My paradox: being responsible ... and hating it

Most people see me as responsible. Dependable. I excelled in school. I’ve always met my deadlines, and in the years before I got laid off, I consistently got great performance reviews at work.

But here’s the thing you might not realize: Just because someone is responsible, it doesn’t mean they like responsibility. Actually, it might be just the opposite, as it is with me, and I’d be willing to bet I’m not the only one who feels this way.

It sounds like a paradox, but it’s not.

I’ve never been ambitious. I’ve never gone out of my way to seek more responsibility. I’ve done just the opposite: I meet (and usually beat) deadlines because I wanted to get that crap out of the way, so I could get to the good stuff.

That’s not to say I did a half-assed job. My fear of failure ensured that wouldn’t happen. I just figured out how to do the best possible job in the least amount of time. I worked out a system, fine-tuned it and became successful.

This probably explains why I never got into upper management. I saw all the bullshit that goes on there, and I couldn’t figure out a system to beat that, so I settled for middle management, which suited me just fine.

My own boss

What suited me better, though, was being my own boss. This has happened a couple of times, when I ran the sports department in Tulare and when I worked as managing editor in Cambria. Each time, supervisors thought I was doing a good job and took a hands-off approach. It was only when the corporate ownership or climate changed, and new chefs were brought in to reheat the stew, that I stopped enjoying it.

That meant more oversight, more micromanaging, less freedom. Here’s what it comes down to: When people watch me work, they invariably try to make me adopt their system. Remember junior high? Remember that teacher who deducted points even if you got the right answer, because you didn’t “show your work”? It’s like that.

If I’m allowed to work in peace, folks are usually pleased with the result. But if those folks insist on looking over my shoulder, I won’t meet their standards. Either I will refuse to follow their system, which pisses them off, or I’ll try to do so and won’t be as good at it as they are – even if I practice for a long time, because it’s not my system. It might come naturally to them, but not to me.

Some might think I’m being stubborn and inflexible, but I disagree. I observe the world around me, listen to others’ ideas and improve my system by incorporating what fits. But I’m not about to scrap my entire way of doing things and start from scratch. Nope. Sorry.

I’m my own boss now, and I might seem ambitious. I’ve released had six books released in the past 12 months, and I’m nearly done with No. 7. But that’s not because I’m being responsible or ambitious or any of that. It’s because I enjoy what I’m doing. I like to write, so I do that. I’m not doing it to “get it over with.” It’s the place I was trying to get to all these years.

The layoff

So why did last spring’s layoff hit me so hard? There’s a simple answer to that, and it goes back to how I approach responsibility.

I’ve always saved the best for last. When I was eating Thanksgiving dinner, I’d eat the turkey first, because I liked it the least, then work my way through the mashed potatoes, then the yams, and finish off with my favorite, the stuffing! Oh, and then there was the ultimate reward: pumpkin pie.

I applied the same principle to homework. I came home and got it done so I could turn my attention to what was more important to me. My time. I didn’t crack the books because I “valued a good education.” It was a means to an end. (Don’t get me wrong: I do love learning things. But I like doing so on my terms: Even though I graduated summa cum laude, I’ve learned a lot more through my own observation and independent research than I ever did in school).

Some of this independence doubtless stems from the fact that I’m an only child. Working alone has always been more comfortable for me than collaboration. Hence, my perfectionism: If I could “get it right” on my own, no one would have any excuse to throw their meddling monkey wrenches into my system.

Delayed gratification

But when I got laid off, however, that was one huge monkey wrench. My system had been set up to work until I was 65 (or older) and then enjoy the fruits of my labor. When I was laid off, I faced with the prospect of looking for a job in a moribund industry, or retraining myself for an entirely different field. Creating a new system from scratch.

I applied for a few jobs, didn’t get anywhere, and decided maybe that was for the best.

I don’t need a conventional job, so why should I go out of my way to pursue one? Certainly not because I’m craving responsibility. Fortunately, I had the ability to retire early and do what I always wanted to do: write books.

That was my original plan, anyway. I would earn a steady paycheck as a journalist while working as an author on the side.

But then I got lazy. I enjoyed journalism more than I thought I would and developed a system that worked, at least for 32 years. During that time, I’d put in an eight- or 10- or 12-hour day, after which I didn’t have much energy left to write for myself. I worked on precisely one book, which took me 10 years to finish, and that was it. (The result was my two-volume opus on the development of Western religion, “The Phoenix Principle.”)

Other than that, I put off my dream of becoming an author until the journalism industry started tanking and I got laid off the first time. I caught on with another newspaper a year later, and that gig lasted six more years before I got laid off again. Both times, I lost my job before I was ready: before my plan said I should.

But both times it gave me the opportunity to start writing more, so I did.

Now, I don’t have any excuse to delay my dream. I don’t have anyone looking over my shoulder. I’m not going to get laid off again, and the sky’s the limit. So maybe, just maybe, I’m right where I always wanted to end up: Free of responsibility but working like hell ... because I like it.

Funny how things work out sometimes.

Moral of the story: Enjoy that pumpkin pie while you can. If you’re diagnosed with diabetes, it won’t be on the table at all.

I deal with anxiety and depression, but not in the way you might think

I’m not a psychologist. I don’t even play one on TV. But I have had experience with both anxiety and depression, and I wanted to share some of those experiences so my readers can understand what it’s like – at least for me. It may be different for others, but if this helps increase understanding and strikes a chord with anyone, it will have been worth it.

Anxiety and depression can go together, or not. Either one be triggered by a specific event, but it’s important to realize that they don’t have to be. There may be no specific external cause at all. It may just have to do with being physically tired, or it may be a response to an accumulation of things that have happened over months or years or even decades.

I don’t always know why I start hyperventilating and my heart starts racing when I lie down to take a nap – or why I don’t. I can’t always pinpoint why I’m feeling unmotivated or down.

If there is a trigger, it can be helpful to identify and remove it. But if there isn’t one, going around and around in your own head – or in conversation with someone else – can only heighten the feeling. At least, that’s how it feels to me, because I’ve always been a highly solution-driven person. I want to figure things out and move on. I want to control my own destiny. I don’t like to feel “stuck.”

Yet for 15 years, even when I had a traditional job, I was spending more money than I was taking in, either because of expenses beyond my control or because I worked in an area where the cost of living outpaced my income. Usually both.

Then my favorite cat died, and I was “stuck” dealing with the grief of that. A few months later, I was stuck dealing with the death of my father, the only living blood member of my immediate family. Not too long after that, I lost the job that was providing me with not enough money to live on in the first place. The same company had laid me off once before. In neither case did it have anything to do with my job performance, which had earned me a number of raises and promotions. But that didn’t matter. And it left me feeling even more “stuck.”

Cause and effect

In fact, the feeling of being “stuck” is one of my biggest phobias: specifically, claustrophobia and a fear of being physically suffocated. I describe my experience of anxiety as being stuck in overdrive with the parking brake on. This feeling can be exhausting, especially if it lasts for a long time, and that feeling of exhaustion can morph into depression pretty easily. In fact, I’d go so far as to say my feeling of depression is emotional exhaustion.  

When I was in middle school, like a lot of kids, I felt alienated and was the target of teasing and bullying. I retreated into a shell of introversion until I figured out that, lo and behold, there was a way out: school. I realized that, because I was pretty smart, I could parlay that into classroom success. It was simple cause and effect. If I learned the material and figured out what the teacher wanted, I could provide it and (voila!) I could ace the class.

This came very easily to me. After nearly flunking out during my freshman year of high school, I got mostly A’s and B’s as a sophomore. By the time I hit my senior year, I was a straight-A student, and I kept right on going into college, graduating summa cum laude. This might seem like a good thing, and in many respects, it was. But it also created an unrealistic expectation: If I did the work and performed well, I would be rewarded.

Reality check: As often as not, it doesn’t always work that way. A lot of things are subjective, and a lot of others are simply beyond your control. I’ve never been fired for cause, but I have lost two jobs despite solid-to-glowing reviews because of market forces and bad timing. This might not seem like a big deal. People get laid off every day. They figure it out.

But picture yourself as a depressed, bullied teenager who discovered his only ticket out of that lonely place was success. Now imagine that, in middle age, that ticket is ripped to shreds in front of his face, not once, but twice. Do you think that person might feel just a little like that ostracized, ridiculed teen all over again?

Maybe school wasn’t your ticket. Maybe you were good at something else: sports, music, acting. It doesn’t matter what it was. It gave you a sense of self-worth, a feeling that the jerks who’d belittled you in sixth grade about your acne or your hair or anything else they could find to poke fun at – that they’d been wrong. That you were worth something after all.

But you learned to rely on it and then, one day, the rug was pulled out from under you. Suddenly, people either started pulling away from you or tried to encourage you by saying they love you “for who you are” rather than what you can do. Some of them are probably sincere. Still, that doesn’t provide the kind of security you’re seeking. It can even be confusing because you’ve gone so “all in” on the cause-and-effect model that anything else feels phony ... even if it isn’t.

The model falls apart

For years, I received a regular paycheck for what I wrote. I felt valued, and the paycheck was proof of that. I felt like I was, to some degree, in control of my own destiny. Now, I don’t. Now, when I write, I never know what’s going to happen. Some people might buy my book, a lot of people won’t, and there’s no way of knowing whether the results are based on something I’ve done or sheer, blind luck (good or bad).

I’ve written a number of books, each of which involves months of work, but I hate sending out query letters and applying for jobs, even though I could do several of those in a day.

Here’s why: I know I can write a book. I can find my way to the end of the story and feel good about having told it – about having accomplished something. That cause-and-effect relationship is intact. But every time I send out a query letter, there’s a very good possibility I’ll be rejected. My fear of failure isn’t just an ego thing. It’s a feeling of having wasted my time; of being stuck. It’s also further confirmation that my old cause-and-effect model doesn’t seem to work. People can try to reassure me that it’s all “part of a process,” not an end in itself ... and that might make sense to me rationally, but my emotions don’t give a damn.

One of two things will happen:

“Dammit, I’m going to make this happen, come hell or high water!” or

“This is never going to happen. Why should I bother?”

I don’t know how many times one side of my brain has told me, “Persistence pays off!” while the other side is reminding me of that “the definition of insanity is (supposedly) doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.” I know it’s not exactly the same thing if I’m sending out requests to different people, but it feels that way – especially if the results are the same.

There’s a myth that people who experience anxiety and depression can’t accomplish anything. That’s not true. It may be true for some, but it’s a broad-brush statement that doesn’t fit with everyone. For me, staying busy can be an expression of my anxiety and a coping mechanism to keep myself from falling too deep into depression.

Because I’m afraid of being stuck, or paralyzed, that fear keeps me busy. But when that busyness fails to produce much in the way of concrete results (income, book sales, etc.), I start to feel anxious – like I’m stuck in overdrive with the parking brake on. I want to get somewhere, but I can’t, so I rev the engine even harder and wear myself out in the process.

Then I crash and, wouldn’t you know it, I’m stuck in the state of depression I was trying to avoid in the first place. And here’s what makes it even worse: The more often it happens, the more difficult it is, each time, to claw your way out of it. Because each repeated “failure” reinforces the idea that you’re no good, that things will never get any better, and that being “stuck” is just a fact of life you’re going to have to deal with for the rest of your days.

I’m not writing any of this in search of advice on one hand or pity on the other. Please don’t tell me to “get over it” or “buck up” or “shrug it off.” And please don’t suggest that I “get professional help,” either. I’m not saying that’s a bad idea, but it’s something people suggest as a stock answer because they feel like they need to provide some kind of answer and can’t think of anything else to say. Trust me: A person who’s dealing with depression or anxiety has already thought of it – and decided to pursue it or not – long before you mentioned it.

Others may fight depression and anxiety for entirely different reasons than those I’ve mentioned here, but I suspect at least some of you reading this know where I’m coming from. Maybe, like me, you’re not interested in pity or advice; maybe you just want people to understand, even if they can’t relate.

I know that’s all I’m asking.

What it's like to be a perfectionist

What does it mean to be a perfectionist?

It means second-guessing yourself. Continually.

It means procrastinating for fear that you’ll “get it wrong” and (worse) that someone might see you get it wrong. It means criticisms are evidence you’ve already gotten it wrong and that someone has seen it. It means that, because of this, you hate people looking over your shoulder or viewing your work until you’re sure it’s “done” or “ready.” Sometimes, it never is.

Perfectionism makes you snap at people when they interrupt you during a task, because you need to focus to ensure you don’t make a mistake. One that people might see; one that will give them an excuse to ridicule you.

It means being an introvert because you don’t trust others. But you don’t trust yourself, either.

It means thinking before you speak. And thinking. And thinking. Until your thoughts tie themselves up in knots that wrap themselves around your tongue.

It hinders decision-making and can leave you paralyzed.

It means expecting the worst because, at least that way, you won’t be disappointed.

It’s believing you’ll never be able to live up to your parents’ or peers’ or employer’s or partner’s perceived expectations of you, and it means adopting those expectations as your own.

It’s a reaction to believing you’re unlovable. Inherently so. But you can’t control that, so the only remedy is to control what you can by earning people’s respect and substituting it for the love you’ve convinced yourself is unattainable.

Yes, it’s controlling. It’s a desperate attempt to control a world that seems chaotic, hostile and overwhelming, but mostly it’s an attempt to control the one thing you think you can (or should be able to) control: yourself. Because of this, it controls you, and you hate that.

It means seeing everything as your fault because, at least that way, you can control it by “doing better the next time.”

It means you seek approval. But you shun it when it’s offered for things you don’t think you deserve ... and sulk when you don’t receive it after working very hard on something you’re very proud to have accomplished.

It means having a very, very hard time with the reality that life isn’t fair, because it feels like fairness is the only thing standing between you and despair.

It means taking breakups hard and layoffs even harder. At least you can rationalize breakups because they’re based on love, not respect. Love is unpredictable. Respect isn’t supposed to be. If you do a good job, you’re supposed to be rewarded. When it doesn’t work out that way, you feel cast adrift, deprived of the life raft you’ve been clinging to: your hard work and ability.

When you lose a job, you blame yourself for taking that job in the first place, because (of course) you should have known better.

It means Woudla, Coulda, Shoulda and What If are couch surfing on your medial temporal lobe. Regret and foreboding team up in an unending tag-team match against your reason and your serenity.

You feel the need to look in the rear-view mirror, peer under the hood and keep your eyes on the road, all at the same time. You have to be on top of everything. Otherwise, the unthinkable will happen. You’ll fail. And people will see it. And they’ll never let you live it down.

It means sleepless nights lost to anxiety and fitful sleep haunted by nightmares.

It means high blood pressure and low self-esteem.

It means you’re constantly asking yourself, “What have you done for me lately?”

It means playing the diplomat and getting slammed from both sides.

It means avoiding conflict and trying to please everyone.

It means thinking you’re never good enough.

It means loving spellcheck for saving your ass and hating it for making you look the fool.

It means always having to say you’re sorry: repeatedly apologizing for things that are your fault, and for things that aren’t.

Failure is the enemy. When you fail, you beat yourself up for it publicly in the hope that self-castigation will keep your critics at bay. But it doesn’t. They revile and ridicule you anyway, so you get beaten up twice over.

It’s being governed by worry and a continual readiness to shift into fight-or-flight mode ... if you don’t live there already. It’s a gateway to defensiveness, cynicism and, if you’re not careful, superstition and paranoia. But because you are careful — to a fault — you’re less likely to get there. At least that’s something.

It means you seldom stop to smell the roses, and you miss out on a lot of life’s beauty. That’s a mistake, too, and you beat yourself up over that. Another regret.

That’s what it means to be a perfectionist. At least part of it. Of course, this list isn't perfect ...

Spanking violates everything we say we believe in

Why is hitting someone OK?

I'm not talking about self-defense; I'm talking about taking your own initiative to hit someone who isn't threatening you.

That would be bad enough. But what about hitting someone who can't fight back?

Our society condemns "kicking people when their down." Football players are penalized for late hits. Boxers can lose points for hitting after the belt, and shooting someone in the back is considered the coward's way.

But somehow these rules don't apply to the most defenseless among us, those least capable of fighting back: young children. Somehow, spanking a child is viewed not only as appropriate, but necessary by a majority of Americans. It's rationalized as a "teaching tool" or a "deterrent" or a way to impose social norms on kids who don't know any better.

"Spare the rod, spoil the child," the saying goes.

LESSONS LEARNED

But how is that different than "teaching someone a lesson"? That's what spanking is supposed to do, right? Teach the child a lesson?

First point: It doesn't work. A 2016 study by professors from the universities of Texas and Michigan found that the more children are spanked, the more apt they are to defy their parents. They're also more likely to exhibit anti-social behaviors and to develop mental health and cognitive problems. So, not only does spanking fail to achieve its supposed goal, it makes the problem worse. And not just for the kids, because ...

Second point: It doesn't stop there. Now, a new study has found that children who are spanked are more likely to engage in dating violence. The kids who are spanked aren't the only victims; they're more likely to victimize others, too.

Apparently, they are learning a lesson ... just the wrong one. They're learning it's appropriate, even desirable, to inflict physical pain upon people when they're at their most vulnerable.

Children can't fight back. They trust their parents implicitly, and spanking breaks that trust. It creates a conundrum of cognitive dissonance: "This person loves me, but he's hurting me." There are two ways to resolve this. Either the child can defy the parents (as the 2016 study found is more likely to occur among those who are spanked) or that child can learn to equate corporal punishment with love.

DATING ABUSE

It should come as no surprise that spanking should be predictive of physical abuse in dating relationships, which also involve high levels of trust and vulnerability. If you agree to go out on a date with someone, you presumably like them (at least a little), and you put yourself in a position of being vulnerable, both emotionally and in terms of physical proximity. 

The link to future sexual abuse in the dating study should hardly be surprising: Spanking children not only involves hitting the most vulnerable people among us, it entails hitting them in one of their most vulnerable areas (the buttocks): an area that, in our society, remains covered in public because of its sexual associations.

If the person you're dating thinks it's appropriate, or even an expression of love, to hit you, trust and vulnerability go out the window. Not to mention that the person has just engaged in a criminal act (assault) according to our social norms.

But those same social norms tell us it's fine to spank a child. Parents can't be prosecuted for it, and they don't even have to endure much (if any) societal disapproval for it. A United Nations committee calls the practice "invariably degrading," and 53 countries ban corporal punishment outright, but the United States isn't one of them.

Indeed, nearly three-quarters of the U.S. population  agrees or strongly agrees "that it is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard spanking."

“The evidence against spanking is one of the most consistent findings in the field of psychology.”

— Elizabeth T. Gershoff, associate professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas at Austin

The upshot: We tell our kids not to "resort to violence" and urge them to solve problems rationally, while at the same time resorting to violence ourselves ... and violence that's anything but rational, since it doesn't work.

I find this incomprehensible. When it comes to how we, as adults, treat other adults, we condemn "throwing the first punch" and justify physical violence only in self-defense. We don't shoot people in the back. We don't pile on after the whistle blows or the bell rings. We observe the boundaries that apply across society ... except, inexplicably, to the most vulnerable among us, our children.

Spanking doesn't work. It makes the problem worse. It's predictive of adult violence. But most of all, it's wrong.

It's wrong to hit someone without provocation, to inflict pain, and it's even more egregiously wrong if that person is defenseless. That's what we're supposed to believe as a society.

So why the hell do we keep doing it to our kids?

Calling people "useless" isn't a useful way to discuss race

I’m not deplorable, but I guess I’m useless.

Aren’t I? Of course not.

Neither are you, and I don’t care about your skin, your political affiliation, what country you’re from, or what language you speak. You’re worthwhile. With a few notable exceptions (I’m thinking mass murderers, child molesters, serial abusers, people who torture animals), we all are. Flawed? Of course. Misunderstood? All too often. Selfish? Well, yeah, at times. But useless?

Who says?

Damon Young does, in the title of his article “The Most Useless Types of White People, Ranked.”

It’s a list.

Provocative headlines and the list format have been touted as ways to increase site visits (e.g., clicks), and the VSB site where Young is editor-in-chief does accept advertising. So, if I were a cynic, I could excuse the blatantly provocative headline as a ploy to increase site visits and, therefore, ad revenues. But that doesn’t explain the combative nature of the content itself.

Not only does Young consider certain types of white people useless, he ranks some as more useless than other. Forget the fact that this makes no sense (either something is useless or it’s not – if it has some use, any use at all, it’s not, by definition, useless). The real problem is that demeaning certain “types” of people belonging to a particular race is offensive. Pretend you’re playing Mad Libs. Just substitute any other group label for the term “white” in the headline, and you’ll see what I mean. Try Latino, Asian, Irish, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, obese people, redheads … whatever.

No matter what term you use, this headline is offensive.

Then there’s the content. Young isn’t listing 10 side-effects of a particular drug or 10 vegetable dishes that go well with roast beef. He’s put together a list of 10 insults, some of which he apparently means to be funny. They’re not.

This will really facilitate dialogue between people of different races. Right.

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to respond to Young's article on each of its 10 points. What follows are his list of 10 “useless” types of white people (in italics) and my response to his comments on each:

10. The “I would have voted for Obama again” guy, which, since a three-term presidency is literally not possible right now, is like saying, “I totally would have killed a velociraptor, dude. Totally.”

So, expressing a willingness to vote for Barack Obama for a third term if given the chance makes someone “useless.” Maybe it would have been more useful to vote for Trump? Or equivocate on Charlottesville? Or defend Confederate monuments? But useless is useless, so I suppose all these things are equal, right? Second point: Expressing a desire to do something that’s beyond your power does not make you useless. More likely, it means you care, which is a lot better than apathy.

9. The “Why can’t we just forget about our differences and come together?” guy, who’s usually the exact-same guy as the “I don’t see color” guy and the “Why does everything have to be about race?” guy and the “I’ll have a Coke Zero, please” guy.

Forget about our differences? Nah. That wouldn’t be any fun. It would make us all a bunch of clones (kind of like Rush Limbaugh’s radio listeners) and render life ridiculously dull. I’m not a clone, which is kind of the point, because not all people listed here are useless. They’re all different, and it would be nice for Mr. Young to acknowledge as much rather than trying to categorize people based on overly simplistic click-bait lists.

Coming together? Seems to me that would be a good thing. This country is so badly fractured that the longer we take to find common ground, the harder it will be to heal. Finding common ground does not mean, “You do things my way and pretend to like it, or you’re fired” (the Trump approach). It means finding things people of different backgrounds can honestly agree on and building something together from there. Finding commonality also doesn’t mean ignoring diversity. But, on the other hand, affirming diversity doesn’t entail calling people useless.

(I'm not sure what Mr. Young has against Coke Zero, but I'm a Diet Pepsi drinker myself, so I guess I don't fit in this category.)

8. The “White people are so terrible. I hate us” guy.

I’m white. I’m not proud of it. I’m not ashamed of it. It doesn’t make my words any more or less credible. Hating people based on skin color is ignorant and destructive. So is labeling people you don’t even know as “useless.”

7. The “Let me write this 2,500-word column attempting to explain and empathize with racist white Trump voters without using the word ‘racist’ once in my 2,500 words” guy.

So, now it’s “useless” to try to explain people’s actions, too? Think about the most despicable person you know, the person who poses the biggest threat to you and your family. Don’t you want to understand what makes that guy tick? Wouldn’t it help you defend yourself if he decides to attack you? The thing is, I can’t imagine any of the people who fall into Young’s categories would consider themselves his sworn enemy. What’s so wrong about trying to understand each other? Point 2: I can’t empathize with white racist Trump voters. I don’t want to. But explaining someone’s actions and supporting them are two different things: like velociraptors and Coke Zero.

6. Bernie Sanders.

Putting universal health care in the spotlight is a bad thing? I suppose it is – to the insurance providers and Republicans who’ve spoken out most forcefully against it. I could always be wrong, but I’m assuming Mr. Young doesn’t fit into either of these categories. How about working toward a more affordable educational system? Is that bad? Since Mr. Young considers Sanders “useless,” I suppose he must think so. But congratulations, Mr. Young, you’re not alone in thinking these goals are “useless.” So does that Trump fellow you mentioned.

5. The “I just really enjoy making sex things with black people, and I hate when conversations about race complicate those things because I just want to make sex things!” guy.

I find it hard to believe that someone who would “just want to make sex things” with black people is even open to having an in-depth conversation about race, culture or human rights. Worse, the hypothetical person being quoted here is objectifying people. Remove the word “black” from Young’s first sentence, and you’ll get the equally offensive “I just really enjoy making sex things with people.” Note: White guys don’t have any kind of monopoly on this, and it’s offensive whoever does it.

4. The “Race issues are really just class issues” guy.

They’re not “just” class issues, but economics have been used as an excuse of establishing a race-based class system, and race has been used as an excuse to perpetuate that system. You can have racism without economic issues, and there are economic issues that have nothing to do with race. But narrowing the wealth gap for all Americans would benefit minority communities, just as ending ingrained racism would help address artificial class issues. Race issues obviously aren’t “just” class issues, but to suggest that race and class issues are entirely separate in this country would be even more inaccurate. I don’t think that’s what Young’s suggesting. At least, I hope not.

3. The “I want to have debates with you about racism because, to me, it’s a fun and lively and energizing thought exercise” guy.

Lively? Energizing? Not in the current climate. We’ve separated into camps, with absolutist true-believers/litmus-testers and rigid positions on both sides. Facts don’t matter; opinions and feelings are considered more important (which explains why Trump voters continue to support him). We use labels to ridicule and dismiss those who challenge or disagree with our assumptions, even to the slightest degree – labels such as, gosh, I don’t know, “useless.” For the record, I have no interest in “debating” Mr. Young. I’m simply stating my opinions – just as he stated his on his blog.

2. The “Let me unload this 18-minute-long tome on my feelings on race and racism and savory grits on you right now even though you’re just standing in line at Potbelly and you clearly just want to get a quick and cheap sandwich and not be my personal Pinterest board of white guilt” guy.

If someone invades your personal space while you’re standing in line, minding your own business, you have every right to tell the person to get lost, whether he’s going on about “white guilt,” mass shootings, the Golden State Warriors or the price of tea in China. Again, this isn’t a “white guy” problem, it’s a rudeness problem.

1. The “I did something nice for black people, like, 37 years ago, and I’m going to continue to bank on that one thing like there’s a ‘Did something nice for black people’ craps table and I already cashed out” guy.

Sure, it can be tedious to hear someone going on and on about having done “something nice” like it’s a badge of honor. But that’s still better than doing something mean. And it doesn’t make the person “useless.” As with No. 2, you don’t have to listen.

You don’t have to read this, either, Mr. Young. But if you do happen to come upon this response while surfing the Internet, I’d like you to know one thing: People aren’t useless just because they fit into one of your 10 categories. Maybe they are to you, but they might say the same thing about your list. And what does any of this accomplish? Further alienation, misunderstanding and animosity? So much fun.

People aren’t useless, and they don’t like being used, either, certainly not as straw men for top 10 lists compiled by people they’ve never met. And certainly not as pawns in culture wars where everyone ends up losing.

Overcoming prejudice is child's play; we adults can do it, too

I’m going to tell you a short personal story, one that my parents told me because I was too young to remember it – even though I was one of the central characters. Both my parents are gone now, and I wanted to preserve this story, not because it says anything about me, but because it says something about how we learn to hate and fear those who are different ... or not, if we've got good role models. 

When I was 3 years old, my father got a one-year job as a visiting professor of American politics in Sydney, Australia. On our way there, we stopped at a South Pacific island and were greeted by a bellhop at the hotel. He was a tall, bearded man with dark skin and a friendly smile. He was probably in his twenties or thirties.

I know this because I’ve seen a picture of him. In the photo, which is probably stored away in the attic somewhere, I'm standing next to the man, holding his hand. Dad enjoyed taking photos (a favored pastime he handed down to me), and he liked to show this one as part of his living room slide shows long before the era of PowerPoint and YouTube.

Anyway, the story, as my dad told it, went something like this:

We were checking into this hotel, and the aforementioned gentlemen asked to help us with our bags. I stared up at him and pointed, then turned to my parents and said, “He’s different.”

Mom and Dad were aghast. They thought sure I’d noticed the man’s dark skin and had made the kind of rude remark that children who “don’t know any better” tend to make.

But the next words out of my mouth immediately put everyone at ease: “He’s got hair on his face.”

What if I had remarked about the color of his skin? Is there really anything wrong with acknowledging our differences? I don’t think so … as long as we also acknowledge our common humanity.

Children who “don’t know any better” are too often taught to “know worse” by adults who use differences as an excuse to demean people who aren’t like them.

I’m thankful my parents weren’t like that.

A funny postscript to this story: My dad, the following year, grew a beard of his own. I later followed suit, not to be like dad, but the opposite – to be different. At 17, most other guys in my high school didn’t have one, and I liked the idea of having my own identity.

Identity is important. So is respect. I may not have known that yet when I was 3 years old, but my parents taught me that over the years.

We can celebrate our differences and our commonality at the same time. It isn't hard. A child can do it.

Author's note: Dad’s birthday is coming up this month, and it will be the first year I won’t be able to celebrate it with him. You’re still making a difference, Dad, even if you’re no longer here to see it.