Dear White males,

I’m one of you. I have been my whole life, checking “White,” “Caucasian,” or “non-Hispanic” on surveys and applications. While my skin tone isn’t exactly white, a farmer tan hides some serious paleness.

Face it, being one of us is a pretty good deal. Mostly it’s White males who are presidents, CEO’s, executives, and all but two baseball managers. White males in America are among the most fortunate people who’ve lived on this planet, except for some kings and queens and very rich. A generally good economy, security, health, education, housing have all been available to us if we were willing to work and not be too stupid.

Despite all that, there is a group of us that is still miserable. Aggrieved White Males (AWMs) are getting lots of attention. AWMs like attention. That makes them different from the rest of us. Typically, us guys don’t like much attention.

AWMs worry someone is getting a better deal at their expense and taking advantage of them. Women, the government, non-whites, immigrants, the list is endless. AWMs feel they are threatened by all these groups. They’re certain there is a great conspiracy to replace them. They lay awake at night worrying they will be canceled the next day.

Of course, the absurd thing is that there has been no more advantaged group in history than White American males. If we’d have lived in any other place or any other time on Earth, we wouldn’t have had it so good. If we were any other skin color, we would have lower income and poorer health. That’s just statistically true. If we were another gender, we’d be paid less. Again, statistics.

America works pretty well. Many people would gladly trade places with us. We have schools to educate us, roads to get us where we want to go, police to protect us. A problem for AWMs is that these things are paid for by taxes. AVMs hate taxes. They dread the thought that a young single Hispanic mother might be getting a dollar more food assistance than is allowed. Ironically, AVMs my age are glad to take their Social Security and Medicare, even though they’ll get more than they ever put in.

I was sent down this path when a friend who is an AWM forwarded me a screen shot message. It claimed that the names of White perpetrators of crimes are released sooner than the names of Black perpetrators. “This practice seems racist.”

I cringed. To begin with, I’m not sure it’s true. Perhaps there is a delay in releasing names of certain types of bad guys, but it hardly seems significant. Then to decide Blacks’ names are withheld while Whites’ names are released for some nefarious reason seems to be looking under a rock.

The fellow who sent that is, not surprisingly, a Donald Trump voter. That’s not a coincidence. Trump has made aggrievement into an artform. He is a cauldron of non-stop victimhood. There are so many threats to his white maleness that he can hardly get through them all in one rally. When faced with so many villains, he does the logical thing: he mocks and ridicules them. The worst get an insulting nickname. That’ll show them.

Within the group of AWMs, there are subsets. One is Aggrieved White Male farmers.

In 2021 the USDA offered a small amount of funding targeted to debt relief for Black farmers. This was in response to multiple lawsuits that proved discrimination against Black farmers going back decades.

Immediately, a group of White farmers went to court to challenge that program, claiming it was discriminatory against them. I suppose it is discriminatory if you ignore 400 years of history. Remember, when our ancestors were settling on homesteads backed by the U.S. government, Black people were working on farms for free.

When the Civil War ended, there was a plan for freed slaves to receive “forty acres and a mule.” The idea was to give them a chance to share in the American dream. That lasted about as long as it took the Union soldiers to leave the South. Jim Crow laws were slapped into place to keep Black people suppressed, landless, and poor. Tenant farming and sharecropping became close approximations to slavery.

Spend 5 minutes googling and you can find all sorts of evidence that Black farmers have been discriminated against by every public and private means possible. A small amount of funding to counteract that legacy is reasonable.

AWM farmers were quick to protest. Ironically, the White farmers suing the USDA have been the beneficiaries of a large amount of government largesse in recent years. Between direct payments, subsidies for crop insurance, and generous “Trump payments,” farmers have benefited handsomely from you taxpayers.

For these Aggrieved White Male Farmers to claim harm is particularly laughable. But like all AWMs, introspection is not a strong suit.

Another subgroup of AWMs is Aggrieved White Male Christians. There is religious persecution in the world, and in many places, Christians are truly persecuted. But to claim that our religious liberties are being trod on in this country? If you want persecution, try living in Gaza for a day.

AWMs point to decline in church attendance, and they want to blame someone. Society, culture, liberals, Hollywood, and of course the government. When it comes to blaming something for their misery, “government” is the gift that keeps on giving.

I am a Christian. Here’s a crazy idea. How about if we model lives of love and service?

What if we Christians were the kindest and most decent people there were?

What if we took seriously Jesus’ admonition to love others as ourselves?

When their families are gathered for Easter, AWMs will be talking about the immigrant hordes threatening to pollute our gene pool. Maybe the rest of us White males can show empathy toward the majority of those at our border who are escaping awful situations and trying to make a better life for their families.

When it comes to how angry and divided our nation has become, I’d like to think we white males could work to make things better. To begin, maybe we can convince our aggrieved brothers to take a chill.

— Randy Krzmarzick farms on the home place west of Sleepy Eye, where he lives with his wife, Pam.