I am a father of three very different children who are now grown men. I am proud of them. I am partner to Joan for more than 30 years, a builder of business and spiritual community. I play the flute and love to take photographs of beauty. I even make a pretty good apple pie and I wash the dishes. But when you reduce my identity to, “old white man”, you remove this essence of my life.

Over the years, I have grieved with loss, seen my dreams broken, made colossal mistakes and humbly offered apologies. But when you tell me to check my privilege, which is akin to telling me to shut up and listen, something inside retreats from conversation and involvement.

Identity politics is a race to the bottom as we, “virtue signal”, our goodness without demonstrating it. It is easy to erase human individually with trite and generalized remarks.

Identifying a human being by the groups we belong to, based on race, gender, sexuality and economics, causes tribalism that breeds suspicion. This will be a problem in multicultural societies and fast growing cities. It doesn’t offer a thoughtful future and I believe it distorts the past.

There are many things wrong with our society, and given the fears of futurists, we will have more including a changing economy and a changing environment. We are all biased and of course we need to admit it, as we work together. And…..we need each other, regardless of our skin colour, our sexuality, our gender, or our abilities.
Needing each other, working with each other, helps us minimize our bias, it helps us share resources more thoughtfully. This is hard to do if we are angry, or resentful. It is impossible if we wish to use power for our own gain or employ vengeance instead of justice. Let’s remember, every one of us is responsible for building the common good, otherwise there won’t be a common good.