I think I’ve finally discovered the secret to eternal youth. It’s not expensive moisturizer or drinking lots of water – it’s being a privileged white man. If you’re a white guy, it seems, you get to stay a child a lot longer than everyone else.

Take Mark Zuckerberg for example. He’s a 33-year-old married father of two, who runs an insanely powerful surveillance network. But, amazingly, he is still a kid. It is only this week, when he has had to face Congress and apologize for the small matter of undermining democracy, that he has started to grow up.

Zuckerberg’s transition from boy to man hasn’t escaped the press. Earlier this week CNN published an article celebrating “Mark Zuckerberg’s growing up moment”. It explains: “Zuck may be 33, a billionaire many times over and unquantifiably powerful, but he is still relatively young and cloistered.”

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The article then goes on to remind us that Zuckerberg started Facebook when he was “young and inexperienced”, which means he really can’t be held entirely accountable for the uber-powerful monster he has created. It is only now that he is entering the age where he can properly take adult responsibility.



So, is 33 the age all white men grow up? Or does it vary? I have done some preliminary investigations into the matter:



32: not mature enough to stop yourself from lying to the police

In 2016 swimmer Ryan Lochte was held up at gunpoint at a Brazilian gas station, during the final week of the Rio Olympics. All his belongings were taken; it was very dramatic! Except, as it quickly turned out, it wasn’t.

After police wasted their time investigating they found that Lochte had made the whole thing up. Lochte apologized for what he described as “shenanigans” and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) seemed to agree that lying to the police was nothing more than a childish jape.

“No apologies from [Lochte] or other athletes are needed,” they said in a statement. “We have to understand that these kids came here to have fun. Let’s give these kids a break.” Shame no one gave 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who officers described as “a grown man” before shooting him dead, a break, eh?

39: too young to be responsible for a bit of casual treason

There’s a new Trump scandal every few minutes; it is easy to forget what happened last week, let alone last year. Nevertheless, please cast your mind back to last summer, when it was discovered that Donald Trump Jr had met a Russian lawyer shortly after his father had won the nomination, apparently in order to solicit incriminating information about Hillary Clinton.

Trump dismissed accusations that his 39-year-old son had been colluding with the Russians by saying “He’s a good boy. He’s a good kid. And he had a meeting. Nothing happened.”

40: not old enough to restrain yourself from throwing a tantrum

Last year, Travis Kalanick, the founder and then CEO of Uber, was caught on camera shimmying to Maroon 5 before screaming at his own Uber driver. When the driver had the temerity to mention to his master that it was difficult to make a decent living driving for the company, Kalanick lost it.

“Some people don’t like to take responsibility for their own shit,” he yelled. “They blame everything in their life on somebody else. Good luck!” He then slammed the door like a mature, responsible man who takes responsibility for his own shit. After the video went public Kalanick was forced to apologize, writing on the Uber blog that he’d realized he needed to fundamentally “change as a leader and grow up”.

Kalanick was 40 at that time. While that may seem grown up, in White Man Years it is still incredibly young.

79: too old to know any better

Last year a number of women came forward to say that former president George HW Bush had groped them during photo opportunities. One of those women said she was just 16 when Bush, then 79, squeezed her buttocks as she posed for a photo with him and her mother.

In this instance, a number of people immediately rushed to Bush’s defense to explain that the poor guy was too elderly to know any better. The incident was likewise trivialized as the actions of a “dirty old man”.

What happens with white men, you see, is that they go from being “just a kid” to an “elderly man who didn’t know better” very quickly. Adulthood isn’t as prolonged as it is for the rest of us.

Settling on an age of White Male Responsibility

Having reviewed the findings of my preliminary investigation I can conclude that privileged white men are basically never the right age to take responsibility for their actions. I know that may seem unfair, but it’s just biology.