Washington City Paper: Contents for Nov. 12

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being
Say it loud: He's white and he's cowed.

Cover Story

From Random House Webster's Electronic Dictionary and Thesaurus:

white (hwiet, wiet) adj.

1.) of the color of pure snow and of the margins of this page; reflecting nearly all the rays of sunlight or a similar light.

2.) light or comparatively light in color.

3.) (of human beings) marked by slight pigmentation of the skin.

It used to be so easy to be a white guy. Likely as not, you were born that way. Your dad was a white guy, and his dad was, too.

And it was good to be a white guy. In the movies, the white guy always caught the robber, killed the Indians, and got the girl. White guys were on television all the time. A white guy was president of the United States.

A white guy would always be president of the United States.

In school, you read books written by white guys, who told you what white guys thought, felt, and hoped for in life, and also about the fish they caught and the species they endangered. In college, you joined other white guys in a fraternity—or “club,” if you had attained the stratospheric white-guyness of Harvard or Princeton.

Later, those white guys became your law-firm partners, your clients, your fellow board members. You sold stocks to white guys. You lobbied white guys, yachted and drank with white guys, but you never, ever read another white guy's diary. You learned to dress like a white guy: muted, tasteful colors, except on the golf course or Nantucket. Underneath everything, you wore Brooks Brothers boxer shorts.

And you were satisfied, because everyone in the world wanted to be like you.... Continued

Issue of Nov. 12 - 18, 1993

News and Features

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being
Say it loud: He's white and he's cowed.
Cover Story By Bill Gifford
Your Bike or Your Life
In the District, Bikejacking Is Becoming a Vicious Cycle
The City By Wayne Savage
Muddying the Waters
While Government Agencies Bicker, the Cause of Washington's Water Contamination Remains a Mystery
The City By Clara Jeffery
The Foster Freeze Thaws
News Bites By Jack Shafer
Drawing Fire
The Mail By Sean T. O'Neil
Dirty Dollars, Dirty Deeds
The Mail By Meryl Siegal
Killing Them Softly
The Mail
Bunkmate
The Mail By Lori Murray
The Crying Game
The Mail By John Natali
Meet Your Neighbor
The Mail By Jack Everett
Not Just Another Cruising Story
The Mail By Stephen P. Forsberg
Fall Guy
The Mail By Ken McGhee
Bad Samaritan
The Mail By Gail Barnes

Columns

Birds Should Tweet Cheap
Breaking Balls By Eliot Cohen
Pointless
The Washington Bullets need a point guard; the team's oldest player, 30-year-old Michael Adams, mans the post in theory but not in practice.
Bullet Heads By Michael Sperling
WHFS II?
City Desk
The Late Show
City Desk
Kids' Play
City Desk
The Apathy of Defeat
Skins Heads By David McKenna
On the Avenida in Adams Morgan
Streetscape By Mark Jenkins and Bill Rice