ways Male Entitlement Erases Women
One. The other day I went to McDonald’s with my eight-year-old son. We don’t go very often, but he likes the Happy Meal toys, and he was putting up with Christmas shopping. While we were waiting in line, he went to check out the toy display: Train cars, tied to various popular children’s franchises. Hot…
Melting the Icebergs of the White Patriarchs
I’ve been thinking about icebergs again. I was thinking about them earlier in the year. At the time, Richard Spencer and other white nationalists were marching in Charlottesville. Moderate white people were rushing to distance themselves from the Nazis with tiki torches defending statues of General Robert E. Lee. The problem with that, as I…
A Eulogy for Porn
The first time I saw a pornographic magazine, I was about twelve years old. My older brother had gotten half a dozen issues of magazines like Hustler from a friend whose father had an extensive collection. The teen boys would look at the magazines in his bedroom, and I was invited to join in, in…