COLUMN: Utah – The white place to be
I’ve got guilt – boatloads ‘o guilt – and maybe you do also. I’ve got guilt because by being white I’m probably oppressing minorities and by being a man I’m somehow oppressing women. To a lesser extent, I guess I’m also oppressing gays, old people, handicapped people and overweight people. It’s quite likely that everything bad from frozen pizza to the Volkswagen air-cooled engine to nuclear testing has been caused by Caucasian males.
Even the book “Stupid White Men” was written by a white guy, and I hate the book and hate the author and hate myself for hating him. It kind of gives me the blues, but I feel guilty that white people have ruined that too and franchised it to death with places like the House of Blues.
How could anyone make a case for white supremacy? It has never appealed to me. The people in that movement are not even very good advertisements in behalf of their own hate mongering. They are generally walking advertisements for everything that is bad about the white race. Who would want to be like them? Seeing them doesn’t make me proud to be white. Seeing them makes me want to go out and marry a black, Jewish lesbian just to piss them off.
That’s why white guys like me like to live in Utah. It’s one of the few places in the currently charted universe where a white guy can sort of be a minority. You don’t have to be anything to qualify. You just have to not be a member of the prevailing church.
Where else in the world would a “non-Mormon” singles group be formed as a support group? I don’t remember living in St. Louis seeing any non-Catholic or non-Baptist singles groups. In fact, I don’t remember too many conversations in the half of my life as a pre-Utahn were not being something was the source of great comradeship.
“You mean you’re not dyslexic. Wow, me neither. Let’s go read something together. Let’s form a non-dyslexic singles group. Let’s advertise for non-dyslexic roommates.”
Utah’s one of the few places where not being something makes you different. Usually it’s the other way around. You are different because you are something; an atheist, a two-headed, brain-eating monster, a bone-through-your-nose voodoo priestess. It takes a lot to make you stand out.
The reason a lot of us “gentiles” (yes, and I have to repeat the oft’-mentioned phrase “Utah is the only place where a Jew can be a gentile”) live here is because we sort of like being part of a minority group. Maybe not a truly oppressed minority, but a minority nonetheless. Utah offers the unique experience of being a minority within a state that considers itself a minority among the other states.
Which brings me to the another reason a lot of us gentiles like it here. The cost of being different is low. If you go to someplace like say Santa Cruz, Calif., the cost of being different is high. Having a single earring and a fashionably short pony tail there will label you as a conservative republican accountant.
People in places like Santa Cruz are desperately trying to be different. It takes a great deal of imagination and work. You really do need to have lime green hair and live boa constrictor wrapped around your waist instead of pants to get a second glance while walking down the street.
In Utah, even white guys can have the blues.
Dennis Hinkamp’s column appears every Friday. Comments can be sent to dhinkamp@msn.com.