A Better Man

by Michael Ian Black

  Of course, it doesn’t entirely work. Year after year, Jews are the single most targeted religious group in the country, and anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise here and abroad. According to the Anti-Defamation League, 2017 was the worst year for American anti-Semitic attacks on record. So we live in an in-between state, belonging and not quite belonging, all of us harboring the slight suspicion that we may be nothing more than guests in our own home.

  All of this to say that our history as Jews gives you additional responsibilities to other people. First, we are obliged to lift others up as a recognition of the privilege we’ve been afforded. Second, we are obliged to speak up on behalf of others as a recognition of the history our people endured when few people spoke up for us. I will be the first to admit that I have not done enough to lift people up. As I’ve gotten older, and my recognition of my responsibilities has grown, I have tried to do more. I will continue to do more.

  At the very least, it means speaking up on behalf of women and minorities. It means checking your friends when they say demeaning or degrading shit. It means being willing to step into a confrontation to help another person. Simple stuff. But it’s the kind of stuff so many men often fail to do. You do not need to sneak downstairs in the middle of the night to be brave. Sometimes all it requires is speaking up.

  Once you are aware of your own privileges, whatever they may be, you must consider them and act accordingly. That’s not a judgment of you, only an acknowledgment of what is true. For example, sociologist Michael Kimmel recounts a conversation he overheard once between a white woman and a black woman:

  The black woman says to the white woman, “When you wake up in the morning and you look in the mirror, what do you see?” And the white woman said, “I see a woman.” And the black woman said, “You see, that’s the problem for me. Because when I wake up in the morning and I look in the mirror, I see a black woman. To me, race is visible, but to you it’s invisible. You don’t see it.” And then she said something really startling. She said, “That’s how privilege works. Privilege is invisible to those who have it.”

  That’s all I’m doing here, trying to make the invisible visible. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it, as much as you might like to. Also, once you see it, that doesn’t mean you see all of it. You can’t, any more than a human eye can see the entire spectrum of light. The rest of the spectrum is out there, but your personal experiences only equip you to see a narrow band. When others better equipped than you tell you what’s out there beyond your vision, believe them.

  And I know how sick to death white guys are of hearing about their “white male privilege,” but however sick white guys might be hearing about it, imagine being on the other side of that privilege. Imagine not being given the benefit of the doubt, or being thought of as less than, or fearing for your safety because of your sex or your race. A white NBA player named Kyle Korver wrote an essay examining his own racial privilege, how he thinks he’s let some of his black teammates down over the years, and how he’s resolved to be a better teammate and man:

  What I’m realizing is, no matter how passionately I commit to being an ally, and no matter how unwavering my support is for NBA and WNBA players of color . . . I’m still in this conversation from the privileged perspective of opting in to it. Which of course means that on the flip side, I could just as easily opt out of it. Every day, I’m given that choice—I’m granted that privilege—based on the color of my skin.

  The privilege is also true for our sex and class. As guys, we get to opt in or out of these conversations because we don’t have to handle the daily indignities that come from occupying a less privileged place. You’re a relatively well-off white boy from Connecticut. It’s on you to figure out how you want to handle the perks that come with that position.

  One way to deal with it is to ignore it. Perhaps you feel like these issues don’t impact you directly, so why should you care? You may feel it’s not your responsibility to fix what you did not break. That may be true to a certain extent, but I also think when you do not make an effort to fix what you know to be broken, you are actively making things worse for everybody else. It’s a choice, but remember how I said our debts tether us to other people? This is one of your debts. Moreover, selfishness won’t set you free from your obligations. It may forestall them, but you cannot escape your own humanity. At some point, you will have to figure out how you want to handle your responsibilities to other people.

  I can’t tell you how to do that. But I can tell you that you’re not applying for sainthood here. You don’t need to be all things to all people. You don’t need to address every issue or solve every problem. You just need to help out a little bit. You may find that the more you do, the more you want to do. If so, cool. There is always more to do. You don’t have to do all of it, but you have to do some. Recognizing the shared humanity of others allows you to become fully human yourself. That is being humane.

  fourteen

  Here I Am

  Do Something Positive

  Earlier, I said that you shouldn’t have to be exceptional to succeed in this life. That’s true. It’s also true that there will always be exceptional women and men who rise above difficult circumstances to achieve great things. Exceptional people will find a way to succeed no matter what because they are, by definition, exceptional. But consider all the unexceptional people who wind up in positions of power and authority. I am one of them. Although my power and authority are pretty limited, I’m still writing these words from a house that Mom and I built with the money I earned telling jokes on TV. Even to me, that seems absurd. How did that even happen?

  I can tell you exactly: I was born into the middle class within a family that valued education. I had access to decent public schools. My father had the foresight and resources to purchase life insurance. When he died, the vast bulk of that money went to your aunt Susan but enough of it went to your uncle Eric and me that we would be able to get through college with minimal debt. I attended an exclusive private college, NYU, and I joined a sketch comedy troupe where we had the luxury to devote all of our free time to learning how to write and perform comedy. One of our members had an unpaid internship (he came from a wealthy family who could subsidize that unpaid internship) at MTV, where he knew a producer because his sister had dated him years before. That producer brought our sketch group into the network, where we were given an opportunity to work on a TV show. Based on the success of our work on that show, our group was given a show of our own.

  Without my even trying very hard, I suddenly had a show on one of the hottest networks on television. We worked hard to get that opportunity, yes, but none of that preliminary work would have been possible without the special privileges every single one of us brought with us to NYU. None of us had to work full-time to pay for college, for example. None of us had kids or arrest records or had to care for younger siblings. Only two out of eleven of us came from divorced families, and I was the only one who had a lost a parent in childhood.

  In fact, I walk around all the time with the guilt that my father’s death actually enabled my success at NYU because, while he was alive, he always told my brother and me that he was going to send us to New Jersey’s state school, Rutgers. Maybe that would have been great and maybe not, but without the life insurance money, I wouldn’t have been able to afford NYU. Had he not died, I wouldn’t have met the people with whom I started my career.

  There is nothing exceptional about me. Yes, I was smart enough, talented and ambitious enough. But I wasn’t special. None of us were. Yet there we were, in our early twenties, with our own hit show on MTV.

  (And, by the way, our comedy group had 10 white guys and 1 white girl.)

  What does all this mean for you? To be honest, I don’t really know. It’s not a guilt trip. It’s just to make the point that we are all both deserving and undeserving of the good fortune we receive. Most of us are ordinary people. Whether we end up “deserving” our successes in life is hard to say. It’
s not a knock on myself to say I got lucky, and I’m not trying to make you feel bad for being born into good fortune. If anything, I’m thrilled for you and thrilled for myself that I’ve been able to provide you and your sister with a good home and food and experiences beyond the grasp of so many. It’s not that I feel like I don’t deserve it, but rather I recognize that I don’t deserve it any more than so many other people who end up with so much less. So I guess what I’m offering here is a caution.

  First, I’m cautioning you against entitlement, which really is the bane of white people in general, and white dudes in particular. I don’t think most of us even realize the extent of our entitlement. It manifests itself in the confident way we enter a store, for example, when we expect to be welcomed as potential customers instead of eyed as potential shoplifters, even though I used to regularly shoplift when I lived in New York.

  I used to steal food, compact discs, little geegaws that caught my eye in boutiques. I did it for the thrill of it and yes, eventually I got caught. A plainclothes security officer caught me stuffing a Miles Davis CD into my pants. I was let off with a warning instead of an arrest. Was that white privilege? You bet your ass it was. Imagine if I’d been a poor black kid getting caught for the same. Maybe I would have been let off with the same warning. Maybe not. How do we measure luck? Sometimes it’s by the color of our skin.

  Our entitlement may express itself in the way we use our voice in conversation, assured that our opinion will be valued or that we know more about any given subject than our listener. Or maybe it expresses itself in how we deal with authority and, more importantly, how authority deals with us.

  I was listening to a story on the podcast Serial about a woman who got into a bar fight. When she was arrested, she started drunkenly screaming at the arresting officer, kicking the police car from inside, and generally making a nuisance of herself. The interviewer, Sarah Koenig, asked her why she thought she could talk to cops like that. The woman responded, somewhat ruefully, “I hate to say—I’m a white girl.”

  While I obviously don’t encourage this form of entitlement, I also disagree with those who say, “You’re not entitled to anything.” Of course you are. You’re entitled to a lot of things: we’ve got a whole fancy constitution spelling out exactly what those things are. Beyond your constitutionally enumerated entitlements, I believe you are also entitled to respect, and I expect you to treat others with respect. You are entitled to control over your own body, and I expect you to honor other people’s control of their bodies. Further, you are entitled to your own thoughts, which is to say you are entitled to keep your own counsel about all things regardless of what anybody tells you is so. Keeping your own counsel, however, is not an excuse for ignorance; I expect you to seek out the knowledge you need in order to understand your own mind. A healthy sense of entitlement is good, the kind that protects your dignity and self-worth. Unhealthy entitlement is the sort that makes you believe you are privileged above others.

  A lot of times that kind of entitlement is hard to recognize. Be mindful of it in yourself and others. If somebody tells you that you are acting in an entitled manner, believe them. They may not always be correct, but at least entertain the possibility that they see something in you that you’re unable to see in yourself.

  In general, even if we see it, white people rarely admit our own entitlement. We understand that our travels through society will never be inhibited by the color of our skin. Moreover, we also understand that somebody else’s journey may be inhibited by the color of their skin. We get all of it but we don’t like to admit it because, when the sailing is smooth, we tend to think it’s because we are great sailors when, in fact, it might just be that we’ve got the wind at our back.

  A different shade of entitlement is when we mistake confidence for competence. Let your confidence grow from inside out, not outside in. Boys have a tendency to overvalue their abilities, whereas girls are more likely to undervalue theirs. Girls are more likely to acknowledge their shortcomings and to ask for help to address them, whereas guys tend to try to muscle through problems on our own. You’re entitled to ask for help.

  You’re also entitled to make mistakes. Everybody is. The privilege you have is that the mistakes you make are likely to be less costly than the mistakes of people without your privilege because you have a vast support system in place (everything from me and your mom to a legal system that favors white guys who can afford good lawyers). Is that fair? Of course not. I’m just pointing out that our system is designed to help people like us, and so I would caution you against judging the mistakes of others too harshly—they could just as easily be your own.

  Some men have fought for greater inclusion because, aside from the basic morality of it, they hope that creating more opportunities for everybody will eventually lead to greater opportunities for all. On the other hand, many guys resist helping others because they fear the gains of others will come at their expense. I see this in my own little comedy community.

  Comedy has always been dominated by white dudes, but the past few years have upended that power structure. The days of the all-male writers’ room, for example, are probably over. Does that mean the comedy world is now suddenly “fair”? Not even remotely. But maybe it’s getting fairer. This new push for inclusion doesn’t mean talented white men won’t keep getting work. Of course they will. But it does mean that guys with average abilities who might have gotten the job before may not get the job now because they’re competing with a broader talent pool. In some cases, they may actually be at a disadvantage because writers’ rooms are trying to ensure that more voices are represented. That’s going to scare some guys. Honestly, as one of those comedy writers with average abilities, it scares me.

  Acting, too. There’s a far more diverse group of entertainers on our televisions, tablets, and movie screens than we’ve ever seen. Do they perfectly mirror our culture? Of course not. But this new inclusion almost certainly means less work for schlubby white character actors like me. Is it a lot less work or a little less work? It’s hard to say, but, again, I would be lying if I said I’m not a little scared. I certainly never felt entitled to writing or acting jobs, but now that I’m having a harder time finding that work, it stings. So no, you shouldn’t have to be exceptional to succeed in life, but some of us who have been coasting on our mediocrity may have to up our game in order to stay afloat.

  I’m one white guy in one “liberal” industry. I’ve done well enough for myself. Even acknowledging my own “economic anxiety” seems ridiculous compared to all the other men out there in all the other industries trying, like polar bears on ever-shrinking ice patches, to hold their ground. One way or another, I’ll be fine. Even so, I worry about my ability to continue to provide. And, of course, I worry about you.

  You’re heading off to study videogame design, which probably feels exactly as realistic to me as it must have seemed to my mom when I told her I was going to New York to study acting. And, truthfully, you probably have as much idea about what it means to be a videogame designer as I did about what it meant to be an actor—slim to none.

  Maybe your career path will work out for you. Maybe it won’t. Maybe you’ll get ten years into it and decide to do something else. In the end, I don’t think it matters that much. Too many of us measure our masculinity by our occupation. Our income. The fluttering prestige of the meaningless.

  You don’t have to fall for it. Earlier, I talked about how we steer boys toward occupations instead of toward happiness, often equating one with the other. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is not the same question as “What do you think will give you the most happiness?”

  Happiness may feel like an ephemeral target, but it’s not. I talked about happiness a little bit before, but I want to drill down into it. Happiness has three components: identity, community, and purpose. A job may provide some of that or none of it. There are happy people who dislike their jobs and unhappy people who identify strongly with their work
. Maybe the reason they’re unhappy is because they identify too strongly with their jobs. The best you can hope for, I think, is to find work you believe to be meaningful among people you enjoy being around. For most of my career, I’ve been fortunate enough to have that. I wish the same for you.

  My own job has given me a community I adore. Despite the stereotype of actors being airheads, they actually tend to be smart, inquisitive, and empathetic. And despite the stereotype of comedians being depressive misanthropes, they’re actually depressive misanthropes—so I guess that one is a little more accurate. But, again, they also tend to be smart, inquisitive, and empathetic. These communities have given me great friendships. At times, they’ve given me purpose. As I’ve gotten older, though, I find they provide less and less of an identity. When people ask me what I do, I often want to say, “I take a lot of naps,” because napping feels as relevant to my larger identity as acting or doing stand-up or whatever else I find myself doing on any given day. Now that I think of it, I look forward to napping as much doing those other things (often more).

  That’s not to say I don’t enjoy my job, but my purpose now isn’t nearly as entwined with my occupation as it was when I was your age. Back then, I was so desperate to be “an actor” that I made myself, literally, sick. I fell into deep depressions because I focused my identity so narrowly on career advancement that any misstep or disappointment would send me into what felt, at times, like an irretrievable blackness.

  At some point, you will almost certainly feel let down by the world. On the other hand, you may feel you’ve gotten more than you deserve. I hope you can learn to hold your gratitude tighter than your resentment. It’s hard to remember sometimes (all the time) that the world spins neither for your benefit nor for your detriment. Each of us is here by some unknown grace. We don’t have to understand how or why to feel humbled and appreciative. It’s a gift, that’s all, sent by a secret admirer.