Hating others — including one’s self — for the way we’re born is the very definition of.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
As I understand it from certain quarters on the left, I suffer from original sin. By virtue (ar ar) of birth circumstances, I am by default a white supremacist and a racist. Because, white.
Yet we’re no longer permitted to believe (at least out loud) that black people were ‘properly’ enslaved because of God’s birthmark of inferiority — their skin.
If it’s birth privilege-reckoning time, I reckon this means black and other men of color must experience their come-to-Jesus reckoning and acknowledge their own original sin.
Penis = male privilege, i.e., misogynist entitled tool of The Patriarchy. Plenty of entitled black men must think they own the whole damn world, white privilege notwithstanding, because they’re the greatest threat to the lives of black women. Murdered by men at two and a half times the rate of white women, 94% of black female victims were killed by someone they knew (similar to white women), and most weren’t committing a crime, but were instead having an argument with someone. Who? Their husbands or partners, 93% of whom were black. The domestic violence rate for women of color is considerably higher than it is for white or Asian women. Black male patriarchy: It’s a thing, too.
But never mind that. This isn’t about black male misogynoir; it’s about the one thing far-left ‘progressives’ and ROCs (Racists of Color) can agree on: White people suck. We’re the worst. Ever.
Bill Maher created a few waves last year with his New Rule against white shame, particularly vomit-worthy virtue signaling.
“White liberals: The only people with a bias against themselves. They only want to hang out with people who are not them.”
It’s the preferred sport of self-loathing white people, the easy way to pretend you’re antiracist without having to do anything. It’s got that whole confess-your-sins-before-God-for-forgiveness feel to it. Just roll around on the ground in front of a bunch of embarrassed Black Lives Matter protesters frothing at the mouth like some rabid evangelical screaming, “I’m a worm! I’m evil! I’m a sinner! I am a white supremacist!” even if the most racist thing you’ve ever done is laugh at a Lisa Lampanelli joke.
Racism is judging someone by the color of their skin, not the content of their character. Some famous guy once said that. But he wasn’t thinking of white self-haters because not many existed. I can’t remember this guy’s name. It’s not important. He was nothing but a man-whore oozing with male privilege who fucked around on his wife, a lot. (He was a Christian preacher, of course! But this was back in the days when Christian men screwed around with women.) He may have fathered an illegitimate child. He allegedly laughed at, possibly even offered advice to a rapist during a rape. If he was alive today he’d be soooo cancelled. What do you expect from someone with a penis?
(How’s original sin lookin’ now, ROCs?)
Somehow I’m guessing the left won’t be pulling down statues of You-Know-Who anytime soon.
Black lives do matter, which is why I don’t say All Lives Matter. Seven billion humans facing an entire planet of widely different challenges is too vast to contemplate versus roughly 47 million living in a specific country with a hardcore racism problem. Something we actually have the power to do something about.
But we must remember: #AllHumanRightsMatter.
White people can’t claim to work for equality if we’re willing to excuse in others what we’d never tolerate in our tribe. Racism is racism, whether you hate others’ race or your own.
It’s not okay to hate on your own. I recently lost a black friend over this. He didn’t hate white people; he hated black people. Especially black women. I told him I couldn’t deal with his misogynoir anymore, we had an argument, and of course he blocked me.
I think what really aggravated him was when I pointed out he’d been challenged on his misogynoir by four different sources. If one person says something about you, hey, it’s an opinion. If a second person does, well maybe, but who knows. If three or more sources — one of which is an entire Zoom support group — telling you something is a problem, pay attention. It’s a problem. Yours.
I cut him slack for a year because I’m not black, I no longer live in America and he’d referred to a lot of trauma he’d been through. I didn’t know what was behind it. I still don’t, but now I wonder what his ex-wives and ex-friends might say about him.
It’s not okay to hate black people even when you’re black.
Ergo, white racial self-hatred isn’t okay either.
Granted, ROC racism against whites is more often passive — white Americans overall don’t need to be afraid of black violence the way blacks need to be of whites.
But we can’t tolerate self-directed racism while we claim to fight the rest. We have to fight it all, rooting the toxin from our souls.
White self-hatred is toxic for a number of reasons.
It encourages black racism
Everyone can be racist despite deniers’ claims otherwise. It doesn’t matter who’s in charge. If you hate on someone for their birth color, it’s racism. ROCs, especially certain ‘antiracists’, need to challenge their own biases and prejudices like everyone else.
If whites quietly consent it’s okay to hate on white people because of historical slavery grievances, uh, do you really want to go down that path? Because the African continent was no pre-European paradise for many and some parts still won’t end slavery today.
Before Europeans, much of African prehistory mirrored the rest of prehistoric cultures: Raiding, war, slavery, massacres.
The continent’s men were every bit as violent as other men.
As a woman, I look with a pretty damned judgemental eye on the barbaric gynocrime of Female Genital Mutilation, with historical evidence implicating Africans roughly 2,500 years ago. The inventors might also have been Arab slave traders, although many scholars think it started in Egypt. No matter which, it was likely men who came up with it, and today African women still rabidly enforce it. If historic wrongs by dead people are a reason to hate on others, African-Americans have a lot to account and atone for.
White self-hatred encourages standard racism
White self-loathing gives genuine white supremacists a real reason to point fingers, cry ‘Racism!’ and feed their own overblown sense of victimhood.
If it’s ‘sort of’ okay to excuse racism against ‘some’ whites (the ‘bad’ ones), it becomes too easy to talk about the ‘good’ black people and the ‘bad’ black people. Or as disgraced Southern cuisine cooking maven Paula Deen more plainly put it, the good blacks, and the — you know.
“You’re one of the good blacks,” means you’re not a shiftless, lazy, criminal black.
Comparatively, every white progressive antiracist desires to be graced with the Holy Grail of liberal respectability: Being told by a black person they’re one of the good ones. I.e., non-racist white person.
Paula Deen wants you to know she isn’t a racist. She never called ‘professional black men’ doing a ‘fabulous job’ waiting on white people the n-word. Photo from Angela on Flickr
It’s still old-fashioned tribalism: Them and us. The human fruit basket contains good and bad apples. But rather than thinking of good/bad apples vs. oranges, bananas and pears, why not think more collectively starting with what we have most in common? Like, 330+ million Americans, most of whom are getting screwed over by the 1%.
White self-hatred encourages damaging victim mentality
I write about ‘taking back your power’ for women because it’s my life experience wheelhouse. I critique the excesses of modern feminism and its often disempowering, self-infantilizing elements. I begin with women because I am a woman and can’t be accused of not knowing what I’m talking about, even when we disagree.
I look down the road toward others who make the same mistakes women make in giving up or refusing their power. I listen to a lot of ‘The Two Black Guys’ on Bloggingheads.tv, Glenn Loury and John McWhorter, because their critiques of black life and victimhood sound awfully similar to my complaints about feminists. They acknowledge they live in a racist culture, as I recognize patriarchal culture, yet still point out how some tribe members prefer victimhood, finger-pointing and self-imposed stasis to claiming their own power and having to assert or apply themselves. Let’s just all agree to blame The Man.
I see a lot of people of color who could stand to Take Back Their Power, but I stay out of that dogfight.
For now.
Here’s the thing about being a victim: You may think it absolves you of control of your own life, preferring to blame ‘white supremacy’ or ‘the patriarchy’, but the very definition of victims is weak. You can call it ‘empowerment’ if you like, but grown-ups see you for what you are: Adult children who say a lot of stuff about personal agency, but don’t believe it.
White self-hatred enables human rights abusers
Self-hating white people, who constitute much of but not all of what reformed Islamist Majiid Nawaz calls the Regressive Left, won’t fight hatred and abusive behavior in non-whites, to avoid ‘stigmatizing’ them, and because, cultural imperialism and slavery guilt. ‘We don’t have the right to impose our values on others.’ A convenient self-serving rationale since challenging human rights abusers can get you hurt or killed. Or worse, called a racist. It’s great for abusers. Female genital mutilation and slavery still flourish in Africa. They thank libs for their support.
What’s good enough for little black and brown girls somewhere other than the U.S. would make these same progressives’ heads explode if Matt Gaetz or Josh Hawley introduced legislation to allow American parents to genitally mutilate their baby girls, to, you know, make them more faithful to their husbands and preserve their virginity until marriage.
You’re gonna do WHAT to my pretty white daughter???
I don’t believe America’s biggest problem is racism. It’s climate change, but never mind that. While I’m against racism and ruining the only planet we have available to us, everyone fights the battles resonating the most with them. I fight for true female empowerment as well as, on a different level, for others. This includes level-headed white men who need language to challenge misandrist feminism and racist antiracism.
It also includes POC with the courage to embrace black power from within who want a better, more equal world. They don’t see themselves as helpless victims of W*H*I*T*E S*U*P*R*E*M*A*C*Y. They know we all have a lot in common despite our skin cancer prevention differences.
I read a black writer’s article recently on how challenging it is to find work as a black woman. I mentally fist-pumped “YEAH! YEAH!” as I recognized a near-exact experience trying to find a job for over a year. The only difference was her skin was black, and mine wrinkled. White privilege fades with age in the workplace. Who knew?
After reading Bullshit Jobs: A Theory and Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America I see America’s biggest challenge as not race, but income inequality. I know that will make certain heads explode but bear with me. I wasn’t kidding about what we all have in multi-colored common — getting screwed by the 1%.
So what can we do about this?
Equality for all, not just 47 million Americans. I’ve developed an interest in the Universal Basic Income idea or, as Manitoban Member of Parliament Leah Gazan calls it, the (GLBI) Guaranteed Living Basic Income. A UBI will equalize income, give everyone a more fair share of the pie, and help lift blacks and others out of poverty faster than and more effectively than ‘slave reparations’ ever will.
The UBI is gaining traction in Canada after the federal government introduced what was essentially a UBI last year in response to COVID-related unemployment: CERB, the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit, which temporarily gave Canadians, almost no questions asked, a $2,000 a month payment (before taxes) to help take the edge off paying the bills. I was on it last year. Believe me, it helped, coming as it did a few months after my unemployment benefits ended and I lived on savings.
Gazan is fighting a long slow country-wide battle. The UBI’s Canadian roots are in her own province. Manitoba’s ‘mincome’ project in the 1970s demonstrated some real success and refuted conservative fears ‘no one will want to work’ if they’re ‘being taken care of’. The mincome was structured to reward people for work by taking only some of their benefits in response to a new job, but keeping them afloat. For every dollar they earned, they lost fifty cents in mincome. At some point you lose all the mincome but who cares? You’re now making more than the mincome! Maybe that’s why a Conservative provincial government canceled it. Embarrassing to be proven wrong, eh?
A UBI’s better, fairer system will address a helluva lot more people in need. Now, #AllAmericanLivesMatter.
The middle class is disappearing and upward mobility is far more difficult even for white people now than it was forty years ago (read the Evil Geniuses book for details).
Equalize the system, and many Americans will have a lot less to complain about and shoot each other over.
I can hear several of you screaming, “But black people always get screwed! How’s a UBI going to help us? You KNOW racist politicians and government officials will find a way to shortchange us AGAIN!”
Thank you, I’m glad you asked that!
We can devise a system for allocating the UBI based on need and circumstances, rendered as blind as possible to personal details. In my fantasy, I’d have a special UBI number, the only label the system has for me. It’s strictly need-to-know: I’m a single human with no kids who rents and makes $X a year. Maybe it knows whether I have permanent employment with benefits (without knowing my employer’s name) or whether I’m a contract, ‘self-employed’ human. It doesn’t know my name, race, gender, where I live or anything other than the generic details the system needs to know directly related to my need. Some other human, say, has three kids they take care of on their own, one high on the autism scale (or maybe Some Unnamed Permanent Condition) and has a mortgage. They get more than I do, and the system doesn’t know what color either of us is.
I’m no super-programmer, nor do I know how to design highly secure and heavily audited software platforms, but after the rock-solid secure and fair 2020 election, I’m convinced we could design a similar system for UBI allocation, with the same rock-solid security, now for blind social assistance.
No, it’s not something we can turn around before the end of Biden’s term. We haven’t the spirit or the fortitude for it. Yet.
We can’t eliminate racism unless we target all racism, including our own unacknowledged racism, against others and ourselves. White self-racism is toxic too, even though it’s not getting black people killed.
We should always address, analyze, and dig ever-deeper into history’s many shames and grievances, but it too often discourages us from contemplating the present and thinking imaginatively about the future, by keeping eyeballs and brains focused on the one time period we can’t change.
And it serves our corporate and political masters very well, thankyouverymuch.
This post originally appeared on Medium in June 2021.