I was working with a new group of junior high students last week and one of the other teachers said that one of the students would never own up to having done anything wrong. So he can’t actually learn any lessons from his mistakes. No surprise, but the student is a white male.

It is normal for adolescents to walk around in a fog about the impacts of their words and actions. We as teachers are always calling their attention to lost items or poor choices of words. That is “their work.” They need a place and a community that holds them accountable in ways that they learn how to be engaged and aware adults. Otherwise they are like toddlers in grown bodies.

I had a conversation with the other teacher and we talked about how when a young person exhibits strict binary thinking, then any of their behaviors that are outside of their side of the binary are invisible to them. For instance is there is a boy who believes that boys are a certain way and girls are a certain way, that boy will be clueless about any actions of their own that are girly.

This is part of the process of becoming an adult. You move beyond childish binary thinking. If your identities do not conform to the dominant forms of the binary, then you have to grow up faster because of self-preservation. You have to be able to read the room.

But if your primary identities conform to the dominant versions then your cluelessness is never challenged. The longer your cluelessness goes unchallenged the more difficult it is to accept alternate viewpoints.

This is reinforced on children. Some of the harshest childhoods are found among owning class white males. They may grow up under economic privilege but there is a series of lies they need to believe about themselves and the world in order justify that privilege. In order to get them to believe those lies about themselves they need to stifle any parts of themselves that don’t fit the molds.

I’m not justifying the guy you are talking about, just saying that he probably wasn’t held accountable as a child and never grew up into a functional adult (at least regarding race). And that many white men, myself included, grew up having big blind spots around race and gender.