Godheval

This is me, sighing.

Maybe this is another case of me being “hypersensitive“, but so be it. If you’re a white person or a particularly assimilated person of color, then you’ll probably think this is a rather harmless video.

You may think it’s funny. Hilarious, even.

If you’re a person of color with even an iota of militancy, or hell, if you’re me then this commercial probably makes you cringe, or just plain annoys you.

But perhaps you’re not entirely sure why. So I’ll tell you why it irritates me, and maybe my explanation will make something click for you.

First of all, it’s cultural appropriation.  Which means that an element of a given culture is taken and used outside of its intended context – worse yet, in blatant opposition to the intended context.

From Wikipedia:

Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. It describes acculturation or assimilation, but can imply a negative view towards acculturation from a minority culture by a dominant culture. It can include the introduction of forms of dress or personal adornment, music and art, religion, language, or social behavior. These elements, once removed from their indigenous cultural contexts, may take on meanings that are significantly divergent from, or merely less nuanced than, those they originally held.

Hip-hop, and rap in particular, by no measure of historical revisionism or denial of their contributions, is undoubtedly an African-American cultural product.

This, however, does not mean that it belongs exclusively to African-Americans, or that no one else can use it.  The rule, though, is that it should be used in the spirit in which it was intended.  That is, as an expression of positivity, uplift, counter-establishment, or justified anger towards historic and lasting inequality and/or injustice.

When a person of color dares to point out an instance of racism, or even more pointedly, accuse someone of being racist, the response from white people or their apologists is often that PoCs are being “hypersensitive”.

Ordinarily I am very critical of the use of this word, but today it occurred to me that perhaps I am arguing the wrong point.

An analogy:

If I slash your arm, then hit the wound with a bat, then dropkick you in that same place with spiked boots, your arm would be a mite “sensitive”, would it not?  Sure.  Then some time passes, and the wound heals over somewhat, but you still have a bruise and/or scar.

Because my savage assault on your arm was “in the past”, would that make it okay for me to poke you – even ever so gently – right in your fucking wound?  Or would that make me a major asshole?  And who is wrong in this situation, you for pointing out that “Hey, that still hurts!” or me, for being an insensitive asshole?

Let’s say I bumped into your sore arm by mistake.  What would be the right thing to do in that situation?  To apologize or to criticize you for being too sensitive?

It’s not that the racism-apologist is incorrect in referring to the person of color as hypersensitive.  Certainly we may be, but we are justified in being such, because old wounds – systemic institutional wounds – are slow to heal.  And someone being a racist asshole – even if only subtly, “by accident”, or “poking fun” – is still going to hurt.

So maybe, instead of stating the obvious, that people of color are “hypersensitive” to racism, white people and their apologists should be more careful not to be assholes.

The weight of knowledge, of “consciousness”, is heavy. I can neither look at nor listen to anything without a critical eye anymore, without it being immediately contextualized within my understanding of race, power, politics, and other such heavy subjects.

I was watching the 12th grade students at my internship put on their senior projects – videos that provided a snapshot into their lives – montages of baby pictures, friend testimonials, other things that they felt would put who they were into context for their viewers. And as I watched, there was the little spark of cynicism, the voice that said “must be nice”.  Must be nice, to be privileged to a life unburdened by any internal or external discussion about matters such as race or power, any personal struggle notwithstanding.  The last part of that statement acknowledges that people of all colors and creeds experience struggle, but white privilege liberates white people from the additional burden of race, and all the meaning that goes along with it.

But as I watched these videos I did not begrudge these children their experiences, their ability to live without certain burdens.  And I realized that I do not begrudge white people their privilege, either.  Like when I watch any of the countless “neutral” or “normative” movies featuring the conflicts of white protagonists, where race is simply not an issue, I am able to be right there with them through the highs and the lows, the struggles and the victories.  But those movies, like the insular world in which white people are able to live, are fiction.  At least they do not reflect my reality, or the reality for other people of color in the United States.

I would also say that they do not reflect white people’s own reality, that they choose to ignore.  And so it is not privilege itself that I begrudge white people, but the failure to acknowledge privilege as such.  It is true that sometimes I experience a bitterness towards white people’s ability to sit within their bubbles and be oblivious to a larger reality.  But nothing is more infuriating then when they extend themselves outside of the bubble – but still from within the bubble – to offer their commentary or engage in any sort of activism, including liberal advocacy for people of color on one end of the spectrum and overt demonstrations of racism on the other.

In other words, if they – white people – are going to live within the bubble, then they should tuck in their arms and legs and detach themselves entirely from the greater reality, and not pretend to understand a single thing about the world outside.  They should not argue with people of color over their perceptions, they should not deny any grievances.  If they are going to stick their fingers in their ears, then they should also stick socks in their mouths. They should respectfully decline any investment in the conversation and retreat to the comfortable confines of the bubble.

The alternative, of course, is to come full-bodied outside the bubble and to embrace, however difficult, the full reality of race and power as it applies to them, and to their relationships with people of color.

Whiteness is a virus – both physical and memetic.  Physical through the human medium, manifest in conquest, rape, plunder, mass murder, subjugation, and enslavement.

Memetic in that it has convinced people of diverse backgrounds and interests to shed their individuality, their cultures, their morals, for the promise of something better – a chance to be a member of the ruling class.

It spread to the Irish in America and manifested in the antagonistic relationship between the police and just about every non-white ethnic minority.  It spread to the Italians and made them forget how they were wop ginnies yesterday in exchange for a chance to be just white tomorrow – and to fight vigorously against other groups for the scraps from the ruling Anglos’ table.

The whiteness virus, contrary to popular belief, is not genetic, but it might as well be in how it infects children by way of their parents not much later than they have their first concept of a “self” and “other”.

The whiteness virus is made up of ideas. And all bad ones.

The primary symptoms of the virus are privilege, denial, fear, and willful ignorance.  Unlike other illnesses, for which we scramble to find cures, there is virtually zero incentive for those with the white virus to seek treatment.

“I don’t like white people.”

I claim the above statement to be true for me. Does it shock you and offend your sensibilities?

Well it should, because alone there – in bold print – without context, without further elaboration, it stands merely as a declaration of powerful contempt of a certain perceived group of people. That view, contingent upon one of the greatest delusions of human history, is not one that I hold. Therefore, the purpose of this article, is to qualify my initial statement by articulating a new definition of “whiteness”.

Before I begin I have to make an important request of my readers. As you read, do not be quick to compare my position to that of anyone else you’ve spoken to about race, because chances are that my point of view is entirely different. I don’t dislike “white people” because I feel some particular affinity towards so-called “black people“. I am not some Afrocentric who espouses “black pride” and also condemns “white people”.

My stance? To hell with white people, and to hell with black pride. In its modern manifestation, racial identity only serves to keeps people divided. I personally have renounced my race as an inadequate representation of who I am as an individual, and how I fit within the continuum of all humanity.

People who identify on the basis of race in general – whether themselves or others – annoy me on some level because race is a stupid concept. Racial whiteness in particular only exists as the “standard” by which all else is an “other”, and implicitly inferior. Everyone who is not “white” is a “person of color”, and therefore is subject to discrimination. “White” only exists to distinguish one perceived group of people from everyone else. In other words, “white” ceases to exist where there are only members of that group present – physically or as the subjects of internal discussions.

Race is an excuse for people in power to maintain that power, or for people once without power to claim that power, on the basis of common physical features. As a result, it also becomes an excuse for those without power to regard themselves as necessarily different than those with power, and often to resent them.

In reality, “whiteness” and “blackness” do not exist. Only by certain people’s perceptions do they exist. So in talking about those people’s perceptions, I use their terms. “White” by “their” definition – those who subscribe to race, racism, and all this other nonsense – is a physical quality – some kind of inherent superiority written in people’s genetic code. That is the fallacy.

White people, by my definition, are those people who subscribe to that concept, but who also happen to bear certain physical characteristics that allow them to claim so-called racial “whiteness”. Therefore, not all people who share those “characteristics” are “white” by my definition. The abolitionist John Brown. Noel Ignatiev and the other “Race Traitors”. The rappers Eminem and Manifest. White by the racial definition, but NOT white by my definition.

There is a seeming contradiction here that I must clarify. I am saying that my definition of whiteness is not based on physical characteristics, as is the standard biological definition, yet in order to qualify for whiteness by my definition, one must fit and subscribe to that biological definition. An analogy would be that all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. All “white people” by my definition also fit the biological definition, but not all people who fit the biological definition automatically fit my definition.

So to reiterate, I am discussing two separate definitions of whiteness. One is the more commonly known – which is based on physical characteristics and – misrepresentationally – genetics. The other (my definition), has nothing to do with genetics, but with a frame of mind.

“White people” then, by my definition, are those who identify themselves as “white”, because they’ve disregarded their own uniqueness, that of others, and use it as license for discrimination. “Whiteness” to me, is an attitude. Packaged within this attitude are things like delusions of superiority, cultural ignorance, willful obliviousness, self-importance, racism, and failure to acknowledge reality – such as the reality that race truly does not exist. These are character traits that seem to rise necessarily out of privilege – a special brand of privilege known as the “wages of whiteness”.

White people are also those who cannot divorce other people’s identities as individuals from their “membership” in one “race” or another. For example, the “black doctor’s” occupation, and perhaps his merits as such, are immediately filtered through his so-called race, when really one thing has nothing to do with the other. Conversely, there is no such thing as a “white doctor”, for he or she is just a doctor, and qualitatively superior to those other lesser doctors.

The subjectivity and circumstantial variance of “whiteness” has seen many people of diverse backgrounds be, at turns, both the subjects and the perpetrators of such discrimination. Italians, Jews, and Irish people – to name three groups – have shared a similar experience in coming to the United States as members of their respective ethnic groups only to be mistreated and abused for their differences.

However, when they were able, and features definitively “non-African” or “non-Indian” qualified them for “whiteness” and many of the benefits that came with it, such as naturalization as U.S. citizens, which was denied those who simply could not claim a white identity. It is at the heights of irony that we find third or forth generation Europeans – now unequivocally “white” – adopting the same racist attitudes that were levied against their own families years earlier.

Once it became convenient to become this thing called “white” – and it only exists in opposition to all things “color” – then people stopped even acknowledging their own cultures. So “white people” are those who sustain the illusion of superiority by not acknowledging the uniqueness of individuals, and the oneness of all humanity. “Black people”, in turn, are those who let the fallacy of whiteness spread to them, because surely it was not their idea to be classified as less than human and subjugated and disenfranchised.

As an aside, it should be noted that Chinese people don’t call themselves “yellow”. Yellow, like black, is a “white” term. Chinese are Chinese, Japanese are Japanese, Koreans are Korean. Yet in America we group them all under “Asian”. Well, guess what? Asia’s a big continent and includes Indians, Russians, Slavs, Poles, Arabs, Persians, and many others. Those people call themselves by their ethnicities or nationalities, not “Asian”. Why must be so quick to shuffle different people into one category or another? If we must be divided along any lines, then let it be by our individuality. Otherwise, let us all be grouped and united as human beings.

I have met people who consider themselves “bi-racial”. To those people I say that you are not half black and half white. You are you. Period. By my definition, a person can’t be “half-white”. There is no one else like you, and you don’t fit into any damned category. To hell with categories. Your ancestry does not define you.

People claim race because that’s what they’ve been taught to do – either directly, or by discrimination. So-called bi-racial people have undoubtedly caught flack from both “sides”, and are sometimes stuck in a strange place. Because of the so-called “one drop rule”, they cannot claim racial whiteness exclusively. It’s like mixing paint. If you mix white paint and black paint, you’re not left with half-black half-white paint. You’re left with gray paint, and gray paint is “colored” paint, meaning it is non-white.

So-called bi-racial people face the added dilemma of not being able to fully claim “blackness”, because of their “light skin”, and therefore may be ostracized – insults such as “high yellow” thrown at them. If they disavow race entirely, however, that problem – at least in terms of its internal aspects – disappears. For those individuals, I encourage you to forget white people. Forget black people. Be you. An individual who transcends categories.

I am not so misguided as not to recognize the fact that the majority of people throughout the world believe in race, but it doesn’t mean we have to subscribe to it as well. We’ve been indoctrinated with racism, and use race as a shortcut where we simply don’t know another person’s ethnicity, nationality, or – more importantly – those traits that define him or her as an individual.

Now that I have given a new definition for “whiteness”, my original statement takes on a new tone. Being Irish, Italian, Slavic, Polish, Jewish, or any other ethnicity will not earn anyone any ill will. Simply claiming a white identity will not either – at least not automatically – because I recognize that my point of view is somewhat radical, and many simply have not been exposed to or been given the chance to acknowledge the fallacy of their own perspectives. However, in our new climate of mass information, there is little excuse to remain so ignorant.

Those who simply don’t care, who cannot be bothered to consider or discuss or learn such things, who are gleefully complacent within their “whiteness”, are the ones that I speak of with disdain. Those who harbor any preconceptions about people on the basis of misconceptions of biology or culture, those unwilling to acknowledge the benefits conferred upon them due to those misconceptions, and those who are conservative, unchanging, non-progressive, narrow-minded, and shallow, are the subjects of my contempt. So indeed, with respect to my definition, I do not like white people. Yet at the same time, I feel that no one is beyond redemption, that with a mere shift of paradigm, a “white person” can once again become simply human.