Being a minority isn’t a walk in the park. I’m a white male. I come from Germanic descent; I was born in a Christian setting and I’m heterosexual. However, I’m left-handed.

The numbers are speculative, but a common estimate is that 10 percent of the world uses their left hand dominantly.

Ethnic minorities have made great strides for equality with the rest of the world, as well as women and homosexuals. But the lefties haven’t had the movement these other groups have.

Our oppression isn’t as apparent as others — we can vote and aren’t discriminated from jobs — but the inconvenience is there, and my fellow “Leftillians” can attest to the annoyances in a right-handed man’s world.

The computer labs on campus are just another right wing plot. All of the mice lay to the right of the keyboard. When I was younger and more idealistic, I would forcibly move the mouse to the left side. Alas, I am getting too old for this mouse switcheroo game.

Several classrooms on campus don’t have any left-handed desks. In Hayes Hall, the two most computer science classrooms — 114 and 117 — are chock full of right-handed desks. Not one desk is tailored to our needs.

Olscamp Hall has a little more compassion for us southpaws. A little. Save that of the deskless rooms (rows of ambidextrous tables), classrooms have one row of left-handed desks on the left side of the room. Of course, this would be comparable to sitting in the back of the room, because the back of the room is the cool place to sit and the left row is farthest away from the front desk.

Rosa Parks would be ashamed.

You may be startled that I’m comparing the black civil rights movement to that of left- handed oppression. I don’t think Martin Luther King Jr. would mind too much — in fact, he would be proud. After all, Dr. King was left-handed too.

OK, left-handed people have lived quite luxuriously compared to the history of other oppressed minorities. We’ve never been enslaved. We’ve always been able to vote. We’ve never been discriminated against, and only once in history have we been told we can’t write with our left hand.

In Nazi Germany, if you wrote with your left hand, they would tie it behind your back and make you write the “right” way. Suffice to say, penmanship was a difficult “A” to achieve for us back then.

But Hitler’s dead and we’re not. (Although it should be noted that Hitler was rumored to be left-handed, which makes him a hypocrite. I’m starting to think Hitler wasn’t such a nice guy.)

The history of why the right hand became dominant over the left is rather fascinating, but not exactly something you all want to hear as you rummage through the newspaper five minutes before class.

Just be warned, you right-handers: The left-handers control the country. Because we think with the right hemisphere of our brain, we are more creative, musical, artistic and intelligent. You right-handers think with your left brain, which makes your thinking much more linear — math, science, language and logic. Sadly (for you righties, at least) the “genius” element falls on the right-hemisphere and the left hand.

You can try and silence us with your right-handed desks, computer mice and can openers. Unfortunately, your “right” scheme is all wrong, and we will still succeed in school, log on to the Internet and eat soup, respectively.

All right?

All left.

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