WHITE ‘BOYS’ & LETHAL SECOND CHANCES... an Emotional Inheritance

Kids. That was the chosen language of the US Vice-President about grown white men indulging in violence and violation via Telegram exchanges.

2,900 messages. Two thousand nine hundred. That’s declaration and deliberation.

This wasn’t a leak, it was the evidence of a legacy. A chat history of ism’s. Racism, anti-Semitism abounded. And, there were the rape jokes.

Led by a 31 year old white man - a former chair of The New York State Young Republicans - in a bid to rally support for his campaign to become chair of the National Young Republicans Organization, reported Politico and Al Jazeera. The chat was made public, sparking headlines, outrage, and condemnation.

I want us to examine the emotionality of what happened, and contextualize that.

This was Emotional Inheritance in practice. It revealed how white masculinity revels in practicing and perpetuating brutal harm and is lethally skilled in avoiding accountability. This use of language as weapon and shield are the chosen tools of a Republican party filled with white men & their rabid pursuit of unfettered power.

Let’s break down Emotional Inheritance.

Emotional Inheritance is what white masculinity hands down generation to generation. White man to white man. Right now, that inheritance is shaping the west’s contemporary political landscape, with global repercussions. This inheritance reveals the shape-shifting forms of white supremacy. It is as atsunami of emotional terrorism in practice.

This accountability-free accountability in white masculinity is one of the ingredients of an Emotional Terrorist. They harness manufactured innocence as a shield, and then scold those who demand consequences from harmful violence as willfully obscuring the ‘kid-like’ nature of the 2,900 texts. That’s what JD Vance did in his press conference responding to the revelations. ‘…the reality is that kids do stupid things, especially, young boys. They tell offensive jokes, that’s what boys do, ” said Vance.

This inheritance has a singular skill. Rich, white privileged men make themselves the constant victim, while they simultaneously target vulnerable, marginalized communities with gleeful venom. In this current Republican party, these ingredients are combined to name, and shape, what it describes as leaders. These leaders are emotional terrorists. They must be named and known as such.

That emotional inheritance is also a narrative of identity for white men as winners, conquerors, saviors, leaders. I call it ‘the leader vs learner’ binary. It is one where the leader = the knower, solver, doer to be listened to, heeded, and followed; and everyone else – all women, Black and Brown folks are learners who need to be taught, shown, whose behavior, actions, words, need constant adjustment without which there will always be issues.

This playbook of white masculinity of Emotional Inheritance and Emotional Infrastructure is the existential threat to America’s political landscape.

It means ‘leader’ is not a title or a position based on merit and expertise, it’s an identity, the way you see yourself, are seen and expect to be seen. That flatlines learning. It also creates an emotional relationship to power that is always – and only – about dominion, not development. It turns the importance of earning authority into the expectation that it is inherited. That expectation shapes history, causes harm and dominates our contemporary political landscape.

This notion of power as dominion is protected by and provided for by a western white masculinity – Left and Right, Progressive and Republican. The latter worships this unfettered power, and the former wishes for this ‘winner’ power. This is a lethal yearning for the Progressive Left as it leads to the dismissal of entire lived experiences that represent chapters of American history in pursuit of being a ‘winner’. We saw that in the interview by Ezra Klein – darling of the progressive Left – and award-winning writer Ta-Nehisi Coats. Klein belittled history and humanity in his unrelenting pursuit of being right, and being a winner. For the Right, it means the US’s Vice President names a 31-year-old, grown white man in his political party, who holds a leadership position and was responsible for racist, sexist, anti-Semitic venom on a text chain, as a ‘kid’ prone to saying dumb shit.

There’s dumb, and there’s deadly.

White masculinity’s emotional inheritance of dominion, not development teaches boys and shapes men with a rabid need to constantly and consistently fight, hold onto and protect this type of power. For them itis the only power worth fighting for and holding onto. It is not just the horror of protection from accountability and the freedom to wreak havoc, it is that they areusing language that can become policy, law, and practice. Their power shapes futures and threatens freedoms. That is deadly.

There are other elements to this Emotional Inheritance.

The Brotherhood of Bystanders. These are the men who stand by, but don’t stand up and don’t stand for anything that may jeopardize their position. Silence is always strategy in this brotherhood. For this 2900 exchange, there were those who witnessed it– like Trump administration official, Michael Bartels – who, according to Politico, didn’t write much – but critically did not object either. We witness this deadly Brotherhood of Bystanders showing us what the next generation of Republican leadership looks like. And as with all fascistic spaces, it is never solely the bully with the mic who jeopardizes collective safety, it’s the silence of those who surround him.

And there are the racialized ingredients in this Emotional Inheritance.

White men infantilize white male perpetrators of harm to avoid accountability,and they adultify Black boys to decimate the second chances that come with actual childhood.Further, treating Black boys like grown men, and grown white men like little white boys maintains threat and terror as mundane battlefields the world must now navigate. There is also the ongoing legacy of untreated trauma from the killing of a black boy, Tamir Rice, playing with a gun. This, as actual grown white male mass shooters armed with guns, rage, and whiteness are defended by other grown white men.

Ultimately, white masculinity demands to be served not scrutinized. IjeomaOluo’s book ‘MEDIOCRE: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America’ lays this out powerfully.

The stakes are stark. The landscape is shrouded in scattered emotional gunfire.

White masculinity cannot and should not be trusted or looked to for any transformative leadership at this time. The emotional inheritance of white masculinity across the political landscape is weapon and ammunition. That means battlefields, casualties, and graveyards. It’s beyond time to name there is no humanity-serving future in contemporary western white masculinity.