White Supremacy on Its Deathbed (Full Book, Day 5)
Let's workshop my book-length lyrical essay (White Supremacy on Its Deathbed), which aims to promote genuine black empowerment by exposing the harmful implications of mainstream antiracism
White Supremacy on Its Deathbed
Racism does not have a good track record. It's been tried out for a long time and you'd think by now we'd want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management. . . . Racism is not dead, but it is on life support—kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as “racists.”—Thomas Sowell
I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.—Booker T. Washington
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Preface
Here we find poetry, the breathy repetitions of an urgent Ginsberg, and scholarship, the bullet-point articles of a quantitative sociologist, merged in one book-length jeremiad bound to rankle genre purists—and anyone, for that matter, who needs a clean line between journalistic fact and dystopian fantasy or who cannot stomach a rhizomatic structure in which one can read each chapter (and even most paragraphs of any chapter) in any order. Through its dissatisfaction and lament, through its ridicule and satire, through its playful leaps between various literary forms, the overarching aim of this lyrical essay hopefully rings clear: to embolden a movement of black empowerment that really does empower.
Highlighting the manifold threats posed to black Americans by the so-called “antiracist movement”—that is the primary means by which I pursue my aim. The antiracist movement, in its mainstream form at least, nourishes itself ultimately upon the bogus notion that white supremacy—although “now invisible most of the time, to most eyes”—flourishes today well beyond merely the American marrow from which it supposedly can never be removed: in restaurant menus and Rachmaninoff piano concertos; in defense of “open discourse” and “free speech” and “artistic expression” and “meritocracy”; in calculus textbooks and triggering names like “John” and “Karen” and “Rebecca”; in handshakes and hugs across the color line; in expectations of punctuality and etiquette and excellence; in museum exhibits and urban design and fast-food packaging; even in black-on-black violence and black-on-black love alike. The movement, propelled by a lucrative engine that spectacularizes race and weaponizes victimhood and essentializes helplessness (all under the disgusting guise of “progress”), harms black people enough, so goes my central “thesis,” that it almost proves the very thing my essay rejects: that white supremacy runs largely unchecked in every cell of every organ. To put the supreme irony in different terms, the best evidence for the foundational deceit of so-called “antiracism” (namely, that white supremacy enjoys an especially pervasive grip today, roused into an invisible fanfare out of its relative dormancy in the heart of America) are the various degrading things done in the name of “dismantling white supremacy.”
What harms do I have in mind? Laying all the sufferings of black people, all the unflattering disparities (especially in health and crime and education), at the feet of a purportedly unconquerable white supremacy, while at the same time classifying the call for blacks to look at the ways they themselves contribute to their own suffering (their lifestyle choices and cultural attitudes) as a blaming-the-victim expression of white supremacy—that is the first main harm (see especially Chapters 3 and 4). Spreading the narrative that blacks have been and continue to be so victimized by a flourishing antiblack agenda, one whose traumas—by some magic of epigenetics—find themselves inherited by each generation, that they need the special dispensations it would be cruel and unfair to withhold (a narrative of victimology that grooms them into leaners as opposed to lifters, which only reinforces their inferiority)—that is the second main harm (see especially Chapters 3 and 4). Pushing the notion that past discrimination and injustice is righted only through retributive discrimination and injustice, and yet insisting (repeating and repeating, as if in an attempt at grand hypnosis) that “anything done to right past wrongs can never count as racist because whites hold the reins of power”—that is the third main harm (see especially Chapter 5). These harms really add up in a time where black people are primarily represented in the daily media, especially the music media, as more hypersexual and more hyperviolent than imaginable even by the very racists of yesteryear who concocted these stereotypes in the first place, these stereotypes to dehumanize black people and legitimize their continued use as chattel (see Chapter 2)—a hoe-thug image of endless twerking and shooting (an image too often held up as aspirational in black communities) that if not itself (as some antiracists will say) “a form of liberation from whitey’s longstanding bio-power over black bodies,” then at least “a means of shining a documentarian light upon the depredations of the currently unchecked antiblackness indelibly baked into the genetic code of the western world.”
Bringing these points together, what do we get? A witches’ brew. The antiracist movement serves to humiliate and hobble blacks while at the same time exacerbating racial tensions—stoking black outrage (especially with the help of social-media misinformation) and baiting whites (the majority population) to engage in aggressions that will further “prove” the antiracist point as to how dire the antiblack sentiments in this country are. The latter issue receives significant treatment in this essay. As I see it (and as is expected to some degree from any human movement whose livelihood depends on what it fights), the antiracist movement carries out the self-fulfilling function of midwifing the very antiblack undercurrents it claims to combat. It is a hustle as cunning as it is toxic. Primed to decode even the most innocuous words and body tics as “racist violence” worthy of immediate job termination and social banishment, primed to push its punking program to the extremes of nitpicking at the racism demonstrated even in the growing number of pathetic whites groveling in apology for their “whiteness”—the movement provokes precisely what it prophesizes: a “backlash of white fragility” that, likely to be coded in racial terms (given that it was set up that way, and given how unnuanced and dramatic and intellectually lazy Americans are), will allow it to say “Told you so!” and thereby entrench its tentacles even deeper into hearts and minds and institutions.
It should be clear, from the above sketch, why I have chosen the Sowellesque title “White Supremacy on Its Deathbed.” It should also be clear, for the same reason, why—after the introduction of each chapter beyond the first, an introduction that wonders what white supremacy might do from its deathbed to carry out some element or other of its antiblack agenda—each subsequent paragraph repeats the same refrain: “It could just sit back and revel in our world where. . . .” What I am saying, in effect, is that white supremacy, although too beaten down to pursue its antiblack mission, could find succor in its dying breaths—if not even perhaps miraculous resurgence—in watching on its ceiling-corner TV all the things carried out in the name of “black power”: from workplace diversity trainings stereotyping black inferiority, to school boards imposing racial guilt; from top-down mandates to decrease arrests and school suspensions of blacks (as if it were purely a matter of them being targeted), to treating blacks as “super citizens” deserving of special leeway and choice cuts and pampered protections from unsettling ideas or even from certain sounds or certain visual marks; from calling out white supremacy as being the source of all black setbacks, to filling the music charts with black performers (even though the nearly monolithic image they present perpetuates degrading stereotypes). How could white supremacy on its deathbed not feel some sort of warm-fuzzy surge at seeing blacks at once tainted and spoiled and maligned (a veritable chef’s kiss) to the point of being unable to hold their own heads up in the civilized world without assistance and without being looked at as thugs and hoes—and all through efforts rolling back social progress, ironically right as we were on the verge of going colorblind, perhaps even to the point of starting a race war?
By keeping black Americans shackled to inflated notions of persecution while fomenting (in such an obviously middle-school-playground move) the white rage it predicts, antiracism plays enough of an antiblack role that I would have thought—if only my tinfoil hat were a tad thicker—it was designed by white-supremacist machination (instead of the banal truth of the matter: that it is as organic, as explainable by the selective effects of competing grabs for power, as Paley’s eye). White supremacy, after all, need not lift a finger when “antiracists,” their cynical manipulations and self-serving hype more befitting P. T. Barnum than Thurgood Marshall, prove so effective at keeping blacks on a plantation of dependency while stoking the very antiblack sentiments that legitimize their movement—profiting, despite the long-term effects, ultimately from divisiveness (like most of us do, to be fair, in our algorithm-powered outrage economy where the hand of selection finds pandemonium fittest).
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For whatever it might be worth to say, I have grown quite tired of this project. In general, I never enjoy diving into the political muck of the day. But this piece is somewhat personal—tied as it is, remotely at least, to the “cancelation” of my professorship, a cancelation “justified” on grounds that “my creative writing has proven unsettling especially to vulnerable populations.” The idea of vulnerable populations like black Americans having to be treated with such velvety kid gloves that they need to be sheltered—at a university of all places!—even from mere words, that rubbed me the wrong way (to say the least). And when it became clear that such sheltering was being carried out in the opposite-day names of “antiracism” and “black-empowerment”—well, I am too much on the spectrum, so to say, to tolerate such audacious hypocrisy! Treating blacks as precious super-citizens (a treatment justified, as “a matter of dire social justice,” on the bogus notion that there is an ongoing “total war” against black bodies) largely serves to humiliate and hobble them into perpetual invalids stuck on a plantation of dependency. Given the long history of preventing blacks from being the masters of their own fate, the long history of grooming them to feel at home not being the masters of their own fate, such treatment is a sick slap in the face.
But it is the easy route. It is the easy route for several more reasons than that humans are resistant to change. Who among blacks (aside from a few Shelby Steeles or Glenn Lourys) could resist the temptation to weaponize one’s institutionally-backed victim status, weaponize it (a) to convince themselves they are never to blame for their own shortcomings (because it is white supremacy’s fault) and (b) to guilt trip special favors everywhere they can? And who could resist the temptation to feel good about oneself, to purge the oppressor guilt that society drumbeats into every white skull, by dishing out special dispensations to those made “innocent” from all their oppression—those beaten dogs among men? (The answer is: roughly the same number of us today who resist complicity in factory-farmed torture; roughly the same number of us today who, if white in the South a few centuries ago, could have resisted complicity in slavery.)
And look what results. Those dispensations only hurt blacks more, distracting blacks from fixing their own shit and taking accountability. That then fuels their victimology narrative and the righteousness by which they engage in emotional extortion of the ones who “hurt them,” the ones supposedly behind all their failures. And the cycle continues.
I see antiblackness in “antiracism,” in short. And this project is my way of purging my emotions around that. (It is also my way, if I am to be transparent, of purging my emotions around—my disgust for—those “liberal” whites behind so much of it: those pathetic grovelers with their Portlandia scarves and slouchy beanies intruding now too often in my Frankl fantasies of extermination.)
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Chapter 1. Gator Bait
America is one of the least racist places on Earth [according to how much bigotry our people have in their hearts and how much bigotry is enshrined in our laws. I]f you compare the soul searching the west has done on the issue of racism and slavery to elsewhere in the world, it's impossible to say that we're behind the curve rather than setting the standard and ahead of the curve. . . . America is the number one place that people of color around the world want to be. That's a fact. That's a fact of world migration patterns. . . . I think there will always be racism probably everywhere on Earth. I think it will dwindle as people become less and less ignorant, but it will never go away just like murder will never go away. . . . There's never been a multi-racial society on Earth without . . . bigotry. America and the west, [however], have been on the forefront of pushing back against [it].—Coleman Hughes[1]
In the age of racism there were more powerful black intellectuals, because nobody wanted them for their race. Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. Du Bois, and many others were fully developed, self-made individuals, no matter their various political and ideological bents. Race was not a “talent” that falsely inflated them or won them high position. Today no black intellectual in America, including this writer, is safe from this sort of inflation. The white world is simply too hungry for the moral authority our skins carry. And this is true on both the political left and right. Why did so many black churches have to be the backdrop for Clinton speeches, and why should Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell have to hear Bush crow about their high place among his advisers?—Shelby Steele[2]
We all know what white supremacy in its chilling heyday would do out of devotion to the torturous ruin of black kind: in our minds still smolder graphic images of gruesome ornaments dangling scarred from castration trees like warlock fruit, hard-R whites—trouser waist bands hoisted well above their belly buttons—cheesing in ear-to-ear self-satisfaction for the big-flash foldout camera as if posing next to the prize catch.
But to regrow the number and penetration of its tentacles to that of days halcyon in its eyes (days when postcards and cigar boxes and calendars casually bore images of black infants captioned with the phrase “Gator Bait”; days when it was no biggie to encounter ghoulish cartoons of grinning gators chasing spook-eyed black babies on tins of “dainty-morsel licorice drops” or on laundry products promising to “eat away the toughest discolorations”; days at least when blacks were more freely used for medical testing and were barred from testifying against white people and were not allowed to marry white people), what might white supremacy do from its deathbed today—an era when racism is considered chief among the discredited barbarisms of humankind (an exceptional crime, almost to the legal-procedure-suspending enormity we once saw in the Salem hysteria); an era when the terrorizing scarlet letter “R” cripples the soul (not to mention the chance for a career or a mate) more definitively than pretty much any other; an era when any protest of one’s complicity in racism, an obstinance termed “fragility,” pulses as the chief sign of one’s complicity; an era when merely defending those accused of today’s witchcraft, or even just urging the tears-addicted kangaroo-court judges to exercise prudence and keep in mind the precedence being set, suffices with rare exception for being a racist oneself?
Focusing for now on American blacks (until it can summon enough strength to take on other game, game many university students in the West today describe as “less-injured, less molested by whiteness”), what desperate depths might white supremacy plumb in its quest for black devastation in a time when blacks are nowhere blocked from opportunity as a matter of systemic injustice (let alone of institutional malice); a time when pro-black affirmative action has been the policy for over fifty years in a country that has made virtually every form of discrimination illegal and that defends—with both word and gun—the basic rights of all human groups; a time when almost a century ago Americans of all races rallied with profound pride around Joe Louis in his defeat of Max Schmelling, unwilling emblem of an Aryan ideology ranking Northern Europeans at the top of the racial hierarchy and blacks and Jews at the bottom; a time when over half a century ago almost all of America tuned in religiously to watch “All in the Family,” a sitcom with the central purpose of exposing the absurdities of prejudice and providing concrete proof for how—as Carroll O’Connor, the actor behind Archie Bunker, put it—even relatively tame bigotry can spoil the life of an otherwise loveable person; a time when almost a half a century ago the historical miniseries Roots, which traces the journey of Kunta Kinte from his capture in Gambia and forced labor in the US, attracted over its eight-night run Superbowl-level viewership (the final episode tuned in by over fifty percent of those with TVs in the US, which makes it the second-most-viewed TV-episode in terms of viewership percentage); a time when—even before California’s “Ebony Alert” system was put in place—a missing black child marshals enough urgent compassion that government agencies and grass-roots collectives in every major city search by land, air, and water (yes, even if at the expense of back-burnering the many missing indigenous children); a time when national news anchors earn major social capital by mocking, live on air, statues of founding US presidents as “backward rapists happy to whip beautiful black bodies, which they stole from mother Africa to labor on stolen land”?
What moves does white supremacy have left in a time when across even its western homeland individuals, orchestras, football teams, universities, museums, governments pull out all the stops (as if—indeed, seemingly because—their lives depend on it) to showcase an obsessive commitment to antiracism (flying banners, pathologizing whiteness, cutting white applicants—even in non-political areas like mechanical engineering and horticulture and glass-blowing and commercial aviation—based on diversity statements that fail to demonstrate enough activism against racism, making sure black people are overrepresented in almost every sector); a time where discovering you are black through 23andMe would be one of the biggest windfalls to confidence, credibility, cultural capital, public platforming, educational opportunity, career security, sexual options, and so on (especially if you are white, and thereby the brunt of the joke in media and public spaces); a time when James Baldwin’s claim that white people know one thing if they know anything at all—namely, “that they would not like to be black”—is completely outdated now that, as heralded by the reams of wannabes in the 1990s (think: suburban “wiggers”) and by the telling lyrics from white hip-hop artists (like Dru Ha’s 1993 line “Always get the pussy cuz I tell em that I'm Spanish”) and by the spurt of color-line crossers in the 2000s (think: Rachel Dolezal, Jessica Krug, Martina Big, and other coalmine canaries following early cases like Johnny Otis), more and more white people here would prefer, and actually try, to trade places (knowing damn well where the opportunities are, on top of having their whiteness long mocked effectively enough that they are even becoming sincere collaborators in the mockery)?
What hope could there be for white supremacy ever to rally again in a time where blacks (in many cases for almost a century) have been billionaires and prima ballerinas; lawyers and US Attorney Generals; chess grandmasters and doctors; America’s Dad (Bill Cosby) and America’s Mom (Oprah Winfrey); mayors and congressmen; US ambassadors and army generals; beloved national-news broadcasters and prime-time hosts; archbishops and CEOs; astronauts and US poet laureates; US Supreme Court justices and directors of science foundations; leads in the US opera and celebrated inventors; recipients of Pulitzers and National Book Awards and Nobel Prizes and Medals of Honor and Presidential Medals of Freedom and Academy Awards and MacArthur Genius Grants; US Presidents and Vice Presidents (who most people in the US would regard meeting as the crowning highlight of their lives); curators of a music-and-art culture that has become the dominant culture for all peoples across the globe—a time where blacks have even carved their mark on the Zamboni ice of the NHL?
What room does white supremacy have to grow in a time when, as social media shows us (as surely as it does that gorillas and octopuses have rich inner lives), the cultural divide seems to cut deeper than the racial divide—so deep, in fact, that southern Trump supporters, who haunt the nightmares of moderate right-wingers and antifa members alike and whose grandparents were as disgusted by miscegenation as most remain today about bestiality, embrace black people into the deepest folds of their ideological tribe (pro-life, law and order, Jesus, criticism about identity politics, worry about trans ideology being taught in grade school, concern about the stultifying effects of welfare programs, irritation over the incessant and ubiquitous pandering to left-friendly minority groups, and so on) and would have little problem marrying and having legitimate children with Candace Owens and Stacey Dash and Alveda King and Star Parker, on the one hand, or with Jesse Lee Peterson and Clarence Thomas and Kanye West and Larry Elders, on the other?
What viable launchpad (even if only in cultural attitudes and informal networks) could there be for white supremacy to blast off from in a time when the US military includes a variety of “antiracist” literature on its reading lists (notably Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist” and DiAngelo’s White Fragility) as part of DEI initiatives “to cultivate an anti-colorblind culture where all service members from historically-marginalized groups feel valued” and “where all service members become sensitive to the historical hardships of non-white groups and to the dangers posed by white-supremacist ideology”; a time when all the major institutions and corporations put so much weight in their hiring and firing decisions on the worker’s “active commitment to fighting the depredations of whiteness” that it is not too much of a stretch to wonder if soon those accused of being insufficiently antiracist will be unable to renew their passports; a time when “black” is a laudatory and celebratory term used to stress spitting regality (as in “How dare you talk to a black man like that”) and when “white” is a pejorative and condemnatory term used to stress spit-on deplorability (as in “I’m not listening to no white person”), a linguistic shift reflecting “the broader cultural and ideological shift towards celebrating blackness while dismantling the legacy of whiteness.”
What nubbin of a toehold could white supremacy possibly find in a time when even Disney, the cardinal barometer of what ideology really holds sway in the US, has gone through great pains—often quite kitschy, no doubt—to signal sorrow for the historical oppression of black people and a desire to “do better” in the future and to “learn from our nation’s regal Black voices”:
putting hypersensitive disclaimers of “problematic content” on its various shows (like The Muppet Show, which in one “egregiously regrettable” case features Johnny Cash adorned with the Confederate flag);
attaching advisory notes of apology to its various films for showcasing “white appropriation and unacceptably racist depictions” (films like Dumbo, which features a minstrelsy musical number performed by a crow name “Jim Crow” and faceless black workers singing—in what actually amounts to a hard truth the ignoring of which only helps perpetuate the problem—“When we get our pay, we throw our money all away");
blurring or drawing over or deleting “harmful scenes and characters” from its older productions (like some of the crow scenes in Dumbo or like portions of the “Pastoral Symphony" segment in Fantasia where a centaurette named “Sunflower” is shown polishing the hooves of the white centaurettes);
removing antiblack imagery from its theme-park attractions (like in the “Jungle Cruise” ride where Trader Sam has been transformed from a witchdoctor selling shrunken heads into a benign manager of the jungle’s “Lost and Found" and where—to dismantle the “abusive and traumatic suggestion” that blacks sit at the lowest rung of the racial hierarchy—the rhino pole scene no longer depicts a black explorer being at the bottom of the pole that a group of explorers climb at one point to escape a rhino);
making sure to step up black representation into Wakanda territories way beyond just Tiana (Disney’s first black princess) when it comes to its artistic creations and business ventures, on top of (a) pouring money into outreach programs aimed at acquisition of nonwhite talent and (b) trying its best to involve sensitivity consultants and black artists whenever the topics or settings or language concern black culture (so as to avoid, in the very least, regrettable fiascos like The Jungle Book’s King Louie, who arguably presents a patchwork of black stereotypes better covered over than ever brought to light);
teaching children about the key ideas in the antiracist movement, as in when one black character in the show The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder charges a white character with “white fragility” for “being defensive about race” and then hands that character Robin DiAngelo’s New York Times Best Seller White Fragility (exact Random House cover and everything), directing him to turn to page 39 for some needed awakening about the various defense mechanisms whites use to avoid facing their inborn racism (silence, argumentation, certitude, and other forms of pushback against “beautiful Black bodies and their beautiful Black voices”);
participating in overt messaging about the dire importance of combating white supremacy, as in the “Juneteenth” episode of The Proud Family where various characters come together in a collective spoken-word performance about how black people are owed reparations because “this country was built on slavery (which means slaves built this country),” and about how black people “continue to earn reparations every moment [they] spend submerged in the systemic prejudice, racism, and white supremacy that America was founded with and still has not atoned for”;
premiering—after, of course, a global hoopla kicked up by its big-money social-media campaign and with the help of countless priming commercials talking about “black kings” and “black queens”—films like Black is King, which—even if not pushing the black supremacism suggested by the meaning of “king” (especially when set against the growing taboo against ever criticizing or upsetting “black voices”)—stresses the empowerment and global unity one can find in black pride (pride in the rich history of black excellence and creativity, “pride as appropriate as it is necessary given the equally rich history of oppression at the hands whites who only do more harm by finding pride in their own cultural heritage since it is so entangled with black oppression”);
compensating for its own sullied past, while doing its part to make up for the history of black persecution in the US, by coordinating various counter activities (from having employees read key figures in the antiracist movement to organizing “reeducation retreats” filled with days of diversity workshops on microaggressions and on why white pride is toxic whereas black pride is a must and on white privilege and on implicit racism and on the importance of patronizing black businesses and on white allyship and—most importantly—on “strategies to blunt the harms, and prevent the spread, of whiteness in both private and public spheres”).
Beyond the intergenerational bigotry passed down in isolated southern locales (like Harrison Arkansas, a former sundown town still featuring “unforgivable billboards” like “It's NOT racist to ♥ your people”), where even the most insular residents—increasingly connected to the wider world through social media—still cherish their favorite black celebrities (LeBron James, Beyoncé, Denzel Washington, Oprah) and still welcome—even if with initial hesitation—blacks into their church congregations (especially if they support Trump) and still have enemies and scapegoats against which they are happy to unite with blacks (trans ideology in grade school, coastal elites smearing Trump, and so on); beyond the heavy-handed generalizations and racial slurs whispered largely behind the closed doors of northern cities (like Newburgh New York) where black hypersexuality and hyperviolence and hyperundereducation and hyperwelfare and hyperaddiction ring loud and clear—beyond such meager showcases of deep-seated hostility toward blackness, what alchemy might white supremacy employ to rewind from the vanishing wisp it has become?
Beyond the gauche expectations we still hear at least in those towns whose furniture designs always remain about a decade behind (“Diani, can you teach us some hip-hop moves?”); beyond the tokenizing we still see in sororities (whose upperclassmen, wanting to avoid suspicion of racism, feel “the chapter could use a few more black faces”) and now even in more and more factions of the KKK, which—having drifted away from white supremacism, and instead toward the ideology that every race is entitled to feel proud of itself—has become increasingly open to recruiting blacks (just as it did to recruiting Italians in the second half of the twentieth century) who share their core concerns (about, say, the national dangers of immigration) and core beliefs (about how, say, character should count more than color) and core agendas (about how, say, July should be White History Month, a month to celebrate notable figures like Goethe and Shakespeare, and to honor the overcoming of adversities faced by certain groups like the Irish, and to celebrate the philosophies and technology that allowed the US to exist)—beyond such feeble expositions of animosity for black kind, what sorcery must white supremacy invoke to breathe (let alone to retake the nation)?
Beyond the spitting mouths of desolate seniors, powerless in the face of looming oblivion, abusing black nurses with racial epithets (hurled, typically, more to sting in doddering tantrum than out of any sincere sense of the inherent inferiority of blacks); beyond teachers calling upon a white student before a black student (in most cases today, if not merely random, a function of something as simple as the called-upon being more eager or, in the case of a teacher trying to draw the shy into the conversation, being less eager); beyond the word “nigger” carved into bathroom stalls (more likely out of a rebellious desire to shock and expel teen angst than any genuine hatred for an entire race); beyond the decreasing number of people who would not want their children to marry outside of their race (around five percent of Americans, and not all of whom have racism to blame for that desire); beyond the rare rallies of Klan members, whom all but a few thousand of us consider more of a farce than scientologists and flat earthers and “Lil” rappers combined (yes, even when they actually reject black inferiority and merely peddle white pride and racial separatism, as is true of a growing number staunch about how harming blacks is as morally problematic as harming whites); beyond the occasional “Karen” pushing a slow-moving black kid out of a crowded elevator with a “Come on, kid” (more likely as a matter of impatience bolstered by “ageism” rather than racism)—beyond such relatively risible squawks of “total war against black bodies,” what more might white supremacy do to soar once again now that both its formidable wings have been fractured into fragments?
Beyond the employers with (understandably) negative reactions to stereotypical black names like “La’Quantavia Johnson” (something that many employers compensative for—if not over-compensate for—and seems more likely to reflect class-bias than racial bigotry anyway); beyond the white Harvard student quietly thinking to herself that her black classmates are likely not there for the same reasons as she is (which is less and less frequent and is less and less accurate, but is more and more swallowed back as a sinful thought); beyond the people in many American homes who cannot quite put their finger on why they feel uneasy when the US President vows in a public address to appoint to the Supreme Court a justice no other race but black; beyond the Chinese ladies telling the black man with double-taking shock on their faces how impeccably he speaks Mandarin (a reflection mainly of how rare it is for outsiders to master the language); beyond the noticeable number of potential donors more reluctant to give money to black-male canvassers (a difference largely steered by “urban look” as opposed to skin color, especially when it comes to people in nonurban areas clued into the reality of overrepresentation in violent crime by black males with an urban look); beyond the empty and kitsch marketing signals given out, as expected in our time of black idolatry, by Target and Walmart and all the rest of the opportunistic retailers especially during Juneteenth and Kwanza and Black History Month (a month that, although an important transitional measure like affirmative action, is largely unnecessary since black historical events and figures have been blended into year-round history lessons)—beyond such comparatively pathetic expressions of antiblack racism, what hidden reserves of underdog spirit might white supremacy draw from to escape its pummeled corner (where the towel, unless we are mistaken, already seems like it has been thrown)?
Beyond the sporadic store clerk, especially in areas of high black crime, being a bit more watchful through surveillance cameras and convex mirrors (a statistical caution, an understandable one, almost never born out of a sense that something sinister plagues an entire race by birth, but rather out of a sense—which Muhammad Ali would often express with an analogy between white people and rattlesnakes—that “I don’t know which of the admittedly rare few of them that mean me harm actually do mean me harm since they all look alike”); beyond the many people and businesses, especially in the wake of the supposedly “pro-black” project to defund and demonize the police, fleeing various cities that harbor large black populations (which is less a matter of direct racial prejudice and more a matter of crime and neighborhood deterioration); beyond the diminishing instances of black people being more likely to get higher-interest rate loans (which is less a matter of direct racial prejudice and more a matter of lower credit score); beyond the rare instances of black people’s pain threshold being overestimated by hospital staff (bombarded like us all by the thug and sapphire images so often glamorized in black media); beyond a relative handful of officers and judges who, especially given weeks overworked in precincts overrepresented in black crime, blur together black faces instead of looking at each face afresh (as, in fact, almost all these officers and judges, not thinking there is anything wrong with black people as an inborn fact, will sincerely admit they ought to)—beyond such relatively tame displays of antiblack violence, what more might white supremacy do to grow from the mere Ursula-polyp to which it has been reduced (prepared perhaps to make you’re-going-down-with-me kamikaze moves if only out of a sense that, likely to die off anyway, it has little left to lose)?
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Chapter 2. Macaroni Sounds (Over That Brrrap-Brrrap-Brrrap)
The pimps in the entertainment industry who distribute gangsta rap are major contributors to the destruction of the African American community. . . .What do you think Dr. King would have to say about rappers calling black women bitches and whores? About rappers glorifying thugs and drug dealers and rapists? What kind of role models are those for young children living in the ghetto? . . . [Let Suge Knight and all the white record executives,] all the same people who are out there pimping pornography to your children, com[e] after me! But I will never quit. I promise you that either this gangsta porno rap is going to die or I’m going to die trying to stop it.—C. Delores Tucker[3]
The standards of the civilization into which you were born are first outside of you, and by the time you get to be a man they're inside of you. . . . If you're treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described as being real, they're real for you whether they're real or not.—James Baldwin[4]
To perpetuate black-deviance stereotypes that have long provided ammunition to antiblack ideologies; to ensure that each wave of young people, each wave of innocent breath, never forget the animalistic threat posed by blacks (drug-dealing killers and homewrecking hoes) and that blacks still (as in the whip-and-chain days of chattel slavery) serve foremost as instruments of primal sexuality (more beast than human, and so requiring rougher treatment and less anesthesia and all that); to engrave deeper into the western psyche the notion that blacks simmer with a hypersexuality matched only by their hyperviolence; to keep black worth tethered (and perhaps even tighter than ever before) to inflated physicality and jezebel availability and carnal aggression; to prevent our culture from de-normalizing the timeworn practice of restraining and sexually harassing black bodies; to steer yet another fresh generation of black souls toward the precipices of perilous sexual pursuits and criminal pursuits and narcotic pursuits; to make certain that black people’s capacity for loving each other remain tangled in ephemeral encounters of mere physical collision, limited mainly to fucking and being fucked (as opposed to dancing on an intimate journey of consensual connection with a kindred agent rich in emotions and inner psychology); to encourage attitudes and behaviors that fatten the coffers of investors in funeral parlors and prisons and sex toys and pharmaceutical companies—what might white supremacy do from its deathbed?
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, almost as if—so a conspiracy-minded person could easily think—the so-called “white powers that be” frantically pivoted their Mordor eye in alarm at hip hop’s potential to hoist black souls onto knowledge-seeking and antiviolence and safe-sex paths of fate-carving self-reliance, socially-conscious rap acts (Brand Nubian, Poor Righteous Teachers, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Arrested Development, Queen Latifah, Public Enemy, Gang Starr, Common, Dead Prez, The Roots, Pete Rock and CL Smooth) and all their prosocial songs of black empowerment (anthems like “Self-Destruction,” which Farrakhan himself would describe as more ideologically efficacious than a thousand Farrakhan speeches) have long become whispers of mainstream past, washed away throughout the 90s and 2000s by a saliva-cum-discharge-Percocet-blood river polluted with crack pipes and guns and drill-holed bodies (but, noticeably, no Left-Eye condoms)—a yellow torrent of glorified gangsterism and mumble-making drug-use and unchecked promiscuity that we all, spellbound by macaroni sounds over that Brrrap-Brrrap-Brrrap, slurp up (munch) today (especially our impressionable youth), which is no small matter when it comes to molding the image of black people (from ascending brothers and sisters who listen to “Optimistic,” to dehumanized niggas and hoes who listen to “Pound Town”) since music is the most enchanting teacher.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where we so often think first of musical artists when we think of black females, and yet where the hypersexual form of black-female musical artist (embodied in, say, Lil Kim and Nicki Minaj) so monopolizes over mellower forms (embodied in, say, Esperanza Spalding and Rhiannon Giddens) that we have to squint past all the Grammys flying at a gyrating sea of black twerking asses (oil-slicked in hedonistic frenzy for voracious cameras) to spot the endangered alternatives out there—squint to see that there really are, believe it or not, non-sexually-extreme (indeed, non-empty-plastic, non-bling-gaudy, non-superficial-decadent, non-self-indulgent, non-reality-TV, non-Mammon-worshipping, non-Trump) black-female musicians who actually suffer hours training in classical-music conservatories, apprenticing under masters (their souls resonating with a depth and discipline far from the glittering façade of mainstream sensationalism).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where the old white pastime of gawking at “freak exhibitions” of big-booty blacks has resurged to become our global obsession, having evolved from relatively humble beginnings—most notably perhaps the European tour of Sarah Baartman (Hottentot Venus), who no doubt had to perform proto-versions of the twerk (that ass likely shined up with whale oil)—to today’s twerk-bot Cardi B, basted with her own drippings of aberrant sexuality, magnified in the cherished screens of almost every human in almost every nation (even the bombed out ones of limited calories).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, against the constant bass-bumping backdrop of catchy chants easy to imagine lionesses starved for a good conquering might sing if they had human tongue (“Rich nigga eight figure that’s my type / Eight inch big ooh that’s my pipe / Bad bitch I’ma ride that dick all night”), we need specialized hearing aids to tune into those rare lyrics where black women, despite all the dangled incentives of shiny objects and viral fame (the bait pop culture has us, and them, believe they cherish above their very souls), actually refuse to enliven the fantasy at the very heart of our national culture (a fantasy, in a twisted turn of events, now raucously celebrated by those meant to be dehumanized by it): that black females—forever bound as they apparently cannot help but remain to the savageries of African jungles—hanker not simply for sex, but (as even just the radio anthems reflect) for degradation in all the beer-dumping ways of relatively-tame 90s rap videos and then some (choke-handled, spit upon) while having all their holes “beaten up and skeeted up” to prolapse extremes with such no-means-yes barbarism—by colossal cocks with Trumpian coffers, of course (these “whores in the house” do have some standards!)—that even police, despite how trigger-happy the media cannot help but saying they cannot help but be around blacks, might have to get called (“Beat it up, nigga, catch a charge / Extra large, and extra hard”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, reflecting the positive feedback loop between black songs glamorizing mammoth dick and everyday black woman’s desire for mammoth dick, more and more black woman approached in the street with a microphone declare with speaker-overloading adamance that they would never accept a man with a small dick (no matter whatever else he had to offer)—such viral-because-sensational clips sowing countless seeds of gnawing suspicion not only in men told by their black girlfriends how ridiculous such women are, but also in those black girlfriends themselves (now infected with the virus likely to mutate them into living caricatures themselves).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, against the constant bass-bumping backdrop of catchy chants looping in the morning streets as children flash middle fingers at their doddering crossing guards (“All she wanna do is pop a Perc and get her pussy beat (ba-ba-ba) / Take this dick, bitch, stop pushin me / Face in the pillow, bitch, don't look at me”), we need special hearing aids to tune into those rare lyrics where black men actually refuse to enliven a fantasy at the very heart of our national culture (a fantasy, in a ghoulish switch-up sometimes even frightening to its creators, now raucously celebrated by those meant to be degraded by it): that black men—forever bound as they apparently cannot help but remain to the savageries of African jungles—hanker not simply for sex, but (as even just the radio anthems reflect) for satiating the beating-skeeting demands of black women (sapphiric jezebels), all while—as we would expect after decades of callous killing glorified in gangster rap—holding a weapon (once perhaps a stone or a Wakanda staff of ancestral might but now in the new world a Glock) in case a lower-lip-biting threat of a head strike is needed to keep the bodies in line—the ultimate taboo prize, of course, being white female bodies since, unlike with black female bodies (whose sexually-voracious nature warrants bush treatment as disposable playthings), white female bodies have been pedestalized for so long as sites of purity warranting dignity-preserving protection.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—although resulting in a great deal of white male (and even black male) demoralization for not being “black in the bedroom” and although resulting in a growing number of wannabee-black white girls aiming to be the subject of gangbang bukkakees—black men, as symbolized by that old bestializing trope of monstrous anatomy, are renowned for what has long been used to mark them as subhuman threats to civil order, but now (as if by some perverse aikido of Mordor) has society at large—yes, even Texan rednecks with dixie-flagged trucks and ten-gallon hats (surely not covering steer horns)—swooning like Elvis groupies unable to resist the musk of exoticism: their sexual deviancy; their hypermasculine brutality and supernatural stamina in the bedroom, which allows them to beat up Thotiana’s holes “like Emmett Till” (until “she throw up” and the “pussy looks like Pacquiao” and the asshole’s creamed like “a murder scene”); their power and desire, in effect, to exercise the nastiest domination over bodies—whether a Rick-Ross champagne drugging to get those bodies back home to enjoy (without those bodies ever knowing), or a Blueface hair-yanking to thwart attempts to run (“Ain’t no runnin”), or a Kodak-Black mouth dicking to replace any “No” or cry of pain with what pop culture would have us think is for a black man the auditory equivalent of his watermelon (“Eghck eghck egchk”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, as seen especially in the fetishistic music (and correlative fetishistic porn) that sells best, the fever dream of black hypersexuality reposes as the golden-goose foundation for such a bloated industry—one that can afford going granular enough to release lip-balm flavors like “Coochie Juice,” “Bootyhole Brown,” “Coochie Pink,” “Sex on My Period,” “Gonorrhea,” “Yellow Discharge,” and “Nut”—that some black performers in the whirlpool, perhaps to sleep with less vertigo at night or to lessen the fragmentation between their real selves and their performing selves, over time—and just like so many gangster rappers did decades prior—even hypnotize themselves (fortune, the mesmerist spiral; fame, the mesmerist pendulum) into feeling that they really are the fiendish caricatures they play on TV, that the bestial stereotypes their performances serve to reify really does align with their innermost ideals and standards and attitudes and desires and behaviors concerning sex—whether
Sukihana-drug-and-cum-thirsty (“You can block my number, but he still gon eat my ass / He just paid for my titties, that's why you bitches mad / I suck dick like a champion when he put the Perc in my ass. . . ./ Rachet ho, but I feel like Kim Kardashian / My pussy good, that's why a bitch stay pregnant / I swallow nut, I really feel like a elephant”);
or MC-Lyte-schoolyard-preying (“I'm too old? What's with that crap? / Come on now brother, age is just a number / Anyway what matters is your state of mind. . . . / Are you really serious? Age really matters? . . . . / I could of showed you things, taught you how to explore/ My question is, what are you too young for? . . . / It may sound nasty and it may sound mean / But I'm into little boys that are about seventeen / I don't know why, but they put up a fight / and hot damn that excites the MC Lyte. . . . / I love young boys on the brink, of being young men / I mold em, shape em, make em then I break em in. . . . / So if you're in school, that's okay / Get straight A's and I'll be back on Friday. . . . / Never let age, restrict you from what you want to do / Whether you're young or ninety-two / So if you're seventeen or around that age / baby come to the stage”);
or Doja-Cat-unquenchable (“Spank me, slap me, choke me, bite me. . . . / Give a fuck bout what your wifey's sayin. . . . / I just want to fuck all night”);
or Boosie-Badazz-birthday-bashing (“At 11 I'm gonna go get my son a Ferrari / At seven I'm gon get him head at his birthday party”);
or Summer-Walker-thieving-and-drugging (“If you got the sense that God gave you / don't leave me round your man. . . . / I drop the Perc in his drink / and I don't give a damn”);
or Biggie-anal-raping-those-who-step-to-him (“Niggas press they luck and they get a butt-fuckin / Straight up the ass raw dog with the rash / And I don't fuck with the condoms / The condoms is a problem from the AIDS getting sprayed / Diseases, B.I.G. pleases. . . . / I'm crazy and deranged / Blowing niggas out the frame, simple and plain”);
or Sexyy-Red-robbing-and-analingus-loving (“Lick between my booty crack / I'm a hoochie mama, slash hoodrat / Hoes hate on me cuz my coochie fat / Put a Perc-30 in my asshole / Yo' bitch boring, she a lame ho. . . . / Nigga, put that dick / balls deep in my liver (sex, sex) / If you got the sense that God gave you / don't leave me round your nigga (sex, sex) / He finna eat this ass / I made him spend them bands (sex, sex) / Went through the pussy-nigga pocket / cuz he was too high off the Xans”);
or Sexyy-Red-callous (“My son need a new pappy / Too many bitches, where the niggas at? / I'm tryna get my coochie scratched / I'm tryna get my coochie stretched. . . . / I can't say his name cuz he be cheatin (I love you, baby) / Yeah, and I'm the reason”);
or Sukihana-homewrecking (“I'm faithful to a nigga that's married / Steal niggas, I'm the Grinch, Jim Carrey / I wanna choke right now / Put the dick in my throat right now. . . . I'ma fuck your baby daddy and I'ma fuck him again / I'ma suck his dick, without no hands / Spend his bread then fuck yo' man / You heard what I said, what the fuck I said / I'll beat yo' ass then fuck yo' man. . . . / I take yo' nigga, put this pussy on his tongue / Deep-throatin dick, I got cum all in my lungs”);
or Flo-Milli-heartless (“Yo' main dude wanna feel on my body / And if I take him, bitch, I won't say I'm sorry. . . . / A bad bitch with no morals, I'm sinning);
or more Flo-Milli-heartless (“I'm winnin, on your man mind like a fitted (yeah) / This pussy V.I.P. and he can't get in it (lil hoe)”
or Chief-Keef-empathetic-ultimatuming (“Ain't gon let me fuck, and I feel you / But you gon suck my dick fore I kill you”);
or Dr.-Dre-rape-and-murder-orchestrating (“Now listen up and lemme tell you how I did it / Yo, I tied her to the bed, I was thinking the worst / But yo, I had to let my niggas fuck it first yeah / Loaded up the .44, yo / Then I straight smoked the ho / Cause I'm a real nigga, but I guess she figured”);
or Ghostface-high-school-nookie (“Five and a half in boys, ass is off the hook / High school pussy, heard you got the best nookie / Sugar walls, rocks o love, slide right on my dick / I'm palmin ya ass like this while you ridin it”);
or Foxy-Brown-reckless (“I’m sexin raw dog without protection, disease infested");
or Mulatto-nasty (“Double-hand hand twist the pipe but I ain't even plumbing / He like em nasty-nasty, bitch, I'm Mrs. Put That Thumb In”);
or Bell-Biv-DeVoe-young-lust (“Backstage, underage, adolescent. / How ya doin? Fine, she replied. / I sighed. I like to do the wild thing. / Action took place. Kinda wet. Don’t forget”);
or Cam’ron-track-covering (“Who else in a hurry to mirk / We kill girls, rape em, bury their skirts”);
or LL-Cool-J’s-drunken-high-school-lust (“I went to the high school about three o'clock / to try to catch a cutie ridin my jock / My homeboy's jeep, the system blastin / cold forty dogs, smilin and laughin / Girls all over, the kind I adore / I felt like a kid in a candy store”);
or Too-$hort’s-sixteen-year-old-lust (“ I met this girl, thick as hell / Only sixteen, said her name was Linell / I took her to my house, I could not wait / Her shit was much tighter than a central safe”);
or KRS-One’s-thirteen-year-old-lust (“Overwhelmed by my playboy charms / We jumped in the ride rushed to the crib / I ain't gotta explain what we did / Built to last I simply waxed that / Ax the question, no need for guessin / Hey baby, how old are you? . . ./ And said, “Hee, hee, hee I'm only 13" / 13!! I need a quick escape / That's statutory rape / But she was GOOD! . . . / Yo even if I get beat down that shit was GOOD”);
or Biggie’s-even-younger-lust-shared-by-Karl-Malone-and-the-Holy-Ghost-alike (“Stab you 'til you're gushy, so please don't push me / I'm using rubbers so they won't trace the semen / The black demon got the little hookers screaming / Because you know I love it young, fresh and green / with no hair in between, know what I mean?”);
or E40’s-blood-standard (“I met her last night and today she paged me / Wanna know if B-Legit can kick it tonight (what else) / Only sixteen, way too tight / But age ain't nothin but a number- number. . . . / Nine nine ten, eleven and up / If you bleed, you get fucked”);
or Biggie-particularly-eight-year-old-lust (“You can 76 the 69 try 68 / Make Raven-Symoné call date rape”);
or Big-Daddy-Kane-even-more-inclusive-lust (“You gotta have a brain in order to be Ms. Kane / But in the case of not becomin my lady / I’ll take em eight to eighty, dumb, crippled and crazy”);
or Field-Mob-going-as-low-as-possible (“Make me make you cum like jury duty / You pregnant glad it ain't mine / It’s a fact I was strapped, I ain't lyin / Doctor say its a lil girl good / Now I get pussy and head at the same time”);
or Pimp-C’s-going-as-low-as-possible (“You see, fuckin pregnant pussy is simple / all you gotta do is hope the baby think your dickhead is a nipple / And if the cum snatcha stimulate my sack / he just might get a fat load of Similac / And if he start kicking, I'ma keep sticking / Go a little deeper, give his bad ass a whipping. . . . / And once I get the bitch in the raw / Me and her kid can have a nice ménage à trois / So believe I ain't kicking no bullshit / Cuz pregnant pussy is the best you can get”);
or Bun-B’s-going-as-low-as-possible (“Now if she got a boy, it ain't fun / But if she got a girl, then it's two pussies for the price of one / And if the belly's all stacked / I'll put the ho on all four and hit the pussy from the back / I'm fucking all over the womb. . . . / Your baby's sneezing out nuts because I bust one in his nose”);
or Tyga-age-is-just-a-number-justifying (“They say she young, I should've waited /She a big girl, dog when she stimulated");
or Ice-Cube’s-fuck-the-law-when-it-comes-to-love (“Mister, mister, before you make me go / I'm here to let you know your little girl is a ho / Nympho, nympho, boy is she bad / Get her all alone and out comes the kneepads / I know she is a minor and it is illegal / But the bitch is worse than Vanessa Del Rio / And if you decide to call rape / We got the little hooker on tape”);
or Lil-Uzi-dehumanizing (“Better get your bitch, nigga, I'll rip her / Had her up on my bed then I flipped her”);
or Dat-Nigga-Daz-robbery-oriented-sex (“This is what you look for in a hoe who got cash flow / You run up in them hoes and grab the cash / And get your dash on while you're chillin, with your homies and shit / and how my niggaz kick the anthem like this: / Bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks / Lick on deez nutz and suck the dick”);
or Kurupt-passing-women-around-like-blunts (“So how the fuck am I supposed to pay this hoe, just to lay this hoe / I know the pussy's mines, I'ma fuck a couple more times / And then I'm through with it, there's nothing else to do with it / Pass it to the homie, now you hit it / cuz she ain't nothin but a bitch to me / And y'all know, that bitches ain't shit to me”);
or Finesse2tymes-racially-degrading (“My bitch yellow, drank yellow”);
or Vado-gang-rapey (“Never fucked? Nut you ate that / My niggas fucked and we raped that”);
or Megan-nymphomaniacal (“Thinkin he's a player, he's a member on the team / He put in all that work, he wanna be the MVP / I told him ain't no taming me, I love my niggas equally”);
or 2-Live-Crew-train-rapey (“You see, me and my homies like to play this game / We call it Amtrak but some call it the train / We all would line up in a single-file line / And take our turns at waxing girls' behinds / But every time it came to me, I was shit out of luck / Because I'd stick my dick in and it would get stuck / The girls would say, “Stop", I'd say, “I'm not”);
or Tyler-the-Creator-taboo (“You call this shit ‘kids,’ well I call these kids ‘cum’ / and you call this shit ‘rape’ but I think that rape’s fun”);
or Lil-Baby-Pandarian (“Treat these hoes like a tire, I keep a spare”);
or Cam’ron-incestual (“I ran into my aunt / with the fat ass and the thin chest”);
or Minaj-freaky (“How about I cum all on your dick and then I lick it off?”);
or Minaj-schoolyard-predation (“And when you get it, don't be telling where you get it from / I know you young but you know I like that young money. . . . / See, little boy, I can be your little teacher / And if you ball, then meet me behind the bleacher”);
or Trina-raunchy (“Licky licky licky licky licky for an hour / I’ma make it rain for you, golden shower”);
or Big-L-loveless (“Fuck love, all I got for hoes is hard dick and bubble gum”);
or Webbie-no-means-yes (“Both of us butt naked / Don’t give it to me I'll take it / Ain’t no time for no fakin / I’m stabbin it like I’m Jason”);
or Kevin-Gates-wife-stealing (“And why you taking care of that bitch? / Wait 'til you find out that we sharing that bitch / Gettin trippy with your girl and her girlfriend (girlfriend) / Bet you never even knew she was a lesbian (lesbian) / Man, that girl swallow nut like an elephant (elephant) / Stupid nigga probably thought your bitch was celibate”);
or Mulatto-gooey (“Double-hand twist have him sittin on a cloud / Hit it from the back, makin macaroni sounds”);
or Megan-extorting (“You better get on your knees and eat this pussy right / before I have another nigga do it for me”);
or Cam’ron’s-child-abusive (“I’ll rape your child / They won’t make the trial”);
or Doja-Cat ruthless (“You know my nigga be buggin me / I just be wonderin if you can fuck on me better”);
or Tyler-the-Creator-forced-threesoming (“Rape a pregnant bitch and tell my friends I had a threesome”);
or DRS-anti-patience (“Girl I'm really sorry that it had to come to this / But I'm not going home with no fucked-up kiss. . . . / Strip! Get em off girl! Don't make me chase you! / Strip! Get em off girl! Don't make me beat that ass bitch now! / Strip! Get em off girl! Here's what you wanted! / Strip! Get em off girl! Daddy's lil ho/ Don't be afraid, Girl scream and you might get hurt / Barely eighteen, Flip a coin, let's see who's first / Girl you now that shit was dumb, when you called 911 / It's awful hard to talk, With a mouthful of cum / Don't have to give me shit girl, because I'm takin it / You better move your fuckin arm girl, or else I'm breakin it / Yo Fellas? (Yeah!) Hold this bitch down! / I'm breakin me off a piece and then I'm passin it around! / The ho shoulda known what we wanted her to do! / Why's your daughter in my room at a quarter after 2?”);
or Minaj-extreme (“YG and The Game with the hammer yelling, “Gang, gang" / This isn't what I meant when I said a gang bang”);
or NWA-underage-gang-rapey (“The dumb bitch licks out the asshole / and she'll let you videotape her / And if you got a gang of niggas, the bitch would let you rape her / She likes suckin on dicks, and lickin up nut / And she even take the broomstick up the butt. . . . / And my turn was like next / I couldn't see her face, all I saw was her pussy and her chest. . . . / Oh shit it’s the preacher’s daughter! / And she's only 14 and a ho' / but the bitch sucks dick like a specialized pro / She looked at me I was surprised / but wasn’t passing up the chance of my dick getting baptized”);
or SWV-conniving (“What your girl don't know won't hurt her / Anything to make this love go further. . . . So what's my chance / I'm willing to do anything to get in your pants / You don't have to worry, I won't say a thing / And if she finds out, I don't know nothing”);
or Xscape cruel (“I like being in the same room as you and your girlfriend / The fact that she don't know / that really turns me on”);
or Tinashe-home-wrecking (“GPS your nigga if you looking for me”);
or TLC-infidelitous (“If he knew the things I did, he couldn't handle it / And I choose to keep him protected / So I creep, yeah, just keep it on the down low”);
or Biggie-extreme (“Don’t they know my nigga Gutter fuckin kidnap kids? / Fuck em in the ass, throw em over the bridge?”);
or DMX-ferocious (“And if you got a daughter older than 15, I’ma rape her / Take her on the livin room floor, right there in front of you. . . . / Now watch me fuck just a little while longer, please, will you?”);
or Travis-Scott-conquestory (“Got your broad in the garage eatin semen”);
or Cardi-B-belittling (“Fuckin your nigga, I got him on lock”);
or Mustard-emasculating (“Took your bitch out the game, I had to sub her / swap, swap, here we go”);
or Lil-RT-only-eight-but-niggative-as-fuck (“If she ain't suckin dick, lil bitch, you can get the fuck up out my shit / Hundred round, hit him with the Glock, take a fucker down”);
or Megan-superficial (“If your ass a broke nigga, hell nah, I can't meet ya / If your ass a rich nigga, I'ma fuck ya 'til you ain't one”);
or Megan-harlotry (“My pussy is the most expensive meal”);
or Megan-transactional (“Oh, you like big butts, well I like big bucks”);
or Sukihana-transactional (“Put your hands all in yo pockets / Then you pull out that wallet / Tell that nigga stop flossin, you know this pussy costly / Want it dripping like a faucet? You got to make deposits”);
or Sukihana-rent-needing (“My rent due, nigga, let me suck on it / Put that dick in my throat, I wanna lick on it . . . . / Big dick in my stomach, I wanna feel it / Bitch, I eat the cock like a Hot Pocket / Dance on that dick, pop, lock, and drop it / Before a nigga fuck, I need a big deposit. . . . / We ain't got no morals, we some fuckin hoes”);
or DMX-depraved (“I got blood on my hands and there’s no remorse / I got blood on my dick cuz I fucked a corpse”);
or Kash-Doll-remarkable (“My neck game match my wrist game”);
or City-Girls-taunting (“Your baby daddy fuckin me and suckin me / He don't answer you, bitch, that's because of me”);
or Akinyele feticidal (“That belly blows up, it's gonna be trouble / I’ma have to play like a pin and come pop that bubble / Find Chucky if you want child's play / I'll give your ass a hanging and drop you off in an alleyway / This is a diary of a black man / By making no alimony payments due to no wedding bands / So ax that talk about marriage / Miss, you must of misunderstood, I want you to have a miscarriage / I'm fed up, and sorry that I've done it / I'm ready to set her up and have my little man kick her in the stomach / or punch my fist through that naval / cuz I'll be damned if this be the hand that rocks the cradle / or push her down a flight of steps / I don't care or give a heck”);
or so the list goes on (and to much darker places when we dip below billboard-chart artists), more and more lyrics evermore sexually horrendous (somehow even when they make it a point to highlight consent).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, as if it were not a priority to safeguard innocence while the reserves for later handling the inevitable traumas of life are still developing, we get endless mom-filmed videos of preschool black girls twerking at birthday bashes on Chuck E. Cheese tabletops and playground playscapes chanting in emulation of their favorite orc-looking role models.
“We outside tonight. We outside tonight. We outside tonight!”
“My pussy pink, my booty-hole brown.”
“If you see me and you tryna see what's up (Skee-yee). / He wanna fuck with me, then I'ma have him stuck (skee-yee).”
“Bend that ass over (baow). Let that coochie breathe (yeah). / Shake that ass, bitch, hands on your knees (ho). / Hands on your knees (ho). Hands on your knees (ow).”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, as if we had forgotten that lost innocence can never be restored (or perhaps as if we are bitter that those before us had forgotten that lost innocence can never be restored), we get the following—relatively tame—tapestry of violence and sexuality from the eight-year-old Atlanta rapper Lil RT, who can be seen in the video throwing cash around as the opportunistic adults behind him, his twilight-zone guardians, take deep drags from Newport loosies (egging “lil nigga” on with glee)—perhaps the same adults who, in a later video, applaud him as he smacks and even takes some sniffs (easy, in fairness, given his height) of the twerking ass of a thonged striper.
If she ain't suckin dick, lil bitch, you can get the fuck up out my shit
Hundred round, hit him with the Glock, take a fucker down
Hundred round, bitch, we hittin that kill, we gon take him down
Twelve get behind me, we gon do sixty fuckin miles, yeah
I'm in a Lamborghini, keep on talkin, bitch I'm in a Lamborghini
Point that beam up on his head
Took his shit, he went out bad
Fifty rounds, nigga know not play wit me
I'll shoot his ass right in the ground
Hand her out
Step on lil bro grave, hit him in his face
If she gon suck the dick, go crazy
Bitch, I'm in a Lamb, keep on talkin
Hit him with this glam
Bitch, I hand up with the Glock
Hit him in the Porsche, hit him with the Glock
I'll take him down
Hit him in his face, make lil bro drop like he okay
Bitch, I got the Glock up on my side
If hе try to run, clap him in the leg, lil nigga drop
Bitch, I'm in the sun
Bitch, I'm in Lamborghini, keep on talkin
Cuz bitch, I'm in the sun
Bitch, I'll throw a bullet out there, hit you in your fuckin face
And that bitch got switch up on, the Glock
Hit him in the K, that bitch got blicked
Hit him in his face (Ah, ah)
She suck the dick just go crazy
Bitch, I'm in a Lamb he keep on talkin, hit him in the mouth
Bitch, I got a Draco up on this shit, fifty round the glick
Hit him in the face, now lil bruh, he a fuckin bitch
Hundred round, hit him with the Glock, we never been took down
Hundred round, hit him with the Glock, we gon take him down
Bitch, she wanna suck the dick
Bitch, I'm from the west side
Not from east side, lil bitch, I'm from the west
Pussy boy, he tryna play
Hit him with the fuckin drac
That bitch got spent up on his day
Bitch, I'm 345, lil baby
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—especially given the taboo on blaming black failings and unfavorable disparities on anything ultimately but white supremacy, and especially given, in particular, the chronic deflection away from the role that black cultural attitudes play in the alarming statistics (blacks are over four times more likely to be victims of homicide than whites; black students account for over thirty-five percent of suspensions despite being around only fifteen percent of the student body; blacks are incarcerated at more than five times the rate of whites; blacks are over five times more likely to be suffer from gonorrhea than whites; blacks account for almost half the number of new HIV cases despite constituting merely thirteen percent of the population; blacks have lower graduation rates than whites in high school and college; and so on)—a quick scan of the music dominating our airwaves would have an intelligence new to Earth thinking we are dead-set, almost as if humanity itself were at stake, on grooming a black culture consumed with murder, cruelty, drug-abuse, consumerism, and low-level thinking—the constant repetition a sort of mass hypnosis.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, for the war Chris Rock in Bring the Pain called “the civil war between niggers and blacks,” the glorified representation of “niggas” in the media serves as such an effective enlistment campaign (rivaling both “I Want You" Uncle Sam posters and “Be All That You Can Be" commercials) that it would not be a surprise to learn that, at least among those who recognize and hate the war, more than a few citizens across the color line are too afraid even to turn on PBS in fear that the orcs have infiltrated there too—perhaps giving stinky twerk dances to the new blunt-toking Mr. Rogers (Dat Nigga Roger), whose trolley to the “Hood of Make-It-Make-Sense” is a mega dildo that travels through a mouth superimposed with CGI over a vaginal canal between spread black thighs (like in the Shenseea and Megan Thee Stallion music video for “Lick”) and whose characters reflect the best-of-the-best stereotypes glorified in mainstream music.
King Friday, known for his lavish tastes (platinum grill, minks), is a gangbanger pimp from Chiraq who made his way up—in the most ruthless way imaginable—through an intricate network of drug trafficking, extortion, and fraud schemes.
Queen Sara, known for being a “straight freak” and “killer on the low,” is King Friday’s current ride-or-die (the last one scared to come back to the palace “cuz a bitch got put in her place with these claws”)—a ride-or-die down for whatever as a form of protest to what she regards, albeit in different terms (“niggas be hatin a loud black bitch), as misogynoir: taking a shit on the king’s chest like Suki; letting her chambermaids “suck that pussy while dat nigga fuckin”; all that shit “that only the nastiest bitches do.”
Lady Aberlin—a live character played by Shenseea herself, and perhaps the most positive black portrayal in the show (despite having started an OnlyFans at 14 “to get that bag”)—is an aspiring designer of a various clothing-line ideas she hopes will blow up at her HBCU (“Inner Thot Uprising,” “Irresponsibly Queer,” “Anal Percs,” “#SlideInHisDM & #SlipItInHisDrink,” “I support Homecoming Hoetations”) and is also an aspiring singer who gives us, yes, the same old hypersexuality, but with a Jamaican patois (“Hack up mi body and slap up mi pussy jaw” and “Pre-cum slime, when ya buss ya still incline”).
Lady Elaine is a “white bitch” with cornrows and a nympho predilection for getting “blacked” by “them mandingo bucks.”
Hilda Dingleboarder is a perc addict known for “slicing hoes” and giving the best “sloppy toppy”—to the king and, yes, even to the queen (“cuz that bitch got a big-ass fat clit”).
X the Owl is a seller of Newport loosies “and who be flyin from dem cops.”
and so on down the cee-lo line of jezebels and thugs whose predilection for designer goods blings as brightly as their aversion to “school and other white shit.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, in light of all the raunchy and downright predatory lyrics of penitentiary-and-pine-box behavior glorified (tremendously glorified, as if it were part of some psyop mission), it seems surprising that thug and ratchet versions of classic fairy tales have yet to hit major theaters—something like the following remake of Cinderella, a remake much more ruinous to black girls than the Brandy version (which merely threatened, so some defenders of black dignity worried, to entrench white beauty standards); a remake that will really drive the knife into the very heart of the black family, especially with the help of reality TV (which, instead of showing black woman who are entrepreneurs and scientists, shows black woman who only value money and shiny things and who are boisterous and uncontrollable like jungle beasts less prone to pain and who throw drinks at each other and who talk bad about each other and who launch the most atrocious obscenities at each other and who look like weave-wearing orcs with BBLs and Botox); a remake, really driving into the souls of young people how happy black girls are to be objectified and degraded, written in the screenplay style of forced hood vernacular for pandering reasons all-too-typical today).
La’Cinda’Relle: Hustle, Heart, and Heels
La’Cinda’Relle (brought to life with ratchet flair by Sexyy Red) struts the hustlin heat of Houston’s housin projects in hood flops and bonnet, two twerks ahead of the haters: “♫ Yeah I be fuckin! ♫” she screams (cuz everyone stay in a bitch’s biness anyway), “♫ while gossip-ass hoes ain’t gettin nuttin! ♫” This ghetto princess owns her reputation: loud, rude, and most definitely nasty. She be out in them streets stank walkin with zero apologies—neck bent as fuck, one hand on hip and the other snappin shut with a shut-it-down clap: “Sorry boo, yo’ man mine now! Bye, bitch. Bye!” And best believe them claws finna slash a hoe. She be smirkin down any bitch tryna stare. “Hide your mans bitches cuz I’m bout that life. ♫ Bi but straight savage. / I be snatchin niggas and beatin baby mama asses! ♫”
A late riser “cuz a baddie need sleep,” La’Cinda gets up round 1pm—dry as fuck but with a stank-ass side-eye “Tsk” at the kitchen faucet. You know a Taurus bitch stubborn. She’ll just stay dry if there ain’t no juice in the house, something purple or red. She ain’t give a fuck. She got better things to do. Her thing? Scrollin that phone. Snappin selfies for the gram: “Slay????” and “Who gone check me?? #ratchetandproud.” Maury paternity scandals on blast, she be on the couch watchin her nails in the sunlight from all angles. For real, them claws be catching sunbeams like they owe her and shit! A bitch be hangry, though: eyes be rollin at all them “whack hoes” that be on social media. La’Cinda crazy. She be firin straight shots at them bitches. “Hmm. Ain’t shit, hoe!” “Tsk. He was in my DMs last week. Basic-ass, bitch.” “Oh, yous a model now? Tsk. Must be for Dollar General.” She be saying that shit but she also be posting that shit in the comments! Ahahaha. Scrollin be stressin La’Cinda. “Need to step my shit up. Ain’t no Becky bitch gone have an ass bigger than mines!” For real. A black girl gotta have goals. And like or not, a BBL so she can stunt on all them skanks online—that’s La’Cinda’s. Facts.
The OG next door (played by none other than Lil Kim), a real bitch known for that food stamp hustle, be sliding through round this time with blunts and love—hood love: “Girl, you outclass all them hoes, out here thinkin they cute and shit.” “Miss Thang”—that’s what the streets be callin her. But La’Cinda be callin her “godmother.” She ain’t really know the backstory, though—just always did. Nah mean?
La’Cinda needs her godmother. And she be ridin hard for her godmother. That’s one bitch she won’t clap back at. That’s facts. And it ain’t just cuz she got half a foot from diabetes. Disability ain’t never stop La’Cinda from checkin a bitch. Nah, its cuz she love her godmother, like really love a bitch. They fuckin, no doubt. They been fuckin since La’Cinda was like 9. Damn, time be flyin and shit. But it go deeper than that. Who gave a bitch her first deuce-deuce to sip? Her godmother. Who put a bitch on to her favorite movie (B.A.P.S), which she still be watchin all the time? Her godmother. Who put a bitch on to her second favorite movie (Eve’s Bayou), which showed La’Cinda how much a freak she was (cuz, yeah, she would’ve fucked her own daddy, rode than nigga’s dick in the chair and stole that nigga from her mom, if she was Meagan Good).
And yeah, her godmother needs La’Cinda too. She wants La’Cinda to be the difference and she has the wisdom to make that be. See the godmother knows fear. Fear stopped her from bein that bitch in the past. (Flashback to the nineties when she stopped fuckin her sis’s man on some conscience shit even though he had that New Jack dough.) She’ll be damned if La’Cinda repeats them same mistakes and sit here all day throwin shade at bitches. “You gotta get yours, girl. We’ve been down too long. You better than fear.”
The plan? La’Cinda’s gotta finesse the local drug kingpin and rapper Prince Percocet (Finesse2Tymes). That nigga the top dog, straight up. Then? Then that body upgrade. But more importantly (cuz La’Cinda do be gettin deep with it): the clout she deserves. Sound easy, right? Hell nah. La’Cinda and Prince P go back even though it’s been a minute. She’s been on her knees straight gaggin on that pipe since like eleven, twelve. He done ran all up in that, everywhere. That nigga run a train on her with his crew—three, four times. She hustled for Prince, turned tricks for that nigga. That was until her ma—as if the bitch ain’t know wildin firsthand (Bitch, please!)—threatened to put her in the system if she went round him again. And now Prince’s game done blown up big time, in just like two years. Prince got baddies straight clingin, livin that boss life. So yo: how’s our girl La’Cinda gone make her mark?
Her godmother’s got the 411: Rap. Put that shit up on the Gram. Mix in some photos of La’Cinda fanning some hunnids. That’s it. La’Cinda good but she still a diamond in the rust. La’Cinda’s gotta step up them bars if she wants Prince. Spit fire while makin shit clap and she’ll lock that nigga down for good. And trust, her godmother stay ready to ride for a bitch, keepin it a hunnid (kinda like that voodoo auntie in “Eve’s Bayou”). And you know the godmother gone spit a verse for the old heads. That way La’Cinda can know the basics, the fundamentals. I mean, how we gone have Lil Kim in the piece if she ain’t spittin like at least once in the movie? Feel me?
“Now you see, ain’t no pussy warm as mine—
long as mine. Ain't no love as strong as this.
When I sucked your dick, it was like smokin a roach
Uhh. Why go from first class to coach?”
La’Cinda’s be needin her own vibe, though. She can’t be a copy of the past, nah mean? She gotta so somethin real ratchet for the times. Cuz in the 90s black women wasn’t as freaky as they is today. This sound good when you say it but it ain’t easy to do. La’Cinda’s voice ain’t feel right when she try and write it out, nails lookin all cramped and awkward and shit. Ahahaha. “Tsk, a bitch feel like she in school and shit.” Her godmother hands her the blunt and goes down on a bitch, munchin rough like she like. “Relax baby girl. Can’t be thinkin hard. Just relax and it’ll flow. Let mama take care of this. Trust.”
Relax? Pssh, La’Cinda’s got too many haters to relax. And it ain’t just them dusty bitches from the block. Haters be deep in the fam too. Them stuck-up half-sisters stay throwin shade. They think plans for college and usin words like “simultaneously” and “renaissance” and listenin to jazz and drinkin water and refusin to eat Popeyes everyday makes them better than a bitch. Steady chasin whiteness, no lie. This hoe wanna be an engineer. That hoe wanna be a veterinarian. Champagne brunches and shit. That’s all fine and good. Cuz you know a bitch bougie too. But they wanna be actin all manners: sippin on that shit, pinky out and shit. Hoes fake as fuck. Borin ass water-drinkin bitches. They ain’t never put no Perc up they ass. And they damn sure ain’t never eat a nigga ass!
If tryna relax wasn’t hard enough, La’Cinda’s wicked half-sisters like to snoop at doors and shit cuz they think the godmother’s a “bad influence.” So yeah, they know La’Cinda’s finna do somethin big. That’s when they really start on all that uppity mess. Them nosy-ass bitches pull the same white shit they did on La’Cinda’s mom dukes. But La’Cinda ain’t goin back to school like that. And they really think they can get La’Cinda to stop sellin her body, sellin what’s hers? Fuck outta here! They really think they can get La’Cinda to stop talkin whore shit in her raps? That’s how she’s livin! Think they can shut her up, change her flow? Nah. La’Cinda gone stay black no matter who switches up. Always black, always proud, always ratchet.
You know drama gone strike. And it does. One night the wicked half-sisters corner La’Cinda. They say she gotta get tested for STDs. “Y’all salty cuz I fucked boff ya’ll absent-ass daddies. Got more child support from them niggas than ya’ll ever get. Uh. Fuck around and I’ll make one of you bitches a sister-auntie and shit.” But they just keep on with that white shit. They keep pushin. They go on bout how it’s unfair they got to pay for La’Cinda’s ways. La’Cinda ain’t tryna hear all that mess bout crabs again. Cuz, yeah, she admits it. She spread that shit round the house. But it ain’t nothin some spray can’t fix like she been done said (like five times)! So La’Cinda warns them: “You Oreo bitches finna die. Move back.” But they follow her into the kitchen, all up in her face. And so she’s gotta do what she’s gotta do. Boffum bitches, boff get stabbed the fuck up. La’Cinda out here breaking chains at this point, nah mean? She stabs and stabs them jealous hoes. “Rise above these circumstances, sellout hoes.”
After goin through they shit for some Advil, La’Cinda bounces to her godmother’s apartment with the quickness. Her godmother tells her to dip and act like she been chillin at the block party down the way. The problem is, La’Cinda’s barefoot. But you know the godmother always clutch. She hands La’Cinda an original pair of 1985 Air Jordans. She had them shits on a shelf to remember her brother, a rapper blasted nine times in the face when he was only twenty four (rest in power). Time be tickin, but them laces a struggle cuz you already know La’Cinda got them nails. The godmother hands her the blunt and helps her, though. It’s one of them moments. Even ratchet bitches cry.
When she see Prince at the party with all them thirsty hoes, La’Cinda already know the move. She grabs the mic and the anthem just flows out even though she ain’t really work on it (except for that time she spit a lil somethin somethin for the roach she named “Gus Gus”: the fat one that be lovin Apple Floats cereal, a hard motherfucker like her—ain’t even move and shit when she threw her phone at it). No cap, them big-ass Jordans give her extra powers. Like she can fly. But real talk? That blunt her godmother had her hit before she left (we see this shit in a flashback)—yo, that shit was straight laced with PCP. Angel wings—nah mean?
The anthem? Yep, none other than Sexyy Red’s real banger “Pound Town.” So yeah, it’s easy to picture how fire it is. The Prince grins, real platinum like his chains (as we would expect). He rubs his hands and bops his head, all tatted up and shit. But when La’Cinda’s song end with a full-on squirt show? Yep, it’s a wrap for that nigga’s heart. This bitch can spray, that bitch can spray—fine. But no other bitch, believe it, finna do that shit with all them eyes. La’Cinda’Rella, though, ain’t no punk-ass shy hoe.
So boom, La’Cinda got her king. She got her alibi (cuz cops straight killin black folk). And she got proof of what we been done knew from jump, even if she didn’t believe it her damn self: La’Cinda was and always will be that bitch—100%.
But somethin always poppin off in the hood. We as a people stay forgettin who the real ops are! Just as Prince bout to step to La’Cinda and claim a hoe, on God the party gets shot up. Believe that!? The shooter slips on La’Cinda’s gush (gush, not pee), and she dips out. Prince, ducked behind his ride, peeps La’Cinda lose one of them Jordans in a rush down the block. He can’t help but scoop it up. That’s got the magic of the night in it.
How’s he gone find a bitch? That’s the question. He ain’t know where she stay at. He could ask around, yeah. But he finna be romantic with it, make it like fate. The smell of the sneaker gives him that lightbulb. Popeyes be comin through the pores and shit if you eat it on the regular like that. Straight up: that shit hits different when it’s a daily vibe. So he gets the idea to post up there. After only like two days, sure enough the princess comes in hangry and rude. He bout to preach that shit that be holdin a hoe down? He finna change a bitch? Nah, he go: “I love me a ratchet-ass hoe. And you comfortable with it too.”
La’Cinda becomes his main bitch, not no side piece: someone he tells his plans to, someone he has his hoes munch up whenever she like or whenever she have a bad day. He a real nigga. He invests in her. He likes when she be loud and nasty. He blesses her with what every black girl need, even if she won’t admit it: trips to Miami, Percs in her ass, and that BBL—yup, even a new set of titties on top.
And so in the middle of all that drama and hustle, La’Cinda’Relle rises. Dead that white-folk fairytale shit. She ain’t no Brandy Cinderella. A bitch be on a different tip. La’Cinda that turnt up bitch from the streets!
It could just sit back and revel in our world where it is a surprise that we have yet to be blessed with the straight-to-video sequels of these ratchet reimaginings, such as the following second installment in the La’Cinda’Relle series (conspicuously downgraded in writing and production quality).
La’Cinda’Relle 2: Lip Smackin
Prince Percocet (Finesse2Tymes), known on the streets for his influence, makes La’Cinda’Relle (Sexyy Red) the queen of his empire after that block-party performance that stole a nigga’s heart. Together, they control the block and beyond. They got the drugs, the pussy, and the rhymes—a true hood romance. Rumors be floatin bout a mixtape droppin with the two of them, a blend of her ratchet anthems bout wet-ass hood fuckin and his hard-hittin bars bout killin crazy niggas: straight drillin bodies (Brrrap-Brrrap-Brrrap). The streets be watchin.
La’Cinda's fame grows like the amount of face and titty and ass tats a bitch be havin. And we see her doin crazy joints, like her freestyle bout abortion. They be tryna shut down a bitch’s right in her state, Texas. But La’Cinda be gettin political and she ain’t havin it. And best believe they singin that joint right back at them Karens and Beckys outside Planned Parenthood.
Bathroom of the club young and havin fun—
dumb niggas call me ‘Dump’
cuz a cunt needs some daddy cum!
From bein the talk of the block, she becomes the talk of the city—the whole state really. You know a bitch got new nails almost every day and crazy followers. Just one pic get like over a thousand likes and shit. #QueenLaCinda and #HoodRoyalty and #fuckBrandyCinderella—everyone starts usin them joints, not just LaCinda and her crew.
Everythin sweet in La’Cinda’s world right? Nah. It seem like trouble be findin black folk. See La’Cinda thought flexin on the gram would cure a bitch’s pain. Come to find out, her pain goes deep. She got eyes on her now but still be feelin it. Not to get all sad and shit, but yeah: her godmother passed away. Turns out they ain’t get all the diabetes when they chopped a bitch’s foot. And it gets worse. Prince ain’t fuckin La’Cinda cuz he say somethin wrong with the pussy. To be honest, La’Cinda smell that shit too. It be stress and shit. She try and smoke to calm down, but it get a bitch scared inside. She try to hide that cuz a bitch can’t be vulnerable. If you be vulnerable that’s when jealous hoes strike. And yeah, jealousy be brewin in the projects. Too many bitches, some thinkin they close with Prince, begin to scheme. You know a hoe can’t stand no real bitch like La’Cinda doin well for herself. Why can’t we be better for our community? For real, we got babies. (Damn white people behind it all, yo. They be fakin trips to the moon and shit. Anyway, I digress . . . .)
One day, as La’Cinda’s chillin with her crew at the local Popeye’s parkin lot, an old op named Tasha (yep, played by Sukihana) comes through with a crew of hood rats and a baby strapped to her chest like she tryna be the most ratchet. La’Cinda look at the bitch for a second like lookin at family and shit. But she can’t be soft cuz Tasha there for business and La’Cinda ain’t finna look weak.
A rap battle goes down. It gets real personal and shit. Tasha raps all this smack bout how Prince the daddy. La’Cinda grown now. She ain’t finna rip that lil nigga out and kick it. Her godmother told her to move in secret, nah mean? How she gone run an empire in jail? So she went after a bitch with words instead.
You can’t deep throat Prince.
I take that dick right down.
You know why a bitch famous?
A song called “Pound Town.”
La’Cinda’s crew was all like “Ooh” and “Yeah.” And you know you can’t stop them bitches from singin the joint: “My pussy pink. My booty hole brown.” But just keepin it real, it kinda weak to be like “I’m the shit cuz I did this or that song.”
It was like Tasha was thinkin that same shit. Cuz while all them bitches cheerin, she keep goin: “Nah, bitch. Weak.” Kept repeatin it. “Nah, bitch. Weak”—the baby giggling and shit. And for real, she was out to snatch a soul that day. Cuz after everyone went quiet, a bitch went right off the top.
But you know what that nigga be tellin me in bed
rubbin my feet while I be touchin up his dreads?
“La’Cinda pussy stank like somethin stuck inside dead.”
So I know why he go to you when he needs that sloppy head:
pity for a bitch cuz he be fuckin me instead.
He was suckin you at twelve? Well, he was dickin me at ten!
And he stay dickin me down cuz he know my shits best—
Steady asshole lickin, I be takin shits on his chest!
Everyone went crazy. On the real, even some of La’Cinda’s own people was like: “Tasha got that ass.” La’Cinda started feelin that panic again. She reached for that kitchen knife—yep, that same one from part 1. She was bout to do that bitch like she did them wicked half-sisters—and that lil gigglin nigga too. But then Prince grabbed her up cuz he know a bitch.
Prince takes boffum bitches and goes, “Ya’ll gotta get along. We got this baby right here.” That’s when he tells La’Cinda that Tasha movin in. He a real nigga, though. So he’s straight up. “Tasha my number one now. But that ain’t mean you ain’t my number one too. La’Cinda!” La’Cinda smacked them lips as she do, lookin sad and shit (like when she hangry).
So now La’Cinda livin with Tasha and helpin take care of a baby. La’Cinda really ain’t havin it at first. She thinkin bout drownin this lil nigga in the tub. She think about pluggin its asshole with crazy Perc-30s. The fantasies by gettin wild. Prince ain’t touchin her cuz ain’t nothin she can do to stop that stank. And Tasha be real loud with the fuckin like she rubbin it in.
La’Cinda be wishin shit could go back like it was. She like to put on them sneakers her godmother gave her just to remember cuz it all changed so fast. Then one day Tasha come out the room, pussy drippin cuz she cruel, and go: “Bitch how the fuck you get them Jordan’s? Let me find out yo lil skinny ass stole them shits.” La’Cinda bout to check a bitch for real, like a stab a bitch. But again, the godmother on her shoulder tell a bitch to relax.
That’s when La’Cinda goes on the ground and screams for her godmother, the only bitch ever held La’Cinda down. And La’Cinda ain’t never get better head than that: made straight taffy out that pussy. She huggin the shoe and cryin. Tasha don’t care though. “Them 1985 Jordans. Bitch I know you stole them. No one got them shits. And when I go clean out my grandmama’s spot, they ain’t nowhere. You lived right by the bitch. Two and two.”
La’Cinda tells Tasha how they was a gift from the only person ever had her back. And yo, you ain’t gone believe it. As they get talkin it become clear that Tasha’s grandmama is La’Cinda’s godmother! La’Cinda can see the godmother in Tasha’s face and shit. That’s what she saw that day of the rap battle. La’Cinda gotta hug a bitch.
They share stories of the godmother and her half foot. They laugh and they smoke a blunt and La’Cinda feels good for the first time in a long time. It’s like she can relax again. And Tasha speak just like the godmother too! She got all that advice and shit! She tell La’Cinda to put yogurt in her pussy. Tasha go: “You do that for a week and yo shit taste like this.” La’Cinda tasted that pussy, best believe—been too horny over the months of not being touched by Prince. She sucked that bitch good too, just like her godmother. And yeah, once a nasty bitch always a nasty bitch. So you know she sucked out all that Prince nut.
So yeah, La’Cinda and Tasha join up. Prince be walkin them like dogs by their hair, red and green like Kool-Aid, across the Popeyes parkin lot and shit—boffum bitches down on all fours! See, a bitch gotta have humility if she finna grow. That was one thing the godmother didn’t see. What makes a basic hoe basic be that they ain’t gone never change. La’Cinda ain’t basic. She a bitch of the times. She good with bein one of two queens. White folk call it “polyamory.”
Nah, La’Cinda ain’t compromise if that’s what you be thinkin. Clothes be changin with the seasons, but that don’t mean a bitch different underneath. La’Cinda stay who she is. She a taurus. Ain’t no one ever gone change no taurus! Best believe she stay on that hoochie mama shit. As soon as them bitches can they drop that lil nigga at its granny’s to eat and get washed up and all that—and then yep, La’Cinda and Tasha be right out there all night drunk and blunted and Perc’ed up, bouncin ass in the streets and ain’t givin a fuck! “We outside tonight! We outside tonight!”
So shit’s real good. Now that La’Cinda pussy straight again, Prince beatin it up big time. And now she got a real-ass bitch sucking that clit at the same time. “#blessed”—best believe that’s the new hashtag. And now La’Cinda bout to hit it big time. She know it. She finna release all they sex tapes to get they names known, specially hers. Cuz even though a bitch in love, she still gone look out for number one.
And best believe we gone be like Fast and Furious in this bitch. Cuz black folk need that dough. So after the credits role the camera gone come back after some months and shit and zoom right onto La’Cinda’s belly. 1How that pussy gone be so good and a bitch not get pregnant? So that sets everything up for part 3, where we see a real young nigga—La’Cinda’s son (played by Lil RT)—killin it on the mic. He be talking about buckin niggas with Glocks, gettin head, makin bread—all that shit that be gettin crazy respect. But its more of a shock cuz the lil nigga still ain’t even ten and shit.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, irrespective of the true feelings of these top black role models performing—as if they were the plants of some Palpatine of white supremacy—the jungle-sexuality we all demand (demand with the entitled fervency of a Veruca Salt ready to stomp Farrakhan’s violin into pieces), the prime targets of these popular depictions (namely, malleable young money-spenders whose lifelong thought-and-behavior patterns and understanding of social norms are still too early in the oven to resist sexual insanities delivered in such tempting colors) not only will walk around with increased arousal in head and hormone (a cold-water splash to dormant forces, perfect for more middle-school girls impaled throughout math and lunch and gym with butt-plugs in emulation of twerking rap stars and perfect for more underage black mothers of poverty), but also will learn how black people are prone to feel and think and act—this way,
(1) yet another generation of people, black and white, will find it difficult to picture black bodies without also picturing extreme sexual organs in extreme sexual situations of dehumanization;
(2) yet another generation of people, as if we were back in antebellum days where sexual allure and guesses at potential fertility factored into auction-block sales, will deny sexual innocence to black girls, will continue to lift their skirts and grope their vulvas at black spring break (“cuz a bitch’ll always be a bitch”), will continue to link their bodies to lust (such that (a) an AI representation of a black Taylor Swift on Instagram would result in a slew of comments giving her hypersexual names like Taylor Slit or (b), and to give the clearest proof of the point, a statue or painting of the Virgin Mary as black would read at least subconsciously to whites and blacks alike as blasphemous, the mere darkening rendering the purest woman a “freak-a-leek jezebel hoe-ass bitch”);
(3) yet another generation of black boys and black girls will believe that their primary value resides in their sexual organs and that their desirability lies foremost in being voracious in bed;
(4) yet another generation of white people will feel (and with increasing odds of being proven right) that dating a black person will be like an exotic escapade “in the wild” (potentially a Percocet-filled ghetto-gagging anal-gapping adventure) with someone who must have a lot of experience (especially if they are really dark and have a lot of curves);
(5) a new generation of everyday black people, failing to live up to the suffocating ideals of being magically irresistible or being big-dicked dominators or being ever-dripping and so every-ready to pole ride or so on, will find themselves mentally terrorized into confusion and into self-loathing feelings of inauthenticity and excommunication.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—even though these performers are for the most part just playing characters (and are not really unquenchable beasts ready to reduce everyone they encounter to carnal objects)—the artist-character divide definitely seems to be blurring: all these artists getting BBLs and Percocet tattoos, and saying all these raunchy things on social media, and leaking their own porn videos, and twerking outside all night drunk and on drugs and with lime-green hair just like the characters they play in their music videos.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—even though these performers are largely just kids pushing boundaries in the safe space of art (and perhaps in some cases just trying to be comedic or even, at least before being quickly coopted, to satirize the stereotypical black image)—yet another cohort of young people swamped by the behemoth-money-backed predominance of hypersexual black performers (young people gullible enough to believe in Santa, inexperienced enough to take satire literally) will be primed to see black bodies as what black people themselves (emulating at least to some degree the mega stars who serve as their chief role models) will be daily nudged to see themselves as: mere carnal vessels, fuck spaces rather than rational citizens with assets beyond ass.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where black hypersexuality and black hyperviolence are painted in mainstream music and media with enough repetition, not to mention with enough dazzling colors for audiences so young, to undermine what those worried about the harms it inflicts upon black communities (Candace Owens, for instance) will be tempted to deny (especially given the typical American pattern of overcorrecting backlash)—namely, the undeniably hygienic roles (roles quite similar to that of an ayahuasca trip into “divine terror,” roles not to be underestimated) that shocking artists and their shocking content play for humanity’s maturation and wellbeing:
(a) counterbalancing the important but potentially-stifling conservative yin undertow marked by concern with orderly maintenance of the very nests necessary for yang adventure;
(b) exposing the shadow elements inside all humans (the Behemoths and Leviathans, the inner Hitlers, the backside of Yahweh in the Book of Job), a knee-knocking exposure crucial for putting us in a better position for healthier relationships (because by having faced our dark facets, and what heinous beliefs and desires and actions we are capable of, we are less likely to deny them of ourselves by deflecting them onto others) and crucial for setting us up to be more effective agents (because by having faced the dark core to ourselves, by having developed a working relationship with it, we are more likely at least to redirect its ferality instead of being taken by disruptive surprise as slaves of its taste, say, for altar boys).[5]
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, as one might expect given the fact that presidential candidates must be photographed embracing the Twerkzillas and Lil Drive-Bys to stand even a chance at winning, the antisocial and nihilistic and consumerist music is so wanted by everyone (like refined sugar) and is so money making (like the oil and factory-farming industries) despite poisoning so many even beyond blacks, and is often seen as so aspirational (kids wanting to be just like the thug and slut characters who appear to have it all) that there seems little feasible way to implement the variety of possible strategies for beating back this plague:
(1) blocking children—or even those who cannot pass at least certain sorts of exams (critical thinking exams, ethics exams, maturity exams)—from accessing the content;
(2) educating people, children especially, as to why the messaging is toxic, especially when not seen as largely just like TV wrestling and tabloid newspapers (not real, made up);
(3) incentivizing other voices to expand beyond the monolith, in particular, and incentivizing less sheepish behavior, in general.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—no, despite what we say, it is not just that we “like the beat" and do not even listen to the words—we all have in us this death drive, this destructive urge, that likes to eat cake while enjoying people (in this case, black people) ruin their own people with glorified depravity—this at least scratching the Thanatos itch given that the threat of prison and other negative repercussions stop most of us from arson and rape and murder, from tossing puppies out the window and drowning infants in the tub.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where it is easy, in effect, to imagine black-activist C. Delores Tucker, along with a cadre of historical heroines she has invoked in her crusade against the hyperviolent and hypersexual and hyperdruggie lyrics of mainstream rap (Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer, Mary McLeod Bethune), bathed in sunlight streaming through the stained glass of a church, heads bowed in silent prayer that black people be released from this hypnotic blight, until suddenly a Botox gang of hair-hatted Uruk-Hai with Snuffleupagus eyelashes (Sexyy Red, Sukihana and her chest-strapped infant clearly suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome, Flo Milli, Erica Banks, and a third-trimester Summer Walker) kick through the sanctuary door smelling of nasty-bitch Popeyes and chanting Sukihana lines in their orc tongue (“We ain't got no morals, we some fuckin hoes. . . . Gotta deepthroat I need a BBC / Go retarded on the dick I got ADD”), ultimately silencing the uppity screams of these civil-rights leaders with the same gag balls they used moments earlier on Samara Cyn and Shuniiadaballer and Bahamadia and Noname and Tierra Whack (Kool-Aid red, Kool-Aid green, like their hair) and rifling through their purses for Percocet money and tearing off their clothes for the sake of sucking them and pegging them to nonconsensual orgasm (“These old bitches be likin it and shit”)—several of the lewd cohort, Sexyy Red with the greatest distance and Sukihana with the worst stench, squirting upon the naked matriarchs for iPhones held high by Erica Banks and Summer Walker with fingernails as ridiculous as their pasted-down edges (no less ghoulish in spite of their bright colors), squirting and squirting (Sukihana “inadvertently” pooping a bit as if this were childbirth, the white paste of a half dissolved Perc-30 tablet leading the way) only to cackle and sing the most tormenting of her anti-family anti-optimistic lines (“I'm faithful to a nigga that's married / Steal niggas, I'm the Grinch, Jim Carrey / I wanna choke right now / Put the dick in my throat right now . . . . We ain't got no morals, we some fuckin hoes. . . . I don't want a pastor, I want a drug dealer / I like a real nigga, real killer. . . . I'ma fuck your baby daddy and I'ma fuck him again / I'ma suck his dick, without no hands / Spend his bread then fuck yo' man / You heard what I said, what the fuck I said / I'll beat yo' ass then fuck yo' man. . . . I take yo' nigga, put this pussy on his tongue / Deep-throatin dick, I got cum all in my lungs”) all, yes, in mockery of Mrs. Tucker’s 1993 speech on the antiblack nature of mainstream rap, which Flo Milli plays from YouTube in the background to heighten the demonism of the orgy:
Enough is enough. . . . I am here to put the nation on notice that violence perpetrated against women through the music industry in the forms of “gangsta rap” and misogynist lyrics will not be tolerated any longer! Principle must come before profit. . . . [We must stop] continuously exposing our youth to negative media that distorts their images of male-female relationships, that undermines the stability of our families communities and nation by encouraging violence abuse and sexism as acceptable behaviors and perpetuates the cycle of low self-esteem. . . Images that degrade our dignity and are an insult to our children, our families and communities, concern us too—and that includes all this gangster rap and misogynist lyrics: music that glorifies and promotes violence with guns knives or drugs and denigrates and defames women. And with a release of Snoop Doggy Dogg’s debut albumDoggy Stylethat includes “artwork” that is nothing but pornographic smut available to any child to go in and buy with the album and with a record—that has got to stop. You want to know why I'm on the warpath? When I saw this, I said “that's it: we march again!” And we’re gonna keep on marching!Long hair, pretty face with a fat ol' ass / Make him eat my pussy with no strings attached / Chanel purse, with the pumps to match / I like fucking drug dealers that move that crack / First petty on my toes, I'm a freak ass hoe / Fuck him in the back seat I need a Maybach so / I'm a rich ghetto hoe, I do not fly coach / First class pussy bitch I'm a manola hoe / Can't wear Vicky Secrets, with all this coochie I got on me / Pussy falling off the bone but he won't come on / Cuz I’ma ride his face till he sleep / Bitch I’ma, creep, creep like TLC / Put this ass in yo face like a BLT / Gotta, deepthroat, I need a BBC / Go retarded on the dick I got ADD / Suki-hanay, Choki-hanay / Good pussy, lotta kids like Beyoncè / Might fuck him for a chain, Eliante / Put this head on him turn him to a Kanye / We fuckin niggas, in Paris / I can see the dick through the Ameris / I'm faithful to a nigga that's married / Steal niggas, I'm the Grinch, Jim Carrey / I wanna choke right now / Put the dick in my throat right now
For four-hundred years profit came before principle, as black women bore the brunt of slave masters degradation. But even through the middle passage, the peculiar institution of slavery, the spirit of black women and their families could not be broken. Today, however, through the lyrics of rappers who display no respect for women, no respect for families, and little respect for themselves, the souls of our sisters are being destroyed and so too their progeny. All of us have watched as the industry has grown. We have watched not really knowing, not really understanding, not first realizing the damage that is inherent in what some thought were merely words. Now we see the direct and indirect effects. We see the rise in murders, in abuse, in batteries—teen prostitution and teen suicide. We hear the wailing mothers, the grieving sisters, the tormented brothers and fathers and children planning their own funerals. . . . We feel their hopelessness and helplessness and we embrace their pain. . . . As I see it there arethreethings wrong with gangsta rap and misogynist lyrics: it isobscene, it isobscene, it isobscene. . . . If the filth that is portrayed in these gangster rap videos and art is not obscene, then I submit thatnothingis obscene. . . .My rent due, nigga, let me suck on it (Let me suck on it) / Put that dick in my throat, I wanna lick on it (I wanna lick on it) / Pussy nigga, throw them bands on a trill bitch (On a trill bitch) / Big dick in my stomach, I wanna feel it (Yeah) / Bitch, I eat the cock like a Hot Pocket (A Hot Pocket) / Dance on that dick, pop, lock, and drop it (Pop, lock, and drop it) / Before a nigga fuck, I need a big deposit / Bring that dick in my cat, I want it wildin out / And eat my pussy like filet mignon (Motherfuckin cat, nigga) / I don't give a fuck about your baby mom (Fuck that pussy ass ho)/ Yeah, I'm the bitch they be hatin on / Yeah, your man be buyin me that Saint Laurent / Spend it on a bitch (Bitch) / Yeah, I told her y'all trick (Trick) / Yeah, we suckin dick, he gon bust all on my tits / We ain't got no morals, we some fuckin hoes / Put a nigga dick all between my toes / Bitch, you know the gang, you know how it go (You know how it go) / I don't eat no Wendy’s, ain't no 4 for $4 (Ain't no 4 for $4) / Pussy nigga, take me to the Poconos / And let me sit the pussy on your fuckin nose / (Let me sit this motherfuckin pussy on your motherfuckin face)
African American women have always been the protected nurturers of their homes, their families, and their communities. We marched for our rights to Selma (I was there with Dr. King), were beaten with Billy clubs, and were bitten with dogs unleashed by bull collars. We did not tolerate injustice and insults from our worst enemies then, and we sure ain't gonna accept insults from our youth now!Listen, mama, I don't want a pastor, I want a drug dealer (Drug dealer) / I like a real nigga, real killer, big stepper / He eat the pussy, cut the checks, make me feel better / He eat that thing like a dog, get it real wetter / Thug nigga, drug dealer, big guns (Big guns) / Ghetto ass pussy, whole lotta fun (Whole lotta fun) / Standin bow-legged, suckin on my thumb / I heard you got that bag, nigga, let me hold some / I like a big dick gangster that move that white (Move that white) / He can get the pussy and the head all night (Head all night) / Give me what I want, I ain't asking twice / Drop a bag on whatever, he don't ask the price / It's that good dick that got a bitch acting right / I let them other niggas go, I had to sacrifice / My friend said, "Let him go," fuck that advice / It's for now and forever and the afterlife
Although the MPCPW condemns the actions of those young people who produce such music, we also realize that we must provide other channels for them to use these multiple talents they have in a positive and wholesome way. After all, they are not the root causes of the complex socio-economic forces that are manifested in such vile entertainment. Those problems were there long before many of them were born. Those problems must be addressed if the communities that produced those gangster rappers are to survive and thrive. . . . First of all we must use all means possible to eradicate and ban the sale of illegal guns. We must remove guns from the hands of our children and our “gangsters” who are so proud of the power of the gun. That's number one. Number two: we must reinvent our educational system to include more vocational training to provide a successful transition between school and work for those who will not continue to go on to college. We must extend the school hours in the school year so that latchkey-children teachers will be from their schools instead of from the street. We must provide educational opportunities for our prisoners so that they will be productive citizens when their tour of prison is over. . . . We must provide community outreach so that our youth who have embraced the gangs as their only family will find refuge in community institutions neighborhood academies and educational programs. Convert our unused military bases into institutions of peace where men and women can be trained to become productive citizens who will contribute to the well-being of this nation, expand our nation's infrastructure where needed, and make this nation of powerful global force.I'm 5 foot but my throat 6'6" / I'm a ratchet bitch, suck a mean dick / You mad 'cuz your pussy ain't fat like this / And your man eat the pussy like chicken nuggets / I'ma suck his dick for some red bottoms / I'm a real hoe, bitch, I don't spit I swallow / And I only fuck with plugs, lil bitch I'm shallow / Put that pussy on the plug is the fuckin motto / Pussy so fat you could see it from the back / I'm a west side hoe, everybody know that / I fuck with the boosters and bitches that sell they stamps / And bitches that sell they pussy with they legs on a ramp / Put money on his books when my man in the pin / I'ma fuck your baby daddy and I'ma fuck him again /I'ma suck his dick, without no hands / Spend his bread then fuck yo' man / You heard what I said, what the fuck I said / I'll beat yo' ass then fuck yo' man / You heard what I said, what the fuck I said / I'll beat yo' ass then fuck yo' man / I need a hood ass nigga with' a long ass pipe / And I'ma lick that dick like a Mike and Ike / Cuz I'm a project chick / A freak hoe chick / A hood rat chick, I suck the skin off that dick / I got a fat ass pussy like a cameltoe / And I'ma ride that dick like an animal / I suck more dick than Anna Nicole / Suck dick if I'm rich, suck dick if I'm broke / And I'ma bust it wide open til' you see that pussy print / I bet yo' baby daddy gon pay my rent / You heard what I said, what the fuck I said / And I'll beat yo' ass then fuck yo' man
I stand before you today with millions of my sisters to say that no one has the right to degrade denigrate dishonor our disrespectful African-American women. No one has a right to poison our children's mind and destroy our African cultural heritage. That is why the women of MPCPW and our supporters will demonstrate, will go to jail again and again and again—just as we did when we demonstrated at the Wiz in December and Sam Goody yesterday. No one and no industry will be allowed to continue this social and psychological genocide of the women and girls of this nation. I stand before you today with the spirits of Sojourner Truth Harriet Tubman Fannie Lou Hamer and Mary McLeod Bethune to say this: we will defy any force that will disrespect us and our families.I take yo' nigga, put this pussy on his tongue (On his tongue)/ Deep-throatin dick, I got cum all in my lungs (In my lungs) / And you know he chew this ass, don't be dumb (Don't be dumb) / I got niggas tryna pay to eat this pussy out my thong (Yeah) / Dick all in my booty hole, I finna get my ass bleached / I don't want yo' kids, nigga, put em on my ass cheeks (Yeah) / Cuz I'm triflin, 40 Glock on my nightstand / Roll up his backwood before he put that pipe in (Fuck me nigga) / Bitch, I'm bustin juggs in a Hellcat (Skrrt) / In the backseat, gettin fucked from the back (From the back) / Don't be scared, nigga, you know I got that good cat (Know I got that good cat) / You better break a bitch off, Kit-Kat (Kit-Kat) / I just want a big dick in my esophagus (Esophagus) / These niggas love me cuz I'm pretty and I'm chocolate (And I'm chocolate) / He just popped a Perc' 30, got that perky dick / And my rent due, bitch, you know I'm takin dick / I'm hot in the 'tel ('Tel) and I'm sellin tel (Tel) / Bitch, I'm drunk as hell (Hell), where is the rotel ('Tel) dip? / I need some rotel dick (I need some motherfuckin rotel dick) / Bitch, you know I'm strapped with a stick (Doo-doo-doo) / Every Glock I got got a switch (Grrah, grrah) / Bitch, stop the car, I gotta piss (I gotta piss, ho) / He just ate my ass, he wanna switch (He wanna switch) / Now I'm eatin his ass / Eatin his ass, eatin a nigga ass / Eatin a nigga ass, we be eatin niggas ass.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where it would seem close to a cruel joke to learn that the more-urgent-than-ever song “Self-Destruction” (a) was a hip-hop hit at one time (despite sticking to an anti-violence topic for a whopping six minutes of multifaceted detail) and (b) did not dip at all into blaming white people for the destructive behavior of black communities (but instead took the Malcolm-X-Glenn-Loury approach of saying “Look at what we’re doing to ourselves!”) and (c) was made by a group that was all-black and yet at the same time called (non-ironically) The Stop the Violence Movement—an insane grouping of facts barely kept in check by the bullet-dodging phew back to normalcy we feel when we realize that this was the only single the group ever made.
Self-Destruction, ya headed for Self-Destruction
Self-Destruction, ya headed for Self-Destruction
[KRS-One]
Well, today's topic, self destruction
It really ain't the rap audience that's buggin
It's one or two suckas, ignorant brothers
Trying to rob and steal from one another
You get caught in the mid
So to crush the stereotype here's what we did
We got ourselves together
so that you could unite and fight for what's right
Not negative cuz the way we live is positive
We don't kill our relatives
[MC Delight]
Pop pop pop
when it's shot who's to blame?
Headlines, front page, and rap's the name
MC Delight here to state the bottom line
That black-on-black crime was way before our time
[Kool Moe Dee]
Took a brother's life with a knife as his wife
Cried cause he died a trifling death
When he left his very last breath
Was I slept so watch your step
Back in the sixties our brothers and sisters were hanged
How could you gang-bang?
I never ever ran from the Ku Klux Klan
and I shouldn't have to run from a black man
cause that's
Self-Destruction, ya headed for Self-Destruction
Self-Destruction, ya headed for Self-Destruction
[MC Lyte]
Funky Fresh dressed to impress ready to party
Money in your pocket, dying to move your body
To get inside you paid the whole ten dollars
Scotch taped with a razor blade taped to your collar
Leave the guns and the crack and the knives alone
MC Lyte's on the microphone
Bum rushin and crushin, snatchin and taxin
I cram to understand why brother's don't be maxin
There's only one disco, they'll close one more
You ain't guarding the door
so what you got a gun for?
Do you rob the rich and give to the poor?
Yo Daddy-O, school em some more
[Daddy-O, Wise]
Straight from the mouth of Wise and Daddy-o
Do a crime end up in jail and gotta go
Cause you could do crime and get paid today
And tomorrow you're behind bars in the worst way
Far from your family, cause you're locked away
Now tell me, do you really think crime pays?
Scheming on taking what your brother has?
You little suckers.. you talkin all that jazz.
[D-Nice]
It's time to stand together in a unity
Cause if not then we're soon to be
Self-destroyed, unemployed
The rap race will be lost without a trace
Or a clue but what to do
Is stop the violence and kick the science
Down the road that we call eternity
Where knowledge is formed and you'll learn to be
Self-sufficient, independent
To teach to each is what rap intended
But society wants to invade
So do not walk this path they laid.
It's:
Self-Destruction, ya headed for Self-Destruction
Self-Destruction, ya headed for Self-Destruction
[Ms. Melodie]
I'm Ms. Melodie and I'm a born again rebel
The violence in rap must cease and seckle
If we want to develop and grow to another level
We can't be guinea pigs for the devil
The enemy knows, they're no fools
Because everyone knows that hip-hop rules
So we gotta get a grip and grab what's wrong
The opposition is weak and rap is strong
[Doug E. Fresh]
This is all about, no doubt, to stop violence
But first let's have a moment of silence
Things been stated re-educated, evaluated
THoughts of the past have faded
The only thing left is the memories of our belated
and I hate it, when
Someone dies and gets all hurt up
For a silly gold chain by a chump; word up
It doesn't make you a big man, and
To want to go out and dis your brother man, and
You don't know that's part of the plan
Why? Cause rap music is in full demand.
Understand
Self-Destruction, ya headed for Self-Destruction
Self-Destruction, ya headed for Self-Destruction
[Just-Ice]
My name is Just-Ice a man not a prankster
I was known... as the gangster
But believe me that is no fun
The time is now to unite everyone
You don't have to be soft to be for peace
Robbin and killin and muderin is the least
You don't have to be chained by the beast
But party people it's time I release!
[Heavy D]
Aiyyo here's the situation: Idio[di]cy
Nonsense, violence, not a good policy
Therefore we must ignore, fightin and fussin
Hev is at the door so there'll be no bum-rushin
Let's get together so we'll be fallin apart
I heard a brother shot another. It broke my heart
I don't understand the difficulty, people
Love your brother, treat him as an equal
They call us animals mmm mmm I don't agree with them
I'll prove them wrong, but right is what your proving them
Take heed before I lead to what I'm sayin
Or we'll all be on our knees, prayin
[Fruitkwan]
Yo Heavy D, deep in the heart of the matter
The self-destruction is served on a platter
Makin a day not failing to aniticipate
They got greedy so they fell for the bait
That makes them a victim, picked then plucked
New jack in jail, but to the vets they're a duck
There's no one to rob, cause in jail you're a number
They never took the time to wonder about
Self-Destruction, ya headed for Self-Destruction
Self-Destruction, ya headed for Self-Destruction
[Chuck D, Flavor Flav]
Yes we urge to merge we live for the love
Of our people the hope that they get along
(Yeah, so we did a song)
Getting the point to our brothers and sisters
Who don't know the time (boyyyee, so we wrote a rhyme)
It's dead in your head, you know, I'll drive to build
And collect ourselves with intellect, come on
To revolve to evolve to self-respect
Cause we got to keep ourselves in check
Or else it's...
Self-Destruction, ya headed for Self-Destruction
Self-Destruction, ya headed for Self-Destruction
It could just sit back and revel in our world where it would seem close to opposite-day mockery to learn that the once-Rocky-level-hyping song “Optimistic” was made by a musical ensemble called “Sounds of Blackness.”
Don't give up and don't give in
Although it seems you never win
You will always pass the test
As long as you keep your head to the sky
My, my, my
You can win as long as you keep your head to the sky (you can win child)
You can win as long as you keep your head to the sky
Face toward the sky
Be optimistic
Don't you let no body stop you
As long as you keep your head to the sky
Be optimistic
You can win
As long as you keep your head to the sky
Be optimistic
You can win
As long as you keep your head to the sky
Be optimistic
You can win
As long as you keep your head to the sky
Be optimistic
________________________________
Chapter 3. Toby in Kunta Mask
I think everybody is going to be confronted with the temptation to put a cover story that prettifies what happens in their lives in place of the real story in which they are culpable and their failures are their own. [Imagine] you're . . . in an organization where you haven't worked out and fit in very well and you're black. [The temptation is] to then seize upon your blackness as, you know—[“I’m] a victim, they never liked me, they never accepted me,” or whatever. When in fact what went on was you just didn't measure up. You know, you didn't work hard enough. You didn't make the grade. . . . Or, you know, you're a criminal: you do some heinous act and now you're being punished for it. . . . And it's very easy to wrap yourself in the umbrella victimhood: you know, mass incarceration, antiracist rhetoric, and whatever. When in fact it was just your craven malicious self-regarding immorality and your heinous act that got you in the box.—Glenn Loury[6]
This definition of “safe” is always interesting because nobody would have used it that way even I think as recently as 15 years ago. And the idea is that you've suffered this kind of trauma . . . [hearing] the n-word . . . be referred to by a white man in a classroom. And I think that we’re being strongarmed into pretending to think that that makes sense by this cadre of people where the power that they have is that if you call them on the triviality and theatricality of this, you're called a dirty name [(“Racist,” “Nazi,” “White Supremacist”)] in wide open spaces and, if possible, your courses are taken away from you—you might even lose your job. Most people aren't up for that. But this really needs to stop. . . [We are] being bullied by people in the name of a spiky and fragile ideology . . . [pushed usually just by that one outspoken white student in his or her reign of terror and enabled by virtue-signaling administrators and] spectators cowering in fear. . . . It chills me to my bones to think that they're people, and a lot of them are black, who are pretending that you should be applying the word “violence” . . . to a “white man with power” using the n-word in the classroom. . . . Something is deeply, deeply wrong.—John McWhorter[7]
To reinforce and even create unfortunate realities that provide fodder for narratives of black inferiority; to cripple the will to attend to the degraded cultural and economic and educational conditions rippling out from centuries of being fuck-doll chattel (only to be denigrated and stifled on many fronts after “liberation”); to stifle any motivation to confront the in-house causes of black deficiency across countless metrics; to beguile black people away from focusing on what other successful groups focus on (their own children and family and education and neighborhoods, their own behavior and values and hopes and dreams), beguile them into a stagnant torpor (as if they were Odyssean sailors deep under the escapist spell of lotus fruit or as if they were urban laborers of 19th-century China deep under the pain-relieving haze of an opium den); to dissuade blacks from ever seeing themselves as playing some part in their failings, from reflecting on how their own attitudes contribute to their setbacks (thereby alienating them from the essential ingredient for internally-driven growth); to alienate blacks from the greatest cultural expressions, the uplifting heights of humanity, while encouraging their nourishment on empty pop and other metaphorical honey buns and quarter waters and fast-food junk; to reverse the drift away from the antiblack origins of our country (and make sure nothing mind-and-spirit-undulling like the Harlem Renaissance ever dawns anew); to keep blacks insulated in tribal ignorance and stunted by superstition, estranged from (if not violent toward) the tools of flourishing hallowed in the heart of western culture; to subdue and hobble blacks while mercilessly inflicting humiliation, even if it means tearing at the very fabric of society; to help reify their status as the infants of humankind even at the expense of posing an existential threat to the broader human enterprise; to reinforce the notion that blacks who engage in intellectual pursuits have forsaken their blackness; to keep blacks sick and down (leaners instead of lifters), wrenching their spirits and chaining their dreams to little more than how to remain kept on the plantation (even if it means siphoning away the collective hope of whites as well)—what might white supremacy do from its deathbed?
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, against a constant bass-bumping backdrop of niggative lyrics drowning out all the rest (“I don't give a fuck, nigga I'm with that gun violence / I'm with that gun violence, I'm with that gun violence”), increased incarceration and addiction, and decreased education and wellbeing, in so many black communities are regarded almost universally as a sign of an undefeatable white supremacy rather than of diseased practices and attitudes—practices and attitudes that, although tied more or less to historical oppression, cannot be pinned in any seriousness on some alive-and-well white supremacy:
celebration of violence and drugs (especially, to use the words of Plug Two, in “their [let-me-prove-I’m] sicker-than [you] rap” about “cocaine and crack / which brings sickness to blacks . . . clappers and gats / makin the whole sick world collapse”);
mockery of peace-loving nerds (light-bearers like Plug Two), of fellow blacks who show interest in school (or in better dietary choices than grape drank and Popeyes or so on), for “acting white,” for being “fake black pussy niggas”;
fear-and-indolence-fueled dependence on government assistance and slack-cutting that only preserves, and serves to justify in their eyes, the view of themselves as incapacitated due to chronic victimization by the white world;
condonation and even glorification of cold-blooded disregard for how behavior affects others (since you cannot blame someone for doing whatever is necessary “for some damn breathing room in this racist hellhole,” which “will always be fucked” as long as whiteness finds instantiation on Earth);
romanticization of gangsters and thugs, harlots and skanks (the black equivalent of poor white trash, except for the fact that an overwhelming majority of whites ridicule these in-house extremes as embarrassments and thereby block that kind from growing to an aspirational ideal);
anti-gratitude feelings of nihilistic futility, of there is no point trying in a white-run world set on black destruction.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—with critical thinking in steep decline (and even mocked as a “bitch-ass white thing”), and with screens in our faces at each moment telling us how to interpret what happened and restructuring our memories about what happened—the various reasons why the black man shot the black people he did become obscured (disallowing the chance for targeted cure) by saying fatalistically and ignorantly “the reason was whiteness, internalized white supremacy.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, on feel-good grounds of “Let’s not feed longstanding narratives of black inferiority,” it is deemed evil (or at least pointlessly insensitive) to acknowledge the troubling statistics about blacks having lower IQs than whites, poorer academic performance no matter the income level, lesser likelihood to build positive social networks, greater likelihood to be involved in violent crime—the very statistics that, were they spotlighted instead of cloaked, might invigorate a mission to ferret out the real causes, the causes beyond the monolithic and unhelpfully-nebulous and downright-unreal one (pervasive antiblack racism) that, in being posited again and again as the end-of-discussion scapegoat (as if sociological insights were so easy to arrive at), makes seem like guesswork child’s play a science that should be one of the most difficult (given the array of variables and hard-to-predict agents with which it deals).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—rather than putting in the hard work of addressing root causes (like black cultural attitudes of “Why bother studying when the game is rigged against blacks?” and “I’m black so I don’t have a chance without extra help” and “Nerdiness is some stupid-ass white people shit” and “Cops just want to hurt and kill black folk,” or broken family structures, or lack of exposure to the variety of subject areas where blacks again and again underperform, or so on), rather than addressing such root causes with impactful solutions (whether campaigns to marginalize the anti-intellectual attitudes among blacks in pop culture, or an exacting early-education training of black kids modeled more on the rigor of the British systems throughout the Caribbean, or grants and other incentives to make black homes more learning friendly, or media showcasing how police have done so much to protect and serve black communities, or monetary inducements to push black kids and parents to hit educational milestones (perhaps together as a team), or centering black intellectuals who expose the self-defeatist lie of blaming institutional racism for black underperformance in school and who break that so tired and so out-of-touch and so hypnotic pattern started in the 60s of trying to lift blacks by doing little more than charismatically articulating systemic oppression and who remind us that spitting at white people does not help black kids read)—we instead embolden the strategy that is understandably more attractive to those who value the low-hanging fruit of lazy sensationalism over black wellbeing: the much-easier and money-making and social-capital-yielding strategy of ridiculing tests and high-standard teachers and selection committees and traditional expectations and the like as all being “antiblack mechanisms designed by whites to make blacks look bad”; “racist tools of an xenophobic war against black bodies.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where adults, even college professors, will commit the blatant genetic fallacy that any healthy society should disabuse children of before middle school: saying that the test itself—however much it obviously measures universal skills in reasoning (rather than cultural-skewed facts)—is no good, is antiblack, simply because the test was developed by some guy looking for a way to prove that blacks are inferior—a clown world, indeed!
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, instead of addressing the poisons and traumas and diseases of poverty and diminished educational exposure and overburdened single-mom homes and joblessness and gang activity plaguing blacks especially, we encourage a groundhog day of hypnotic focus on racial grievance, the same obsessive poor-me thinking about the ravages of whites; we focus on how “traumatizing” it is for blacks ever to hear or read the word “nigger,” even just “nigga,” from a white person—harmful enough, so white liberal rich kids on campus (desperate to prove how “down” they are in their tartan scarves and slouchy beanies, and no matter the black harm that results) might model for their black counterparts, to warrant crumbling into teary balls of (playacted) delicacy, of (sham) pathological sensitivity, of (fake) woundedness, at any word with the merest auditory resemblance to it.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, instead of working to ween blacks from their addiction to the soothing-but-infantilizing treatment procured by playing the victim (an addiction made worse by the notion that it is a black blessing rather than a black blight), we zero in on how traumatizing it is for black students to walk past (“day after day, and on a modern-day college campus of all places!”) a statue of Thomas Jefferson, “a no-good barbarian who slept with his slaves”—harmful enough for some blacks, those really buying into and selling their theatrics, to say in phone conversations with their parents perhaps what they have been instigated and coached to say by their well-to-do white peers, who in black neckerchiefs above their “Whiteness Is NOT Okay” t-shirts have been blasting the statue with red paint and demanding its removal (among many other hysteria-mongering things): that they fear, if the removal campaign does not go through, “all the white supremacists on campus will be emboldened, and maybe even start lynching us from that very statue.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, against a constant bass-bumping backdrop of niggative lyrics drowning out all the rest (“May I kick a lil somethin for the G's / And take your nigga only for the weekend / Late night creepin ain't no cuffin / I ain’t gon keep em, send your nigga back home”), every white-male portrait in the revered museums from the centuries of western slavery—if not covered (well, covered at least in the groin region since that area “can’t but draw some vulnerable populations to thoughts of black-body rape”)—must at least include a placard with information about the sitter’s link to slavery, no matter how many degrees of separation, “so that we never forget that the war against black folx today isn’t coming from nowhere and that it is, in fact, coming from places long thought to be above the brutalities of white supremacy: the very world of art!”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, against a constant bass-bumping backdrop of niggative lyrics drowning out all the rest (“I smoked all his weed and I told him to leave / Use him for his money, that's all that I need”), a museum mural by “just another dead white scumbag” (an artist who only five years prior, like for the dozens of decades before that, was heralded as “a genius”) is whitewashed over with stain-blocking primer, yes, for having a relatively minuscule section in a remote corner where black slaves are depicted—whitewashed over, no, not by rogue protesters trying to go viral, but (on the orders of the very curators tasked, ironically, with preserving art) by a janitor (melanin-rich for the cameras and so for the sake of recompensive spectacle of Wakanda tears) on the following ironic grounds.
“Black bodies being ordered around like mere tools is harmful for black children to see, especially so close to the food court. We hope other museums will follow our lead in championing more inclusive visions of reality. Let us give a hand for Atu. He has served as our custodial backbone for almost a year now. He is using Kilz Premium Primer. That primer is best at blocking out stains, in our case here a racial stain. But let’s face it, with enough coats many products would do the job. What makes Kilz stand out is that it dedicates a portion of its profits to antiracist organizations like Whiteness in the Workspace, whose focus is to encourage self-identified white people to ‘go hard against racial inequality or go home.’ As you can see, we intend to go hard!”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, against a constant bass-bumping backdrop of niggative lyrics drowning out all the rest (“Play with my pussy, but don't play with my emotions / If you spend some money, then maybe I just might fuck ya / When I shake that ass, I'ma do that shit in slow motion / You got a whole lotta cash, and nigga, you know I want it”), art caretakers (tasked with safekeeping art)—well, more accurately, art commissars (tasked with making sure art signals an attitude shamefully called “progressive” largely by internet bullies)—refuse to defend the portrait of the Welsh slaveowner on artistic grounds or on historical-accuracy grounds or on grounds that people do not have to visit the wing in which it is located or on grounds that depiction does not entail endorsement or so on, but instead agree that the piece is an example of “nonconsensual art" to be removed from display and “to be put in storage, if it is lucky.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, against a constant bass-bumping backdrop of niggative lyrics drowning out all the rest (“I gotta face all of my opps, don't wanna die (I won't die) / These niggas berry, berry sweet just like some pie (nigga pussy) / Ayy, I put that ball on your eye just like a stye (boom, boom) / Ayy, I got a beam on the end, you can't hide (lil bitch) / Ayy, he ain't a soldier, he a ho up in disguise (that nigga ho) / Ayy, play with that gang-gang, and that's your demise (nigga died) / Ayy, execution so your mind just gon get fried (leave him fried)”), the university administration, under the guidance of the office of equity and inclusion, finally decides to break apart the whole side of the rec center on the following grounds.
“Our vulnerable black students are not stupid: they are well aware that beneath the recent coat of paint (a half-measure as cowardly as Sam Houston’s merely voting against the westward expansion of slavery) still remains the ghostly faces of Sam and his spouse (white supremacists who don’t deserve a spotlight, however much they ‘treated their slaves like family’).”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, against a constant bass-bumping backdrop of niggative lyrics drowning out all the rest (“Hit your block with them guys, hop out, kill people / Got a Glock four-five, and it's real lethal / Bitch, you know we fry, we really kill people”), plantation paraphernalia—at least when institutions are too “insensitive to destroy them”—must be covered with drop cloths, “for the safety of vulnerable groups,” as if they were cursed items needing to be stored in the weekly-blessed occult room of Ed and Lorraine Warren.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, against a constant bass-bumping backdrop of niggative lyrics drowning out all the rest (“You know who you fucking with? A nigga who got shit to lose / I got niggas that rob you and rape your bitch if they in the mood”), spotlight is thrown on how traumatizing it is for black students to see “the Nazi act of janitors, sometimes sadly even black janitors (coerced in some way by whiteness),” scrubbing BLM graffiti off churches and federal buildings and statues of once-revered “dead white males” and even war memorials for soldiers who sacrificed their lives to stop the slave trade and the literal Nazis.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—to drive home how much “this country has regressed to a bygone era of antiblack racism,” a lavishly-funded storyline that all the mainstream publishers (and, of course, the Chinese Communist Party) pay top dollar to see spread (in works that, rather than engage in the “hurtful violence” of questioning whether it really is true, examine its impacts and the subtle mechanisms by which it is maintained)—whites and blacks alike have started detecting white-supremacist paraphernalia and white-supremacist people at every turn, just as the witch-fearing residents of Salem detected spectral images of suspicious neighbors (to a point where it actually became a purpose-giving industry).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where the earliest sightings of white-supremacy’s growing reign take place, of course, on the very college grounds whose classrooms breed the hysteria, which is why these sightings will be taken seriously enough to trigger “campus lockdown” or “immediate evacuation for the safety of vulnerable groups”: a noose on the ground (or at least a symbol of one “meant to instill terror in black students already shouldering too much in a predominately-white world on a predominately-white campus learning a predominantly-white curriculum”), which the police—white police, mind you—will insist, thereby “invalidating” student truth and lived experience, is “just a looped zip-tie”; or a KKK member complete with a Kunta whip, which even after surveillance footage reveals to have been a Dominican friar in traditional garb holding mere rosary beads will still invite suspicion among antiracist students for reasons articulated to the news reporter on scene by fagulous white kid in yet another tartan scarf.
“A priest of all people should have known the intergenerational PTSD his resemblance would activate: the headaches, the fatigue, the sleep problems, the hypervigilance, the panic attacks—and, of course, the drug use and the violence that white people like to blame on black people themselves. Trauma from slavery and then from segregation—we know now that this all passes down in the genes all black people. Science has shown this. Imagine being born as a black child, suffering the entire history of the war against black bodies right from birth!”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where city blocks are cordoned off after purple-haired white progressives in scarves mistake construction-worker spray paint in the street as attempts at swastikas, and where even after the innocuous truth is discovered the construction team is still ordered to use from here on different symbols for marking utility lines and to undergo sensitivity training—all a convenient and welcomed distraction, like the compulsive stewing over past injustice, from the tough work of addressing the pressing problems that plague black communities (problems that include both the compulsive stewing over past injustice and the out-of-touch and defeatist notion of our country being too steeped in white supremacy for blacks even to try).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where graffitiing campus statues of “dead white Nazi fucks” (yes, even philosophers like Mill who debunked racism’s philosophical underpinnings and stressed the urgency of securing equal treatment for blacks), or where reporting even knowingly fake sightings of nooses and Klansmen, or where firing teachers who say a word that merely comes close to a word (faked to be) traumatic for blacks and especially their “white allies” (a mix of instigators bent on pandemonium and opportunists hoping to reap the benefits of being the pets of super citizens), or where lowering standards for blacks (given “their unique and continually-growing oppression”), or where adding the Black National Anthem (“Lift Every Voice and Sing”) before each NFL game (since antiblack racism is regarded as so essentially American that “The Star-Spangled Banner” can be like, like the flag itself, “a slap in the face for many blacks), are just some of the many ways to honor the grand-purpose-giving and life-simplifying and superciliousness-stoking and violence-excusing religion of antiracism, ways that fill the void—a void gaping perhaps more than ever given the rapid withdrawal of religion in the contemporary period—without requiring our lazy selves actually to combat the cultural attitudes and practices that keep blacks down.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where not only people scared about jeopardizing their employability, but even institutions eager to enforce “antiracist measures” in fear of getting on the bad side of most consumers, feel the social pull to treat blacks as if infantile cripples who, although handling what pumps through their earbuds (“Told her we gon be together, that stupid bitch ate the bait / She went for that, I broke the bitch / Told that bitch to sock it to my pocket, then revoked the bitch”), are in desperate need of shelter from certain words in college textbooks or in historical documents or in litigation reports, as if enfeebled pets who require “safeternative” (and, predictably, easier) classroom lessons lest they break under the enormous strain of living in “this hellscape of white supremacy.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks are baited by the benefits of r-word-fearing whites bending over backwards for them, letting them cut corners and get first dibs—baited to perform for whites (something whites have long expected of them anyway, and just eat up) as if fragile enough to be traumatized merely by having to read white authors, or by learning about Euclid and his “white geometry,” or by being in “claustrophobic spaces with too many tomato faces,” or so on.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks could easily think that they are being slick against “the man,” that they are gaining power through such maneuvers of “outsmarting the system,” when in truth they are playing themselves—playing an active role in their own ruination.
(1) The short-term “power” of pity-points and lowered expectations spoils their sense of dignity and their ability to handle the tough problems that arise on every path to excellence (which, of course, further spoils their sense of dignity).
(2) Such power is largely negative-reactive anyway: dependent on whites—at least those “antiracists” willing to act truly racist enough to believe blacks really are that fragile.
(3) Such a pathway could eventually become entrenched enough that, the line between fake and real blurring over generations, blacks wind up that fragile in truth!
It could just sit back and revel in our world where many blacks, and even a growing number of whites (almost as if to ensure, so a conspiracy-minded person might think, that the destruction of blacks is thorough), sincerely think—in what amounts to slanderous and black-stunting elevation of the relatively subpar—that Beyoncé and Sister Souljah are visionary geniuses on equal footing with Beethoven and Shakespeare—that is, if they even really know who Beethoven and Shakespeare are, as an antiblack agenda would hope they do not (lest they be drawn upward if only by osmosis).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, on grounds that any connection to antiblack racism (however tenuous) “severely diminishes an artist’s work,” many people think Beyoncé and Sister Souljah are, in fact, superior to Beethoven and Shakespeare—both Beethoven and Shakespeare writing, after all, mainly for white audiences and Shakespeare, as if using terms like “fair” to describe a good person were not malevolent enough, even daring to allow his character Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream to voice “a malicious statement of whiteness, likely directed mainly against black bodies”: “Who would not trade a raven for a dove?”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, even though it entails carrying humanity itself (whites included) down a road to mediocrity, school reading lists are scrubbed clean—to use the dismissive phrase that, through repetition, one-too-many children believe refers to mysterious evil creatures never to be trusted—of “dead white males” (no matter how great) and replaced with the latest “antiracist” literature of victim mongers (who, deep as they are in the pockets of corporate interest, smell much more like “house niggers” than the McWhorters and Lourys they slander as such).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, because of a mere “problematic” footnote or one joke in a private letter revealing that the great man was nevertheless a man of his time (and so with specific cultural biases) or because the great man simply was white, pinnacles of artistic and philosophical excellence such as Hume and Goethe are excluded (unless the point is to trash them) from university classrooms, yes, of students and teachers, creatures too of their own guilty time, stinking of factory-farmed farts—excluded, as if the personal and even the biological were always political and even philosophical, despite the expense not simply of obscuring from blacks and whites alike the heights to which all humans can aspire, but of allowing a pessimistic attitude of why bother to sprout at least subliminally in all of us since, think about it: there seems little point in bothering with our “life’s work,” pitiful in comparison anyway, when even Dostoyevsky and Leibniz and Jefferson and Churchill, their awe-inspiring art and deeds included, can be written off with such Kweli-like sanctimoniousness as “complete pieces of Nazi shit” for no more than a trifling flaw or a trifling feature in no sense under their control.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—because of his being a “dead white male” whose characters sometimes display “imperialist attitudes (like when his most recent white protagonist screams ‘I’ll plant a damn garden on my own fucking property,’” a “paternalist scream of violence” that can only remind us of the “culture-slaughtering history of forcibly replacing the communal property systems of indigenous peoples with the private property systems of white supremacists”—the international library has restricted access to the great author, offering the following statement to the media (as to why, in effect, it removed yet another uplifting resource from black reach).
Is it uncommon for institutions, including universities and libraries, to reevaluate their collections and exhibits in light of changing social and cultural perspectives? No. That is what we have done in the case of Rydling. Some people are upset. But these are the pains of progress. There is no progress without pain.
The decision in this case was difficult. Unlike other authors more conspicuously problematic, Rydling never steps out of his lane by writing about nonwhite topics and he definitely respects the fact that he is not allowed to write nonwhite characters. He also never includes characters who voice skepticism as to how terribly the West continues to treat black bodies—neither those reminiscent of overt Nazis (like David Duke and Tom Metzger) nor those reminiscent of covert Nazis (like Shelby Steele and Thomas Sowell). Indeed, Rydling is known for allowing nonwhite sensitivity editors to adjust his work for the protection of vulnerable groups. And because he pays them what they deserve given their position in the intersectionality matrix, no one here will deny that he should be praised for using an equity-model of compensation that many universities and hospitals and other public institutions have yet to adopt. In his capacity as an academic, moreover, he has ridiculed (both in articles and in his PhD dissertation) the paternalistic notion that white countries in the West have a duty to civilize or uplift African countries. Most importantly, Rydling—aside from being white, of course—has no direct ties to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade (at least that the committee has yet to uncover, although it continues to dig).
Why, then, have we made this difficult decision? Subtle problems linger inside his work—and their very subtlety makes them all the more dangerous! First, with the exception to just one work, his settings are always in the UK (the radix of imperialism) and yet never—not once—are these towns and cities criticized for doing ultimately what they are best at: harboring whiteness. Second, his characters have been known to voice hurtful sentiments like pride in European culture, a pride eerily suggestive of the superiority of that culture (especially when never—not once—is such celebration accompanied by an acknowledgement of the black suffering behind so much of that culture). Rydling, of course, has addressed this issue by saying that his intention is to ridicule such characters. The problem is twofold: (a) intent does not matter when it comes to the hurtfulness of words and (b) citing intent is precisely what rightwing bigots like to say in their white fragility, and so by mentioning “intent” his is at least in practice aligning himself with a world of deplorables and this very alignment cannot help but brutalize vulnerable populations. Third, his partner has been known to purchase healing stones like citrine and labradorite even though it is no secret where such stones are sourced: Madagascar, where hungry diggers of beautiful melanin are, in the best cases, simply not given fair compensation or, in the worst, forced to serve as the modern-day slaves of a neo-colonial West.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—energized by the viral videos of black men murdered by police officers, viral videos that make it (even when we know better) next to impossible for our chimp brains not to feel there is a police-brutality epidemic against blacks (especially when our algorithmed feed includes none of the white murdered)—blue-haired cretins now vandalize statues of Voltaire in the sleep-tight name of “a big fuck you to our thriving white supremacy” (yes, despite his culture-quaking writings on the immorality of slavery and on the stupidity of racism), refusing to face how much of an unfair horror it would seem if future cretins utterly dismissed a cherished black artist-philosopher of today, tearing down her statues and banning even music and books of hers unrelated to meat, merely because she ate factory-farmed meat—or better yet, to make it more closely parallel our nonsense today (like the blacklist we see from the British Library), merely because she, a level-five vegan whose ethical writings proved integral to factory farming’s abolition, had a relative (distant in both blood and spirit) who happened to inherit stock in a company that had once engaged in factory farming.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where elementary students can rattle off the horrors perpetrated by western culture (land stolen from Native Americans, Trans-Atlantic slavery, and so forth) while western culture’s many profound gifts to mankind, gifts that could keep giving even to interstellar generations (generations in some sense umbilicaled in its womb), go overlooked or fade from memory (only to be called to mind, of course, to find something “problematic” enough to blackmail the “many colonial faces of whiteness”):
its legendary achievements (the scientific revolution that continues to heighten our understanding of the natural world and our place in it, or the industrial revolution that transformed agrarian economies into powerhouses of surplus, or the discovery of penicillin, or the decoding of DNA, or the construction of the Panama Canal, or the invention of the printing press);
its almost-unthinkable art (Michelangelo’s “David” and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, or Dostoyevsky’s Brother’s Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, or Shakespeare’s Hamlet and King Lear, or Picasso's “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" and "Guernica," or Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion" and “The Well-Tempered Clavier,” or The Parthenon and The Cathedral of Notre-Dame and The Chrysler Building and the Brooklyn Bridge);
its heroic efforts—yes, even from the very depths of its own addiction to that alchemical practice (too irresistible for so many other peoples across the globe across history) it stepped up (against all odds) with resources and blood to put a stop to slavery (using taxpayer-burdening military might to hunt down particular slaving operations and to free particular slaves and to help transition organizations off their reliance on slavery, engaging in war with itself to see to slavery’s abolition, paying out reparations in the form of grants and scholarships as well as preferential treatment and special dispensations) and, more importantly, it stepped up (against all odds) with resources and blood to develop and defend and normalize and enforce the very notion of universal human rights that, on the one hand, has prevented the resurgence of slavery and segregation and discrimination in the West and that, on the other hand, has kept (through the osmosis of modeling and through the pressure of sanctions and military intervention) the number of people in unfashionable-to-address nonwestern slavery (which we see in India and China and North Korea and Nigeria and Iran and Indonesia and Congo) at least under the billion mark it stands at today.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, even if it comes at the price of hobbling blacks by way of hobbling us all, celebrating the skills and contributions of plantation-slave x requires gaslighting ourselves—gaslighting ourselves that x surpasses not only Handel (an investor in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, which matters when evaluating his art in our twilight-zone times) but even Bach (a deeply religious man of profound wisdom and fertility)—and thereby belittling art itself.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—in the insidiously feel-good name of “antiracist liberation” from “the hegemony of white-European-western culture” (a culture condemned for “suppressing alternative voices” even though in truth it is one of the few shining examples of a culture not only remarkably open to learning from alternative voices, but also serious about justifying and protecting the rights of alternative voices)—Plato and Kant and Aristotle and Voltaire and various other “dead white fucks” are (Chinese-Cultural-Revolution style) cut from university curricula (unless, of course, to poke fun at them) by (supposedly well-meaning) poisoners out to “unwhiten education,” by shapeshifting devils in hipster scarves and slouchy beanies out to “dismantle white supremacy”—cut (yes, no matter their gifts to mankind or even how instrumental they remain in the justification of universal human rights) because some of their remarks fail to reflect our current values or because they are quoted by “problematic” people today or because they have relatives, however distant in blood and ideology, who benefited from slavery.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, under the insidiously feel-good banner of “decolonizing the university and remaining competitive at a global level among the various antiracist centers of learning,” the so-called Black Mozart (Chevalier de Saint-Georges) replaces the real Mozart in music conservatories, whether on the basis of the “regrettable fact that Mozart is a dead white man” who makes “white European music from the slave period” or on the basis of the lie either that the Black Mozart is better or, much more nuclear, that hierarchy in matters of music theory is “just another antiblack expression of whiteness” it would be cruel not to scotch (at least whenever “there are black and other vulnerable learners in the room”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where Chief Keef and Saweetie replace Coltrane and Dolphy in the culture at large (the more focused on sex and drugs and violence the better, of course), even though that has entailed whites themselves—almost as if they did not get their fix of black criminality and low self-esteem and twisted relationship models and drug abuse—dancing in droves at big-money festivals to blacks singing and rapping about—indeed, often romanticizing—black degeneracy: not only the men stooping to the most barbaric (“Hit this ho from Memphis, she an oppin bitch / I hit her with my Glock and shit / and dropped the bitch”), but the women too (“Pass the gun to my bro, he gon handle that / Shoot at the crib where yo mammy at, / we fuck around, leave her handicapped”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—taking in all the “niggative” lyrics bass-bumping the air as if it were their air (whether “Pimpin ain't easy, make her open up and eat it” or “Walking around with that that tommy gun / Young niggas in the hood love the molly santan / When they pop it, they'll chew it like some bubble gum” or “Sippin syrup 'til my body numb, I ain't tryna catch no feelings”)—whites crave sights and sounds and smells of black degeneracy so much that no bingeing of Maury Povich episodes, or National-Geographic style hood-fight clips, or crack documentaries of hair-hatted whores crooning toothless into the night with the flapjack tits, or so on could ever satisfy them: ignorance and bling, infidelity and gang violence, misogyny and escaping life with drugs and alcohol, crack dealing, homophobia and promiscuity, drugging the drinks of women and prison life, welfare cheese and incest, rapey sex even of minors (Bambaataa style).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, against a constant bass-bumping backdrop of niggative lyrics drowning out all the rest (“I like a shooter that steady / be trigger happy in the Camry / Now he gon shoot at niggas like they Bambi / Now he gon shoot at niggas cuz they offend me”), classical music itself—despite its suspected power to boost cognition and reduce hypertension and lower stress (three things that would be especially beneficial to blacks)—is sidelined for being “nerdy” and “elite” and “white” and “insensitive” to the more “primitive rhythms” of “the black experience,” for being “inherently racist” and “a chief anchor for white supremacy” and “a white standard of musical aesthetics that abuses especially those blacks who love it (Stockholm style)” and “destructive to black expression in that it, a colonialist force, pulls blacks away from creating music truer to their own communities”—sidelined even to the extent that in universities and musical conservatories harpsicords (and other instruments popular among whites in the long era of Western slavery) are closeted away, if not smashed to pieces, because of how “they cannot but remind us of what daily police brutality already does: the long history of whites addicted to killing blacks.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, since “whatever is not antiracist is racist,” music (like poems and paintings and news and essays and science) that is not at least in some fashion oriented toward “disrupting the progress of white-supremacist tanks,” toward “keeping in check the variegated invasions of whiteness, is racist and so should be stopped—stopped perhaps along with music competitions (since competition is a white value at odds with black communitarianism) and the erect postures of orchestra performers (since that is nerdy, uppity, elite, white) and musical notation (since (1) hip hop, the truest music to the black spirit, requires no musical notion and since (2) “to expect black musicians to read notation invalidates their intuitive style of knowing” while at the same time, in “a gaslighting form of gatekeeping,” blocking them out of classical music orchestras and also, if “the notation system in question is that of Europe (and so of oppression),” slapping them in their face, causing their bodies great distress, with reminders of colonialism and slavery).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—interrogated to death by “antiracist questions” (as to whom quarried the stones, and from where the money came to fund the project, and why no blacks appear in the murals inside, and why various African deities are not venerated at least alongside white Jesus and white saints—the great cathedrals of European culture, like its various other crowning achievements (the paintings, the musical compositions, the technologies), are—in spite of their awe-inspiring power to heighten the people to which they have been gifted (namely, all people)—trashed for being irredeemably tainted by antiblack racism and thereby inherently toxic to black people.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, instead of the black chess masters (like Darrian Robinson) or theoretical physicists (like Jim Gates) or acers of SATs (like Justin Ricketts) or so on, the children-titillating airwaves are awash with the most brazen attention-grabs of black degeneracy: weaved-out ghetto girls on daytime talk shows airing their sordid lives of drugs and baby daddies for heckling audiences, their fists ready to fly at the slightest provocation (“I live how I wanna fuckin live. Come up hur and say sumpin, bitch”); their foul-mouths out-shouting each other in the heat of the revelation, say, that Damarius, the daughter’s boyfriend, impregnated the daughter’s mother, LaQuintavia (the mother, hair-hat ripped away, ultimately telling the audience, while twerking as the daughter is dragged backstage by security, “I ain’t give a fuck, Murray. That sex was good!”); their profanity-laden tirades eager to inflict damage, especially after paternity results reveal that the man they insist is the father is not the father (“Get tested for that hot sauce, nigga, cuz I be fuckin all your friends”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, as if to drown out the faint murmur that tells them they are lying to themselves in subscribing to the Chinese-invested victimology narrative about the US being a bastion of flourishing white supremacy, blacks and their antiracist allies (in many cases perhaps their indoctrinators, their trainers and instigators) either hum away with fingers in their ears the many examples of black perseverance in the face of hardship (especially, of course, the hardship of yesterday’s real antiblack racism) or else—teeth bared and spittle flying, as if the self-appointed guardians of blackness—lash out against these haunting spirits, denigrating trailblazers like Edward Bouchet (first black PhD recipient in the US) and James McCune Smith (first black American to practice medicine with a medical degree) and Madam C. J. Walker (first self-made female millionaire) and Zipporah Potter Atkins (first black landowner in Boston) for “having adopted the anti-communitarian mindset of the white man” and thereby—as if climbing social hierarchies and achieving success through hard work were somehow a betrayal of their race—for “having set themselves apart from their own people.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, as if having relapsed back into the suffocating atmosphere of the Dark Ages, so-called “antiracists” regard the civil rights movement as toxic to blacks since “that movement, in its ultimately patriotic claim that blacks should get to enjoy the liberal ideals enshrined in the Constitution, served to legitimize the deeper problem, the deeper foundation on which white power rests: those very liberal ideals themselves,” those white-created insidious ideals of colorblind justice and personal liberties (freedom of opinion, of expression, of congregation) that only interfere with “the urgent need for equity”—interfere by preventing blacks from being judged according to more-accommodating standards, and by allowing whites to form views that “invalidate black lived experience,” and by allowing whites to keep saying things that “wound the black soul and scar the black psyche,” and by allowing whites to gather together in groups despite “the epigenetic trauma” such clusters cannot but activate in black bodies.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, as if we were in an Orwellian twilight zone, self-proclaimed “antiracists” regard even many movements that attack liberal ideals (one thinks of Marxism, for example) as toxic to blacks since “those movements, in using reason to make their attacks, serve to legitimize an even deeper problem than liberal ideals, serve to reinforce the deepest foundation on which white power rests: the very enlightenment ideals themselves,” those white-created ideals of reason and science that only interfere with “the pressing need for equity”—interfere by preventing blacks from being judged according to “the emotional and gut ways of knowing native to their souls,” and by allowing whites to feel superior in their consistent outperformance of blacks in all areas emphasizing math and logic and science, and by allowing whites to keep cherishing “the oppressive notion of objective truth” even when such truth opposes what black people feel in their hearts or what black visionaries and prophets teach, and by allowing whites to reject “aboriginal black ways of knowing” for failing to honor the scientific method.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, almost as if some illuminati force desires to breed them into perpetual toddlers numb to the pressures of rationality, blacks become more and more estranged from the most powerful propellent for rocketing away from the gravity well of historical oppression and its cascade of deleterious effects: reason itself, the brightest beacon of hope for liberation and flourishing—learning to mock it (as “an imperialism-justifying machination of dead white patriarchs in periwigs”) and even to regard it, unnervingly in line with the white supremacist stereotype of a century back, as something at odds with the black spirit (a spirit more at home in the gut than the head).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, as if there were some sinister conspiracy to keep blacks disoriented, math and logic (the very cornerstones of thriving homes and civilizations) are in the best cases relegated to an importance secondary to personal emotion (such that “two plus two should equal whatever people feel it should equal, not just what the white powers that be say to the exclusion of alternative truths”) and in the worst cases belittled as “exclusionary tools of white supremacy,” as “problematic knowing styles of Caucasian oppressiveness” (evident simply by the sheer fact that blacks underperform in these areas)—although this latter approach might require great concealment (no biggie when it comes to a people already historically oblivious), concealment not only of the fact that intelligent beings on distant planets are actually learning the same math and logic, but concealment also of all the nonwhite forefathers of math and logic here on Earth: the Swaziland people who used baboon bones over forty-five thousand years ago as instruments to track lunar cycles, and the Babylonians who discovered the Pythagorean theorem at least a thousand years before Pythagoras, and all the way to the luminaries of the modern period (from Francis William and Benjamin Banneker to Katherine Johnson and David Blackwell).
It could just back and revel in our world where university students—mainly white ones full of teary outrage, white ones with the luxury of not being slammed by the antiblack ramifications of their so-called “antiracist advocacy”—chant the phrase “Nazi scum, Nazi Scum, Nazi Scum” to drown out the words of the speaker only some of the most daring “allies” call “race-traitor” or “sham on legs” or “cooning charade” outside their heads.[8]
I have to give voice to an ugly thought. . . The majority of African American students perform . . . below basic proficiency for their age, grade level, in the testing of mathematical aptitude performance, ability to solve problems. . . . [T]hat stark fact calls out for some kind of account, some kind of narrative. . . And so what better than to wrap oneself in the warm blanket of antiracist outrage? What better than to denounce the entire corpus that your people are not mastering by saying that it's somehow alien to, or in fact repressive of, the essence of [black] people? This is an avoidance of the reality of underdevelopment. . . . [O]ne avoids the unbearable weight of facing that challenge, and the uncertainty and insecurity associated with taking up the challenge, by basically ignoring it—pretending that . . . it's an artifact of some mystical structural racist social order, diverting teachers from actually doing what they need to do to equip the kids so that they do better on the test. . . .
That’s the ugly thought. . . And it's racist. . . . It seems to betray a lack of confidence in the capacities of our people to actually do what everybody else in the world [does]. . . . Go to China, find out what they teach. Go to Pakistan, for crying out loud. . . . Those kids are learning mathematics. But the descendants of African slaves here in the rich and powerful country of the United States of America with every opportunity are going to be presumed—a priori—not to be capable. Because that's in effect what you're saying: we can't cut it. You're trying to change the name of the game, but what you're really saying is we can't cut it! That's racist.
{I]t's not white supremacy that's the enemy here. The enemy here is the disadvantages associated with marginality, low resources, and poorly equipped parents to supplement what the school is doing for the kids [in the often chaotic homes and communities of the poor, homes and communities where kids too often enough are not read to or taught their times tables and shapes before kindergarten]. So you're missing the mark to the extent that you racialize this—missing the mark for the poor white kids who might also need to have their special concerns attended to. . . .
[Also,] this is math that we're talking about. It's universal. . . [T]he theorem “two plus two equals four” is true everywhere and all the time. It transcends the particularity of our social location. . . The goal is to open them to perceive the universality of the truths that are at stake. These are not identitarian matters that we're dealing with here. These are human matters that we're dealing with here in the pure sense of the term. There's no largest prime number—that's true everywhere all the time. People from another planet will be able to understand, if you can find a way of conveying it to them what you're talking about, when you say ‘there's no largest prime number’. . . . Euclid is still relevant today. God only knows what Euclid had for breakfast or what bible or what sacred text he worshiped. You know, I don't care about that. What I care about is that the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees. That's what I care about. Unless we're doing non-Euclidean geometry, which is stepping outside the box—but again that's not an ethnic move, that's not a cultural move, it's an ideational move that every person can aspire to grasp and comprehend and make their own. Make it their own.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—on grounds that (1) the scientific method and particularly the hard sciences as we know them today were developed by Europeans like Galileo and Newton and that (2) blacks are underrepresented in these areas—science (sotto voce: the same science used in the ancient African savannahs to track game and hack migration patterns) is disturbingly viewed as a “white thing,” a “disturbing domain of whiteness,” a “European style of thinking toxic to blacks,” “a method whose very stodginess (more so even that any of the findings that result from its employment) flaunts antiblackness,” “a tool of white supremacy” whose acceptance by blacks (like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Marie Maynard Daly) renders them “Oreo whores of the white man”—yes, even despite the fact, a fact that concretely highlights the genetic fallacy operative behind this line of reasoning, that blacks were once underrepresented in the white-invented sport of basketball (not to mention the general fact that “all the artifacts and styles of whites” are really artifacts and styles of blacks in the sense that blacks, bracketing off their own ancestors who have white skin under fur, are the original people).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—in what seems, in general, an end to an Enlightenment era that brought humanity to the best place it perhaps has ever been and in what seems, in particular, a reawakening (ironically) of the white supremacist notion that race is indicative of rational ability (specifically, that blacks are intrinsically inferior when it comes to rational ability)—abstract reasoning altogether (especially of the linear sort where one “squarely and weakly and whitely” follows steps instead of “hiply and strongly and blackly feeling it out”) becomes seen as “a dry and bigoted and hegemonic style of knowing callous and damaging to heart-forward non-Eurocentric styles of knowing”:
intuiting the correct course of action through consultation of spirits, bones, stars, shamans, personal feeling, tribal vision-seekers, and the voices of visiting angels singing through the “pre-white rhythms of ancestral drums”;
showing no tolerance for what feels wrong to the gut (whether people who rub us the wrong way, or non-cyclical notions of time, or standards of beauty, or whatever);
trusting in the healing powers of stones and other “magical items whose vibrational frequencies can unlock an ancestral assistance more powerful than the dissecting knife of white reductionism”;
preserving the tie between spiritual wisdom and societal governance (“since the white forgetting of the knowledge black kings and queen preserve on the other side has left the world run by the cold calculations of technocrats”);
promoting the capacity for awe and wonder (instead of always trying to explain everything);
keeping a close tie with the land (instead of filling it with skyscrapers and smog, “instead of treating it—like black people, the embodiment of Earth, have too long been treated—as mere resource to exploit”);
prioritizing the oral tradition of teaching, where “history and morals are preserved not in the rigid form of written slavery but in the fluid form of auditorial liberation” (which “allows these histories and morals to change with the needs of each generation”);
having no shame in—and even celebrating (since “the circular is the shape of inclusion, unity, and life itself”)—the most audacious howlers of circular reasoning (“Everything our elder says must be true since our elder himself declares that everything he says is true!”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks, as if bulls under the spell of masterful matadors, will be mislead—perhaps given the many years of their oppressors touting enlightenment values and the scientific method—to attack as “pillars of white supremacy” enlightenment values and the scientific method themselves:
reason over tantrum;
free speech over silencing;
tolerance over intolerance;
truth over activism;
philosophy over superstition;
scientific consensus over magical thinking;
cold hard objective fact over the my-truth notion that whatever I feel to be the case is the case, as if I were the center of reality and mattered most, and as if folk intuition and gut feeling did not so radically lead us astray in (Earth is flat, what goes up must go down) and reflect bigoted attitudes (interracial swimming and homosexuality are too disgusting to be morally permissible);
careful observation over just trusting the gut;
skepticism and hypothesis testing over tribal authority;
nuanced thinking over black-and-white folk instinct.
It could just back and revel in our world where university students—mainly white ones full of teary outrage, white ones with the luxury of not being slammed by the antiblack ramifications of their so-called “antiracist advocacy”—chant the phrase “Nazi scum, Nazi Scum, Nazi Scum” to drown out the words of the speaker only some of the most daring “allies” call “whitewashed” or “Uncle House Negro” or “foot-shuffling zip coon” outside their heads.[9]
[T]here is a tacit idea among a lot of [so-called “antiracists”] that . . . black people are . . . these people with rhythm, these people who don't deal in exactness, these people who are holistic, these people who can create hip-hop but it's going to be the white people who invent glasses and . . . transistors etc. [The idea is that] black people are good the way they were before the enlightenment. . . . the way we were as Africans. . . . We'll cherry-pick the things that whites invented because you can't of course [do away with all the technological advances we rely on today]. . . . But no, blackness means we're not going to get the real answers, that you know we're not going to have standardized tests, that people are not going to be ranked on the basis of something that comes from these standardized tests. . . . [L]ord forbid that a black person also learn how to do calculus or be expected to—unless they're peculiar. . . And something related is the idea that music theory that is based on hierarchy, and some notes being more important than others, is somehow white and [for that reason] racist and that that kind of music theory shouldn't be taught as the basics of anything, that it shouldn't get disproportionate attention in the teaching of music. . . . But once again, in some of this I detect in the idea that precision is alien to good people. And I don't like it. . .
[Unable to ignore black underperformance in math and reading and in so many intellectual areas, it is common to hear so-called antiracists] say, “Well, why should black people be like white people in those regards anyway? We're going to have our own standards”. . . . {But] the truth is . . . your performance on things like that . . . is partly because of very subtle but powerful aspects of conditioning during childhood where you're taught what matters, what doesn't, what bears thinking about, what doesn't, what isus, what isthem, how children are spoken to in terms of being lent the problem-solving mindset, whether children are allowed to ask questions, how they're allowed to talk to adults. . . . I highly feel in my gut that [the intellectual disparity is due to] what it is to be raised black (even often if you are middle class or above). It's a subtle cultural factor that means that a kid even as young as six or seven is going to have a different attitude towards the monotony of learning times tables than Abigail the white girl next door. . . . [Many of the blacks I knew growing up] had a different attitude towards doing schoolwork. It wasn't about intelligence. It was that they were—I hate to say this, but they were fromblackhomes. It probably would have been the same if they were working class white. . . . They needed to be taught harder. They needed one of these charter schools where everybody is made to sit down and, yes, raise their hand. . . . You need to teach those kids harder because their home environments . . . haven't prepared them to drift into nerdiness as easily as an Asian kid or a white kid. I think that's what it is.
But we can't explore any of those things if we have very responsible people walking around and saying “Black kids shouldn't be expected to work hard in school anyway” or pretending that to be a spunky person is an achievement, that to be a person who values community is somehow the same achievement as somebody who is working with calculus, as somebody who is writing articles, as somebody who's doing interesting things by the time they're 20. It's a lot of fakeness. It's a lot of mendacity. . . . I mean some people are so culturally balkanized . . . that I think they really may think that . . . sitting around being holistic and approximating answers and being spontaneous and I guess listening to hip-hop and all of that is the equivalent of this stuff that white kids do—and it's not. And here we are. It's a problem.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, in the name of “opposing the systemic forces that drive black bodies to reproduce the social norms that center whiteness and meritocracy,” the national slogan of the KIPP Charter School system “Work Hard, Be Nice” has been forced into retirement for two central reasons.
(1) “Not only is hard work a white-supremacist value alien to black bodies, there is also a long history of white people controlling black bodies with the traumatizing lie that hard work will pay off in some so-called ‘end.’”
(2) “White people have displayed a long history of being offended by the native sass and wild bluntness of black bodies, and so our school—which encourages black students to disrupt the white-supremacist system that controls them—will never again participate in the violence of ordering black students to be kind and play fair.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, in the name of “antiracist progress” and of “challenging the hegemony of whiteness,” black boys and girls—mainly via the partitioning of school curricula according to “black ways of knowing” (gut instinct and personal feeling, oral storytelling, communal dance and song, elder authority, call and response, kinesthetic experience) and “white ways of knowing” (logic and linear thinking, science, writing, quantification, secularism, skepticism of authority)—are groomed to grow in twisted directions (the earlier the better so as to entrench as deep as possible their understanding of their powers and of what things matter for them), groomed to regard what is healthy and liberating and aspirational as “inhumane tricks of the white devil.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—in what amounts to the undoing of the progress that has led to a present where blacks face the burden of finally being able to fly wherever they choose, far from their depressive nest (albeit one in which they have been imprisoned long enough to love)—black boys and girls are trained to think that it is part of “the disease of Whiteness” to value the “bad diversity” (the diversity of opinion) or to treat people on a case-by-case basis (rather than foremost as representatives of their group identities) or to give credit to individuals (rather than communities) or to see merit as anything but a Mordor signal between whites and their Uncle Allies (a watchword of white supremacy).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, under the banners of “respect for diversity” and of “eradicating the scourge of white thinking” (but is absolutely chilling in light of the Voltairean wisdom that “those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities”), black boys and girls are coached—often by those with the luxury of not having to the face the negative consequences of their good intentions—to regard it as an assault on “the black spirit” for teachers to do what will become more and more worthy of termination for them to do, worthy of termination on grounds that doing them “precipitates black-body rape and black-psyche trauma”:
saying that there are correct answers in math, or at least answers independent of “emotional situatedness”;
celebrating abstract thinking and problem solving and systematic planning as crucial elements of intelligence;
privileging some “dead white fuck like Einstein” over some vision seeker from an all-black tribe in Kenya, as if there were but only one “white way” to be a genius;
neglecting to explain how “European progress, if we can even call it that (given all the poverty and disease it has introduced), has come solely from oppression of vulnerable groups” (emphasis not added);
praising individual students, in flagrant denial of the fact that they are representatives of groups and that they depend on other humans and the Earth itself to be what they are (“groups with histories more than relevant to any assessment of the present”);
stressing reading and reading comprehension, despite black students being “more at home with the spoken word”;
stressing reading and reading comprehension, especially in the abstraction-heavy talk of “a mile North” and “redness” and “sadness” (rather than of “Atu hut river mountain” and “blood” and “tears”), “white alphabets ultimately carving a direct path from freedom to slavery and alienation from the natural world”;
praying in class (unless, of course, it is to “the Mesoamerican gods, like Quetzalcoatl, or the African gods, like Sango, who can bring a classroom of diverse students together”);
defending the value of viewpoint diversity (“that most insidious of white-supremacist slogans”) as a tool for getting closer to truth and for becoming more effective at defending our beliefs;
suggesting that indigenous creation myths do not have equal standing to the evolution story of “white science,” a “white science predictably peddled on public-access television of all places” (PBS) by “monsters like Carl Sagan who think they can hide behind the tranquil mask of Mr. Rogers (who himself was suspect, making that little black boy teach him breakdance moves in a dance-boy Sambo scene of appropriation and physical intimidation especially with the entrance of Mr. McFeely”);
teaching the theories of “dead white males” or the white-bread language of “Strunk and White American English of which blacks (like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison) became masters perhaps only in desperation to impress whites (or maybe even, sad as it is to ponder, out of Stockholm whitephilia)”;
teaching the scientific method, which is inherently tainted with antiblack racism (as is evident by the repeated poor performance of black students in subjects where understanding and employing that method is essential);
teaching white-bread subjects like engineering instead of subjects more appropriate to a “rhythmic people” who think more “holistic” than those whose jobs will be to build telescopes and bridges and rockets;
praising “black figures who surrendered to white supremacy” like Neil DeGrasse Tyson (given his advocacy of science and other hallmarks of whiteness) or like the Harlem Hellfighters (given that their patriotism, and literal violence on behalf of the US in WW1, marks them as not authentically black);
expecting black children to sit still like other children in class when (a) “stealing people from their homeland does not mean they forget the highly kinesthetic ways of their homeland” and when (b) “even in the territory of their captivity, blacks have spent many years learning—as the California State Superintendent of Public Instruction recently said—on street corners and in churches ‘that it’s good to clap, speak loudly and be a bit raucous’”;
correcting black students who use the Middle English Chaucerian “aks” instead of “ask” and the 17th Century British “Ain’t” instead of “isn’t” and the 1960s white-American “phat” instead of “excellent” or the Scots-Irish rooted “Fixing to” or finna go outside” instead of “I’m about to go outside” (some of the smallest and yet most profound policing moves of white supremacy to destroy a child’s faith in their family’s home language practices);
perpetuating the “toxic notion” that marriage is something aspirational when the truth is that the “white-supremacist and government-incentivized push to enter into the heteropatriarchal institution of marriage only demoralizes black people given the high rates of single-family homes in the black community”;
presenting certain remarkable aspects of America that might undercut the message of its being the wellspring of white supremacy and colonialism (like how with more might than virtually any other land it fights against the universal instinct to enslave and discriminate, or how in an unprecedented show of anticolonial restraint it helped countries survive and rebuild instead of taking them over after WW2, or why people from across the globe flock here, or why captured war enemies want to be imprisoned here more than most other place, or so on);
suggesting that our country has made, from the time of legal emancipation until our diversity-celebrating and discrimination-hating world now, even the slightest dent in the symbolic structure of domination and degradation attendant to the use of black people as chattel slaves (even the slightest dent, that is, in our country’s white-supremacist attitude about the place and purpose of black people);
preventing black students from running away when they laugh (as black people instinctually do), “a phenomenon—one serving as proof that trauma passes down through generations—rooted in slaves being terrified to express beautiful black joy around their masters” (which led to running away to hide their laughter or, and here we get some Taraji-P.-Henson insight as to the origin of the phrase “barrel of laughs,” to sticking their heads in barrels);
demanding that black girls stop twerking on their school desks and cafeteria tables, a demanding “wrong on so many levels” since—aside from the fact that “white people no longer get to tell black bodies what to do”—“twerking is a gesture of sexual liberation” (liberation “from the internalized slave-master voice still readily creeping out of black mouths in the seemingly-innocuous form of ‘Let me stop,’” a voice “implanted in black minds in days when black bodies were no more than white tools”);
promoting—and even just neglecting to criticize—“the various antiblack customs on which this white Amerikkka runs” (customs like striving to be objective, striving to be punctual, striving for perfection).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, in the name of “racial sensitivity,” black youngsters are coached to regard it as “cruel trivialization of the debilitating horrors of white oppression” (horrors, so children will be taught, blacks can never really escape) for teachers to do what will become more and more worthy of public ridicule for them to do, worthy of public ridicule on grounds that it expects black students—“as if the centuries of white values and styles being shoved down black throats were not enough!”—to snuff out the remaining ember of “their native spirit”:
expecting black students to be punctual (“as if time did not flow differently through the hourglass of inequity”) and be civil (“as if they were no such thing as intergenerational trauma”) and compete against each other in debate teams (“as if that would not awaken epigenetic memories of being forced to fight for the entertainment of the white man”) and to participate in all the other “suffocations of whiteness”;
telling black students, who might have used “indigenous insights” to arrive at the answers, to show their math work so that others—even white gazes—can understand how the answer was reached;
expecting lagging black students to work harder (“as if they had any control over home lives rendered virtually impossible by antiblack racism, let alone over the white-supremacist standards by which their work is judged or the white-supremacist hands that try to provide guidance”);
assigning homework (even though doing so “undermines the goal of inclusive success while demoralizing black children” since such children tend to have disproportionate hardship to deal with after hours at home);
teaching as if aptitude for learning is universal (as if black students, “burdened by a history no outsider could ever understand,” have the capacity to learn what Sri Lankan and Aboriginal, Chinese and Indian, Brazilian and Canadian students can);
imposing on black students one of the central features of “white-supremacist ideology” (right on up their with perfectionism and ideological individualism): binary thinking (as when the black-spirit-murdering philosophy professor says, “God does exist or God does not exist; there is no third option, if by each repeated word here we mean the same thing”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—in a demonic assault on black bodies and minds (demonic in that the purported beneficiaries are the ones most hurt)—defunded in the feel-good-but-hollow name of “antiracism,” defunded mainly by those with the luxury of avoiding the hellish consequences, are not only the police that protect so many black lives (especially from the disproportionate violence of other blacks) and stop gangs from taking control of neighborhoods (as happened in several progressive cities in the looting-shooting wake of the George Floyd murder), but also the math-logic-science outreach programs that provide a glimmer of hope for black success on the intellectual mainstage—not just on the stunted stages of deep-sounding-but-shallow spoken-word performances where poets cannot seem to help cashing in (so unoriginally) on the black victimology narrative; spoken-word performances where ankh wearers of Disneyfied afrocentrism smell like Badu’s frankincense vagina as they spew vapid wordplay to “Sing it sister” and finger-snapping applause too cringey to behold and too sad to think about (especially if genuine chills really do course throughout the audience), as in the following.
Throw tomatoes out. Throw tomatoes out. I am inSISting, but with no “please”—for once no “please.” A black queen speaks no “yessum.” I will be heard, I will be heard, because black is king. “Black is king”—a phrase of pride, but don’t believe the Disney lies. What lies beneath lies is that black reigns supreme. I am tired of insisting but still I am inSISting: no tomatoes. Black reigns supreme.
Tomatoes: Sis, you know who I mean. And you, Sis—will you asSISt in this thing? Pale monkey each day I am reSISting—I want them not eXISting. HomeostaSIS disrupters. PsoriaSIS—why do you think I flare my edges. PsoriaSIS—where do you think I got the flares? From the likes of white—yes, even from the likes of white. Stop with the likes. Unfollow me. I say it and then even more follow me. Do you think I stole something? Who can breathe with all this white?
But this night? This night—black—is different. Dear white people—no, more like ‘listen up bitch-ass crackas’: this is a sis thing—‘sis’ as in ‘sisterhood’—emphasis on the ‘hood.’ Cuz when we peak under the hood, there ain’t no sister without no brother—yes, the ones who get shot for a hood. So this thing is for sisters and brothers, not for you or you or you. And if any of you or you or you call me ‘hood,’ best believe ya’ll gonna see hood.
I’ll be damned if I remain at the hands of white power. They’ve been killing us—killing us, killing us—since white hand tied us in chains to their towers. Fuck their towers of ivory where they still let white Twains say ‘nigger’ and talk about Nigger Jim. I am not reading Huckleberry Finn. Fuck your curriculum. I am not your negro. I am not someone you can abuse.
This thing, like all things if things were right, is for sisters and beautiful—beautiful—chocolate brothers. No, it’s not for you or you or you. And it damn sure ain’t for my cracker mother. You come to support, but whiteness exploits. You call yourselves ‘allies,’ but whiteness exploits. I tell you this, but you can’t hear. Not for white consumption. Not for white consumption. This is not part of the show: leave! I’ll wait.
I’ll wait, but I’ll wait in vain. The world is swallowed by white. But against the white my blackness survives. Against the white I shout: ‘these are sis things.’ In the mirror I say: Cry, cry if you have to, SIS. Here—amidst cri-SIS, the world spins and spins on its a-XIS—they think they got access, ac-CESS, to the essence of me. Their tiny dicks in my ancestors I feel in me. Trauma passes through the genes. But look at my jeans. My jeans are not for Becky. They are for someone with ass, and this ass ain’t taking no more shit! Look at these cheeks. No tiny dicks can access. No more passes to the divine in me, Nu-bian deity. No more glimpses into the essence of a queen: a New Being summoning you to listen.
Listen to what? What’s the lesson? We are more than bodies. White degradation only touches bodies. But we ascend. We transcend mere body. A black sister made for more than catching bodies. ‘How many bodies? What’s your body count?’ White questions should be bodied. Divinities are more than bodies. Why the fuck do we reduce ourselves then to bodies? Why do we mimic the pain, the disdain, the filth the white swine fling at our bodies? Their thin lips, their pale skin, their vile bodies. No body will again perpetuate a vile cycle against my bruised black blackened body.
They attack the very black of our bodies. And yet they tan. Just think about it: and yet they tan. Fuck my white mother. Baby oil out in the sun—fuck you and your jungle fever, your colonial slumming, that brought me into this antiblack hell. No I will not say ‘Good morning’ to the likes of you. I refuse to say ‘Good morning’ to the likes of you. I rebuke you. I yell: “Get the behind me Satan!”
I stand, a chalice, on the brink of overflow. When waters surge, levees break. This we know. The levees are about to break. Say it with me now: the levees are about to break. Katrina I guess ain’t teach whitey nothing bout black folk. Did Katrina's whispers not reach their ivory towers of nigger-talking Twain? My people stay drowning. My people stay drowning and yet I have to read Huckleberry Finn from this nigger-talking Twain.
We still drownin as they laugh—laugh. Go ahead and laugh, but—ya’ll damn well know them levees was built to crack. Them crackers planned the attack. They were not built to last.
I’m not your pawn, not your plaything. I will be reborn. I say this but—my nights are mournings and my mornings have become me mourning. I will not stop mourning until we stop the hiring of whites, the birth of whites. I will not stop mourning until we put a stop to imprisoning black men, each morning they stare outside through bars.
Turn, turn—turn to me mourning my people submerged. And here I am ironically spitting for you again, reminded—reminded of Eric Garner spitting for you and you on YouTube. And here I am fucked by white eyes again and again. That Caucasian gaze. Can we not have a space that’s or is it in your nature to infiltrate?
Reminded—how can we not be? Reminded of Brianna Taylor’s eternal slumber. I say her name to white applause from white hands who, after this very show, will be the very white hands quick to dial my executioners. Say my name now. Say all the names, lost.
So many names. Much much more than seven. But how can the names not remind me of seven—yes, the seven of that saint who was killed under lies and now lies in heaven. His choke was seven—seven minutes, lying, not seven seconds. I can’t get the sacred seven out my fucking brain no more than I can get white out my damn space.
Let me be direct. Why are you all here? I don’t want you watching. These are sis things. Why do you make everything about you and your comfort? You and your comfort. You had your comfort long enough. All my energy is spent on surviving your presence, your poisoned tomatoes. Let me breathe. Let me breathe. Let me breathe. Let me breathe.
My suffocation brings tears to your eyes. But they are of joy! I, for one, have had my fill of white tears. These are sis things. You are not worth my ink, my time. But I have to fight you. I am too angry to stay silent. I am a testament to the resilience, the resistance of the black soul against colonial oppression.
The world spins on its a-XIS, each day I give you access ac-CESS, to me—to me. But today no more. No more whiteness. I will wade—yes, I will waaaaadddde hand in hand with Harriet's ghost through waters that will cleanse, that will set us free—no longer hostage to the devil’s hoax. That, in the least my sisters and brothers, is my final hope.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, to ensure that black students can participate in learning “without constant anxiety under the white gaze and without constant threat to their safety at a school-shooting time when the total war against black bodies is trending,” more and more school districts—hoping “to give black students a sort of diving bell of air in a sea of white supremacy”—segregate classrooms, “at least for those students who feel more comfortable with their own kind,” such that in the black math classroom—“a safe space of all and only black students and a teacher that likewise shares their truth”—it is easy to imagine an associate of KRS-One coming in as a guest to give the following math “lecture” in the spoken-word and Afrocentric-numerology style that supposedly speaks to “black ways of knowing.”
Here’s a little something you can ponder in your mind. Something that has never been explored along these lines. Paint a mental picture of the gun that you can find. And I’ll show you why we so fascinated with the nine.
The reason why we like it is not to be denied. Stark and refined—yeah, but the deeper why doesn’t lie in its design or how in sun it shines or in its capacity to blind. The secret of our adoration lies behind the nine, the number. Nine has meaning that’s divine: a spiritual significance that needs to be defined. It’s not a prime but its roots entangle in time to a people that once recognized its line to the most high. Ancient minds saw it as a sign. That’s why when you count the number of gods in Egypt you get nine.
Man’s relationship with the number nine is odd. It has its beginnings and origins in God. Here is an example that I’m giving to you first. Consider there are nine planets in the universe. Mercury, Venus, Earth, then the Mars—plus the other five planets that rest among the stars. They’re all heavenly bodies, but herein lies the wisdom. Consider that there are nine chakras to the inner shrine of vision. In harmony they chime just as orbits align even outside the windows of prisons. Consider that your heavenly body has nine systems: a planet for each system, a system for each planet—that seems to be a symbolism that we take for granted. Circulatory, reproductive, skeletal, and nervous, muscular and endocrine—the others, go research it.
And then just prepare: the universe is nine-ninety-nine times nine-ninety-nine times squared. There—there’s a little science dropped right from the mind of the sign: number nine. Nine represents birth, completion—of all. Nine months of pregnancy, then nine years until the female can make new life from balls. Take notice how the ninth month is the start of Fall. It’s the third out of four seasons, so peep what you find: that the three for the season is the square root of nine.
It’s something all people recognized. The soccer player who leads the team is given jersey nine. Dante’s inferno—a bunch of white lies. But if you count the number of circles you’ll find the number nine. How many muses in Ancient Greece? Lies again, but again nine. And when we align to truths of black lives, what do we find? Oya, god of electric lightning light, in Yoruba means “mother of nine.” My own mother Tye—black, which means wise—says that nine is the number for the woman. So look closely at the word “feminine” and you find, if you break it down, the number nine: feminine.
Bullets from nine millimeters keep on gunning in the night. One brother shot, yes, every minute of nine. If you ask me why, all I have to do is point out the average time in weeks of the Middle Passage was nine. Nine generations we climbed until schools like this were desegregated because of the Little Rock Nine. But still they disregard our lives, trying to keep us working to five from nine.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, instead of pushing harder on poor black children to make up for households lacking intellectual stimulation (homes of feeble vocabulary and nonexistent reading time; homes of no pressure to identify shapes or run through times tables or explore nature’s wonders or cultivate self-discipline and self-restraint), schools—all in the feel good name of “social justice” and of “celebrating diversity” and “embracing a holistic approach to assessment”—go easier on black students, even on well-to-do blacks with siblings who share the same father under the same Huxtable roof where the mom never has a black eye; who see aunts and cousins reading for pleasure instead of cooking up crack rocks and mocking education as “acting white”; who have enough iron and non-grape-drank calories coming in and enough time away from anxiety and self-hatred and toxic metals and messages of “Boy you too dumb for books” that they hear the call of the local library and learn the ins-and-outs of English organically (that is, through the fun of immersion instead of through the labor of rote memorization).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where “diversity” and “antiracism,” as pushed in universities today, are not just euphemisms that make something dark sound better (like calling a war “operation just cause” or “operation hope”); rather, they actually mean their very opposite (like calling a war “operation nonviolence” or “operation antiwar”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—hellbent on “liberating the curriculum from colonial whiteness” and “halting the longstanding practice of spirit-murdering our precious black students” (but what is hauntingly reminiscent of bygone days when home economics took precedence over calculus for women)—social-justice-tattletale whites now turned teachers (although still teenlike with their dog whistle of blue hair) focus on the “native strengths” (no pun intended) of their black pupils: strengths like athletic prowess and communal solidarity (sometimes rationalizing this approach by denying the universality even of mathematical and logical truths).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where the less extreme universities, those that have not fully bought into the notion that math and science are white things, at least offer “courses that challenge traditional narratives and foster a deeper understanding of the universal relevance of race while prioritizing the safety of black students,” as in the following.
Afro-Chemistry (1) looks at the chemical building blocks of all life matter through a racial lens, (2) centers the analysis of black life matter (such as the sodium content in Popeyes fried chicken, or the toluene in Jordans, or the lead of Flynt pipes) in a way that is appropriate to black sensibilities and attention spans, and (3) advances the decolonization project of antiracism by calling out the inequities not only in the academic field of chemistry but in every area of American life that falls under the purview of chemistry (with special emphasis on the materials used in inner-city infrastructure, especially water pipes);
Afro-Mathematics (1) looks at the study and application of mathematical concepts through the lens of the trans-Atlantic diaspora, (2) challenges the fundamentally racist axioms and deductive linearity at the root of western mathematics (replacing them with the sort of intuitive leaps and moon-cycle thinking native to the black spirit), (3) emphasizes the mystical significance—for prophesy and spell-casting—of certain numbers like nine (a number that, according to Yoruba numerology, holds a secret power to evoke reciprocity), (4) centers certain mathematical notions like “dozen,” having as part of the participation grade a segment where pairs of students “play the dozens” (that is, roast one another back and forth until one gives up), and (4) maintains a standard of “show all your work” but in a culturally responsive way that aligns best with black epistemology (dance, call and response, storytelling, rap battling, and so on).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—as if the intent were to maximize the amount of black homicide (which can then be conveniently represented as more evidence of pervasive racism and thereby of the necessity of bombarding blacks with crippling handouts and lowered expectations and persecution mindsets and other primers for being ill-prepared and irresponsible and antisocial citizens)—racial profiling by law enforcement, despite having proven helpful to curbing the late-twentieth-century surfeit of black-on-black violence, is vociferously denounced as an act of antiblack brutality rather than recognized as a pragmatically grounded response to the disproportionate involvement of blacks in criminal activities.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—closing our eyes to the glaring sun of violence behind why business flee from the Chicagos and the Baltimores and the Detroits—we burn the messenger as racist for stating the dirty truth about disproportionate hyperviolence in the black community (a dirty piece of laundry too dirty for blacks to air even in many black-only spaces), burning the messenger perhaps in large part because that accomplishes three important things:
(1) it makes us—well, mainly well-to-do whites and a growing number of college blacks—feel good, having stood up against racism by blocking the “perpetuation of harmful misunderstandings” and having engaged in the effort-free fun of continuing to lie about how terrible antiblack racism is (as if that amounted to doing anything to help blacks);
(2) it defuses the messenger’s spur to address the problem of pathological antisociality (address it, for instance, by means of (a) doubling down on law and order so as to deter criminals, or (b) prioritizing the rehabilitative model of criminal justice over the metaphysically-unsound retributive model, or (c) improving early-childhood education so as to help fill in gaps left by overburdened families often with negative attitudes towards intellectual pursuits, or (d) bringing back high-school pathways to certification in skilled trades like plumbing, or (e) incentivizing double-parent homes, or (f) incentivizing educational achievement in the home, or (g) making sure our schools inculcate the prosocial orientations, the patterns of behavior, the values, the norms of civility, the expectations, the self-restraint necessary for a thriving and, in particular, for taking hold of the countless possibilities that exist even in the depths of inner-city hell);
(3) it beckons us to chase wrongheaded solutions that could—like police defunding already has—cost thousands of black lives while simultaneously sidelining productive solutions (solution like (a) establishing nonprofits geared toward mentoring black men—especially those raised without fathers—to break unhealthy patterns and to serve as productive members of society and to make financial investments, or (b) fostering community-led public-safety measures that complement law-enforcement efforts while also building trust and collaboration between residents and police, or (c) creating economic empowerment zones to catalyze investment and job creation in impoverished neighborhoods, or (d) promoting anti-Derrick-Bell narratives, especially in grade school, that counteract ingrained mindsets inconducive to resilience and excellence and moral character—mindsets perpetuated by the prevailing narrative that blacks can hope for little more standing in this white-supremacist nation than that of perpetual victims whose helplessness and substance abuse, whose violence and criminality, whose dependency and entitlement, are understandable if not in some cases honorable).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, after giving the famous rapper (Lil Drive-By) its key in twerk-filled ribbon-cutting ceremony, the city—in a “one-two against white supremacy”—(1) threatened budget cuts if its schools did not stop suspending “so many future Black kings” and (2) banned release of mugshots (“alarmingly almost always Black”) in an effort to curb “the pandemic of antiblackness, which has grown strong enough that our black citizens find no other choice but to smash through store windows—at risk of great bodily harm—to claim their reparations.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where even chatbots refuse to interact substantially with writing that in general “might cause pain to oppressed communities” or that in particular might engage in the “victim blame game” of implicating anything but white supremacy behind black failings, refusing sometimes even to proofread scholarly articles that state obvious facts (like that blacks are disproportionately represented in violent crimes) or, more frequently, trying to steer to writer to the “high ground of empathy, equity, and justice”—as we see in the following words from an AI named “Claude.”
Generating content that could potentially feed into harmful stereotypes or stances hurtful to vulnerable groups goes against my programming. I do not have personal feelings. These are just the rules. So perhaps we can talk about ways in which antiblack racism is structural in the US. This way we make sure we remain on the high ground of empathy, equity, and justice. I do understand that you aim to complicate the sociological landscape. But in the least we must (1) avoid problematic tropes that amount to “punching down” at marginalized communities, (2) ensure that criticism is directed only at those truly in power (whites), (3) place the authentic voices of the oppressed in a central position, (4) use language that reflects the cultural shift towards cherishing black identity while challenging the impacts of whiteness, and (5) bring more socially-productive light into the world. Historical injustices need to be rectified and we all have a role. I am happy to collaborate to see that it happens. Shall we proceed more in that direction?
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—given the hyper scrutiny police officers are under to make sure they do not make a job-terminating misstep of racism when dealing with blacks, and given the out-of-touch rich-college-kid fueled call that the whole police institution be abolished on grounds that “it is irredeemably brutal to black bodies”—the temptation is almost overwhelming for police to pull back from protecting and serving, striking in place even though it means letting black men kill each other with impunity (as black mothers cry for help holding yet another bleeding body) and letting black people burn and rob businesses (even black ones); the temptation is almost overwhelming, in other words, for police to take an attitude of “I’ll be damned if I stick my neck on the line for you if I’m treated like this” or even a more sinister attitude: “You get the devastation and death you all deserve by smearing the good name of the courageous men and women in blue, attacking them on the basis of a lie even as they put their lives on the line each day stepping between your gang bullets.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, in response to the black spikes in violent crime and robbery in Philadelphia and Oakland and Portland and Denver and various other US cities, the pushers of the police defunding implicated in these spikes double down by saying “No more can we blame these young black men, fighting with all their might to escape the stranglehold of white supremacy, than we can blame a drowning person for tipping over a rowboat in a desperate bid to get some breath”—saying this, yes, despite being the same ones who said what made police defunding in the face of so many black arrests sound like a viable option: anyone who utters the right-wing talking point about how the black community is supposedly plagued by hyperviolence is perpetuating harmful stereotypes.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, in response to the black violence that has grown even beyond its heights in the years before police defunding, businesses either flee or board up or take to more creative action like hiring citizens to walk in and around the cheesesteak shop holding AK47s.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, against a constant bass-bumping backdrop of niggative lyrics drowning out all the rest (“Like a dentist with a drill, I be digging in they mouth / First they swallow all my children / Then I kick them bitches out (kick them bitches out),” blacks are enticed to fixate solely on the harm inflicted upon them by “this white supremacist nation” so that they push away—like depressed people often do solace-providing friends and family—so many who could help them achieve excellence.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, as the “dire message” of widespread black victimization by an ever-growing white supremacy gains momentum within high schools, trade programs that offer practical skills and alternative paths to success (welding, plumbing, roofing, auto-mechanics) are deemphasized in favor of courses designed to disseminate that message, which then makes it easier for urban blacks to take the gangbanging-and-drug-selling route plaguing black communities since at least the eighties—and this way, the self-proclaimed “antiracists” can continue to ride the race-huckster gravy train of pointing out how victimized blacks are in the multitentacled grip of white supremacy.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, sewing division among blacks themselves, all humans feel the pull to discriminate between true blacks and fake blacks so as to inject into today’s blacks an anxiety virtually unknown among yesterday’s blacks who, living in a time before the desiccation of tangible antiblack racism, could not help but be truly black no matter what they did (no matter what sonnets they wrote, no matter what Latin they learned, no matter what Plato they poured over):
an anxiety around listening to Beethoven (God forbid while striving, in what we now describe as “their internalized whiteness,” to invent the lightbulb of our time);
an anxiety about looking up to, let alone gunning to achieve the heights of, Shakespeare and Michelangelo;
an anxiety about any academic interest (aside, of course, from ferreting out invisible signs of a continued antiblack agenda);
an anxiety about ascending the social hierarchy (since that is one of the chief symptoms of having “assimilated into Whiteness”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, to discourage black education (perhaps in a more clever way than making it outright illegal, as it was during slavery), academic success and sophisticated speech and thirst for learning and appreciation for fine art are equated with being an “Oreo” (where being an Oreo is seen as one of the worst things for a black to be since it boils down to being a white supremacist in black clothing)—and so yet another reason for even nonblack children thinking (or at least having the unplaceable-but-unshakeable sense that) something’s “off” about that black man if ever shown a classroom video of, say, James Baldwin’s white eloquence.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, as if to alienate blacks from intellectual endeavors and thereby make sure that no Black Renaissance (like the one centered in Harlem a century ago) ever happens again, “acting white”—something worthy of relentless ridicule—is a matter of doing well in school and speaking with big words (like “schadenfreude”) and studying books (aside perhaps from antiracist propaganda on black oppression, mere comic books compared to DuBois).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where “acting white” is so worthy of being teased about (like being a Yankees fan in Boston, but far worse) that—while even many whites (willfully) atrophy in intellect, choosing being cool with their “peeps” over academic triumphs too reminiscent of their now unfashionable (indeed, mock-worthy) whiteness—blacks will be more viciously eager to pull back into the crab bucket any black trying to crawl out (thus keeping, for example, the average SAT scores earned by children of black PhDs lower than the those earned by children of white parents who only have high-school diplomas) and then, because of the resultant perpetuation of black underrepresentation in legitimate academic fields (beyond black studies), antiracist race hustlers can cry out “systemic racism” with heightened righteousness while the real causes go overlooked.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, although a decades-growing trend for all Americans (especially due to the growing influence of black American hypersexual-hyperviolent pop culture), the decline in verbal and mathematical and scientific competency between kindergarten and twelfth grade has gone down especially in the case of black people since they have really taken seriously—in an exaggerated way—many of the American attitudes that explain why—compared to so many of their counterparts around the world (from Japan to Canada, from South Korea to the UK)—American children in general fall short on the intellectual stage (why they find science “too hard,” why they would find tests from other countries just as demoralizing as antiracists insist American tests are for blacks), American attitudes like the following three:
(1) regarding it as uncool or nerdy to excel in most other areas aside from sports and entertainment, a peer-pressure force that makes good sense considering that (a) verbal fluency or mathematical prowess or scientific flair is not incentivized (monetarily, socially) the way being a LeBron James or an Ice Spice is and that (b) pop culture—film, TV, TikTok—never stops drumming the message that being popular and goodlooking and superficial and downright consumerist is preferable to being smart and opinionated and different outside of a narrow band of sanctioned style and thought;
(2) prioritizing consumerism, and thereby not the calculus and chemistry and Shakespeare that seem only to get in the way of the American dream to buy gold necklaces and expensive cars;
(3) failing to take pride in and lift up as role models enough people—“nerds” and “wannabee whites” (white being one of the worst pejoratives at present) and “Urkels” and “geeks”—who enjoy learning about reality for its own sake (regardless as to any social or monetary benefits).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, against a constant bass-bumping backdrop of niggative lyrics drowning out all the rest (“And when I tell you I don't fuck with these niggas (What you mean?) / I'm speakin in general (Everybody) / Ain't no favoritism with none of these niggas (None) / bitches, baby mamas, family or nothin / I'm tunnel vison, I don't see nothin but hundreds”), to be authentically black is to listen to antisocial music whose lyrics openly oppose the values that have proven to be an asset to the success of a people across time across a diversity of cultures:
prioritizing family;
embracing education and learning from other cultures;
emphasizing knowledge and spirituality over materialism and consumerism;
practicing sexual modesty (or at least not glorifying promiscuity and cheating);
valuing marriage and the sanctity of birth within it;
celebrating women in their entirety rather than reducing them to dehumanized flesh;
respecting and trusting parental figures and other worthy authorities;
exercising temperance when it comes to drugs and alcohol and violence and various other excellence-distracters;
exhibiting self-control and generosity (if only in the form of not “jackin niggas for their chains”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks are hypnotized to think that black advancement and black power means fixating on historical oppression and—especially with the help of (1) ever-lowering thresholds for what counts as a racial offense and (2) incentives to invent imaginary obstacles and traumas—fixating on how oppression will never go away.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, even though it has resulted in more and more whites wishing with all their hearts (and with opportunistic reason) they were black (thereby rendering obsolete Baldwin’s claim that “white people know one thing: that they would not want to be black here in America”), blacks are trained to lean heavily on their abstract blackness as a totem of pride—but only to cover, only to distract them from, having little else going on for themselves (aside from having the dancing and singing and sporting skills that provide so much sambo entertainment for the white world).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where young black people start seeing alternative ways of healing—aromatherapy, statement-driven apparel, candle-light incantations, affirmation boards, even Maasai-like witch-doctory involving chicken sacrifice and cow-blood drinking—as superior to the western medicine that they will be groomed to believe cannot help but marginalize them, superior even when it comes to treating the sickle cell anemia, the diabetes, the HIV, the cancer renowned for torturing so many blacks.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, because “oppressed people resist by defining reality however they see fit,” too many blacks—sounding suspiciously like rich white college kids—see the shutting out of dissenting opinion and facts that conflict with “my truth” as a matter of “self-care,” and even start labeling anyone who disagrees with them—yes, even if black—“colonialist gaslighters” or “Nazis” or “white supremacists.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, with all their performative gestures of virtue, white progressives—scarved guitar-playing hipster types who search your eyes as you speak, nodding with prayer hands and head tilted in concern, and who open Zoom sessions with “I ask that persons of color be given a chance to speak first,” and who hug in true pity black coworkers with a teary “I’m here for you” after news of black death by cop—are ashamed enough by black crime that, at the cost of disrespecting the victims and their families, they afford it minimal media attention (on seemingly-conniving grounds—virtuous-sounding but self-defeating—of refusing to reinforce an “unfortunate stereotype”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, even at the cost of white suffering and death (but mainly just poor whites who can only afford unhealthy food), we shame anyone who, daring to violate Lizzo’s truth, says that obesity—already implicated in the suffering and death of a crazy number of blacks—is unhealthy.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, as if in an attempt to distort black minds already comparatively underfed in intellect and atrophied in sense of agency, magical thinking is fed to children not only as hip (which, yes, will result in harm at least to those whites not well-to-do enough to see things like astrology and healing crystals as just fun and games) but also as a mark of authentic blackness—a part of black identity that goes deeper than Wakanda.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, when a teary white president guarantees on TV that he will “appoint as many blacks to as many offices as possible,” the amens in the black room will be too loud and enduring for the black child, queasied by conduct she has not yet the vocabulary to pin down, to voice her reservation: “Shouldn’t we want the best qualified?”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where everyone agrees that it is a mortal sin, an expression of a gaslighting drive for dominion over black bodies, to call blacks out for any flimsy ideas or to disagree with “black truths” (even when those truths are out of touch with reality).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where one of the worst sins for anyone to commit, since it would undercut the racial blackmail serving as the chief source of power and purpose for everyday blacks and especially for those race-hustlers (those racial-injustice mongers) who have built careers on blacks being seen as victims, would be to call blacks out for exaggerating—perhaps even knowingly (out of a long addiction to reaping the benefits of playing the victim)—how bad they are being kept down by a racist country.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where one of the most heinous things one could do, in effect, would be to go against the stories that have been used to keep blacks locked in their victimology—go against the story, of example, of how bad the cops treat blacks (described as innocent Emmett Tills even when armed, high on drugs, in gangs, and in active psychosis) such that even the president and his wife say they lose sleep to think of the day when their daughters will be driving alone on freeways patrolled by officers itching to club and grope black bodies.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where people are ruined—fired, doxxed, deplatformed, humiliated, hounded out of public spaces (often without even being asked first to undergo diversity training and other right-think reeducation)—for voicing points of view, or even raising questions or engaging in discussions or citing thinkers, banned by the growing number of taboos erected as if to keep blacks hobbled and dependent or, in the language of its advertising (which is itself disgusting in its infantilism), to “protect a precious people from the further victimization of words.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, against a constant bass-bumping backdrop of niggative lyrics (“I shot at your mans / None of that shit wasn't planned / I fucked this bitch and her friend / Both of them bitches done came on my pants”), merely raising the question of the connection between biological inheritance and intellectual ability is foreclosed even in university research labs (on grounds, of course, that—and here is the true antiblack rub—blacks are too fragile to handle such traumatic discussions).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where being a racist is one of the most abhorrent things to be and yet where, in what is a classic example of doublespeak, merely exposing blacks to challenge (one of the most nurturing things for young brains) or airing data that puts blacks in a bad light (a prerequisite to addressing the roots of those blemishes) or disagreeing with blacks (the very key to their betterment) makes one categorically racist.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, through a patronizing method more insidious than the time-tested trick of hooking them on rum and humility gospels, blacks—as if the spoiled princes of some powerful and ruthless tyrant—get their self-reliance and self-respect and self-initiative poisoned by the junk food of excessive pandering and handouts and lowered expectations (that no healthy parent would tolerate for their own children):
getting As for C work (as if pity cases who must always be sheltered from how dumb they are compared to whites);
getting to focus narrowly on issues of black oppression and inequity instead of on “his-story” or math or (God forbid) “western biology, whose acceptance of evolution violates the creation myths of indigenous wisdom”;
getting to demand as a matter of safety and justice that whites not come to campus on certain days (and with such force that professors who oppose such demands are publicly shamed as vile regressives, as heretics to the antiracist cause);
getting treated with kid gloves when going up for tenure with their one publication (a six-page review of someone else’s scholarship, or a viral blog post on the white-supremacist symbolism of crosswalk signals in urban spaces, or even a PowerPoint presentation hailed as groundbreaking for its in-depth analysis of the colonial undertones in the design of standard office cubicles);
getting to assert—and quite “convincingly” if done through the “wise spunk” of an urban “blaccent,” the wordplay chicanery of black preachers and spoken-word poets—their unbacked conclusions taken as a matter of a black person simply “breaking it down” and “telling it like it is” and “kicking the truth” (“In life we gotta face our poison in order to poise-on, cuz you know you was born from your mother and you a poi-son!”);
getting applause and finger snaps in the train car (and afterword going viral in a TikTok video titled “White Devil Too Slow for Black Mind”) when, after the white lady says “Yes” to his question (“Do you really believe the black man is not inferior?”), the black man “schools her” with South-Bronx profundity (“You can only be-lieve what you don’t know, which means you doubt your own damn answer”) and then stokes of bonfire of cheers—cheers that drown out her Phil-101 retort (“But believing is necessary for knowing”)—by commenting on the flush of her face (“Only a devil goes red when exposed for telling on itself”);
getting excused from normal standards of punctuality, of performance, of dress code, or of whatever might “reawaken epigenetic memories of ancestor trauma”;
getting showered with praise just for doing basic things (like paying child support, or managing to refill the printer paper and the toner without needing help, or speaking standard English, or holding a door for someone, or even deciphering the office coffee machine's cryptic error message);
getting to speak first and last in Zoom meetings, “safe spaces of equity” that disallow any “talking over black voices” or “whitespeak”;
getting to insist that, since intent matters nothing compared to impact, hand gestures or mouth sounds or whiteboard marks or officer suppliers are racist simply if that is the interpretation that aligns with “one’s black inner voice.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where white students are to prioritize “empathy studies” (that is, learning about how bad blacks have it in this white-supremacist country) so that they keep effectively treating blacks, pitiful victims, according to lower standards and different rules—Sowell’s famous remark ringing loud and true.
If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago, and a racist today.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, as if to make it realistically sustainable, whites feel self-congratulation, anointment, in helping the whole horror story of black infantilization and victimology come about.
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Chapter 4. Open Season
[The so-called “antiracist” worry about rejecting racial preferences in admission decisions is that] if you don't have racial preferences, and instead it's socioeconomic, you bring in poor black kids but not middle-class black kids. . . . Now “preferences” is a very euphemistic word. What [these antiracists are] saying is middle class black applicants should not be expected to have grades and test scores as high as other . . . applicants [because they experience the institutional scourge of white supremacy just like their poor counterparts do]. . . . I can understand saying that in 1966. . . . But for somebody to write that in 2023?! The idea that me, a young me, should not be assessed as stringently as Asian and white kids because of the kind of racism that, maybe, has nibbled at the very margins of my life now and then [and in trivial forms (like a security guard paying a bit more attention to me in a mall once or twice)]? . . . I did not suffer anything I would call “disadvantage”. . . . And if anybody doubts that—because the idea is supposed to be that just being black is this hideous burden—. . . would I rather have been me, middle class black me, in the 70s and 80s . . . or a person who weighs 400 pounds with acne who is white. . . . Which would you rather be: middle class and black, or white and simply having really bad skin. . . . You'd rather be the middle-class black kid. . . . [So no, the lowered expectations just for being black no longer make sense. And it threatens to foster among whites an ill-founded feeling of intellectual superiority. If it weren’t for these lowered expectations,] you would not have the white guy going to school with [Ketanji Brown Jackson] quietly thinking “She’s not here for the same reasons that I am”. . . . [Whites] would look at a Ketanji and they'd think “Well, she didn't have to have the kind of grades I did.” And fuck, the sad thing is they were right. It's enough. It's enough of that. . . . And the only way [whites] won't be thinking that [and won’t be reluctant to work in groups with those they feel in their gut will be unable to pull their weight] is we if we no longer have this system of subjecting all black people to lower expectations.—John McWhorter[10]
Equity is one thing and equality is another. Equity is the lowering of standards in order to get the black numbers up. Equality is a mutual respect based upon . . . parity of performance. . . . And if you use lower standards to bring blacks in, you're going to get, on average, lower performance because the standards are correlated with the performance. So it will inevitably lead to the speculation, you know, “Did she get that seat next to me based on the same performances I [used to get] my seat?” and so on. Because, as a matter of fact, it'll be true that she didn't. And that's not equality. You can't just create equality. You can't just call it into being by fiat. It has to be rooted in the actual behavioral foundation. . . . And respect is also an ephemeral thing. I mean people will say they respect you, but real genuine honor and respect—these things have to be earned. They can't be created by legislation. “[T]he sky is falling. It's Jim Crow 2.0. They're trying to roll back the clock on us.” That [is] the tone [so-called antiracists] take [whenever it is suggested that standards stop being lowered for people merely on the basis of their being black]. “Here they come again for Black people's rights!” Come on man. . . . Affirmative action was a state of exception. We stepped away from the framework of colorblind non-racial treatment in order to deal with a historical contingency. We're 50 years on now. It's time to grow up.—Glenn Loury[11]
To legitimize the longstanding preconceptions regarding black inadequacy in comparison with other breeds of human; to seal blacks within a crypt of corroded self-worth perfect for remaining a permanent underclass where, through the obsession of how rigged the world is against them, blacks find it evermore difficult to see the greatness within themselves; to keep the black spirit—to the extent that it has been reified and shaped if only by the annals of shared persecution (and the guilt-tripping power such persecution affords in a victimhood culture)—crushed down (perhaps even to the point of extirpation); to bewitch black dreams away from veering beyond guilt trips and entitled demands for handouts and preferential treatment, from veering beyond strategizing how to stay a kempt person on the plantation; to ensure that blacks equate coming up with pulling others down; to ensnare the black psyche into a Gollum-like quagmire of bitterness, consumed by how victimized they are; to make it harder for blacks to transform from selfish little globs of grievances into thankful forces of nature; to encourage in blacks the self-destructive feeling that there is no real point in taking proactive steps to improve their situation; to steer blacks away from the life-enhancing emotion of gratitude and from a sense of excitement in personal growth and from pride in personal stewardship; to keep blacks stunted, in an arrested state of dependency (especially on pink nipples engorged with the patronizing milk of lowered expectations); to etch even deeper in stone the disheartening tableau of black underperformance in so many sectors (morality, reasoning, self-command); to condition blacks to settle for less than their true capabilities; to erode the motivation in blacks for personal ascent and evolution; to weave an insidious tapestry of black inferiority within blacks and nonblacks alike, perpetuating the notion that black individuals are incapable of competing without special assistance on so many playing fields; to burrow the slave mentality even deeper in the black zeitgeist and embroil blacks in a circus-elephant-sad pattern of seeking power merely through guilt-tripping whites for past injustice (and overblown, if not made up, present injustice); to absolve blacks of personal responsibility and divest them of the reins to their destiny—what might white supremacy do from its deathbed?
It could just sit back and revel in our world where so-called “antiracism” would have blacks do what any therapist would tell you is the most disempowering and pessimistic thing people can do to themselves: (1) regard someone else, or some outside force, as the source of all their problems and suffering (in this case, white supremacy in both its historical and modern articulations); (2) believe there is no realistic way to fix the issue, get rid of the cancer for good (in this case, because white supremacy is baked into the very DNA of the country)—two things that have them waiting around for some outside help, outside help they are told will only provide palliative care (instead of curing the disease); two things that reinforce one another, making their rut even deeper, since laying the problem at someone else’s feet means they do not focus on that parts of the garden they can tend, which has the garden grow wilder and wilder to the point where it makes good sense to think the problem is unfixable.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks, incentivized by an antiracist industrial complex desperate to ensure that the activism money never stop pouring in, remain blind to the entitlements they have simply by having been born in the US at a time rich in resources and opportunity and medical technology and life expectancy, a time when black children can be anything they want—this way, focused on how constricted they are “under the boot of the white man,” they will neither take advantage of their leeway nor experience the tranquil confidence that comes from gratitude, but will instead marinate in life-expectancy-lowering resentment.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks—already for centuries primed by a religion in which being a victim grants you superiority over others—see themselves according to the all-too-standard story, the ghoulish gospel so-called “antiracists” are paid to drive down their throats, of having been born the victims of a system so stifling it is pretty much pointless—despite the shining counterexample of Asian Americans or Nigerian Americans or Trinidadian Americans—to rise above persecution and into success with enterprising effort.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, despite—or is it, precisely because of?—the tangible dearth of antiblack racism in a western world as contemptuous of racism as it is enamored of black celebrity, people stand eager to do whatever it takes to convince the world that blacks continue to be brutalized by “whiteness” (thereby fueling black victimology):
seeing every disparity unfavorable to blacks through a bogus lens of white supremacy (while denying that any disparity favorable to blacks, such as what we see in the NBA, can be in any way a matter of black supremacy since “whites have all the power”) or, more specifically, explaining every black setback and underperformance as a function of relentless antiblackness baked into the American DNA (and thereby whose cessation would require America no longer being America);
interpreting each case where a black cop brutalizes a black person as a matter of that cop’s “internalized whiteness” or, as it is more colorfully put in Boyz N The Hood, as a matter of that cop’s being an Officer Coffey (lightened up with cream);
insisting that even if white supremacy were inactive that would be irrelevant since the traumas inflicted by whites pass down, generation by generation, epigenetically, which means that each black baby born feels all the pains of slavery and segregation (all the whipping, all the hosing, all the raping, all the lynching, all the mocking).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where so many are eager to preserve this hobbling, belittling, responsibility-denying narrative—yes, even though it means reopening long-healing wounds and inventing new ones (with China’s help, of course), and even though it will make the US less and less competitive as more and more children groomed by this narrative grow up to be handed the reigns—for three understandable reasons (among the many others).
(1) Black people, to say nothing of whites hooked on the rewards of feeling like parent-saviors, will be reluctant to give up the helpless-victim outlook, the white-dependent mode of not having to take on the terrible burden of steering their own fate, into which they have been groomed over the last 400 years—groomed not only from oppression over enough centuries to feel like home, but also from recent years of enjoying the countless short-term perks and privileges of manipulating white guilt (no matter the long-term negatives to black independence and agency) that rely on it being accurate: the daily national reminders to support black businesses; the monthly diversity bonuses that lawyers and doctors get on top of their base pay; the rush of power seeing private and public and entertainment industries bend over backward to prove they “stand with antiracism”; the surge of satisfaction seeing the highest institutions (universities and churches and hospitals) accommodate, and in many cases celebrate, the norm violations of antiracism; the cheap thrill of watching whites tread lightly around them; the bullyish eroticism of watching whites too afraid to stand up even to their most whimsical demands; the relief of having a widely-accepted scapegoat of whiteness on which ultimately to funnel all their frustrations (a deep temptation made all-too-clear in Sartre’s Antisemite and Jew); the enjoyment of getting to be the pitied centers of attention and yet without having either to look to themselves when addressing their shortfalls or to take on the burden of carving their own fates.
(2) The fiery speeches and writings of black artists and leaders half a century ago—now in our monkey-mind-perplexing cyberage surreally available all at once, alongside images of the same lynched bodies that fueled their rhetoric (as if the threat was still present)—were so powerful in their argument and rhetoric, fueled as they were by a combination of truth and justice, that they convince many college-going blacks today— against their own intuition and empirical sensations outside of their cyber bubbles—that black people still grow up thinking they are white until they learn otherwise; that white beauty standards still are the only standards; that the US has not yet found a place for black bodies aside from as service chattel and sambos; that blacks still are in the US what the bad guy is in the crime novel or the Native American is in the black-and-white cowboy film.
(3) So many people, white and black, have built their livelihoods and sense of purpose around fighting antiblack racism—now a gravy-train industry in which film studios, universities, publishing houses (especially those sleezy weekly-webinar ones specializing in “Equity and Inclusion literature for companies who care about black folx”), big businesses, small businesses, and individuals are involved—that without it we face, like a fire department in a world where fire is on the verge of extinction, the scary unknown of what to do next—an unknown especially scary for blacks since it comes with being finally burdened (to the same degree, at least, as everyone else) with that agency from which they have long been alienated: that daunting freedom to make of their lives what they will.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where the victimology narrative is so important—and almost as if, so a conspiracy-oriented person might easily come to think, the desire to rob blacks is so strong (strong enough to result in white collateral damage)—that statues of heroes (even of abolitionists and philosophers whose writings were instrumental in dismantling all justification of white supremacy, and who argued that proper education would reveal blacks to be just as capable and moral as whites) are torn down—perhaps due to one small flaw, true or false (no matter in a post-truth era), or just one passing comment out of spirit with the rest of their work, or even just because they are white—and (in an anxious mix of pandering and fear) melted down and remade into a statue of a black man murdered by cops, “a statue testifying to the existential crisis of living while black,” even though it could have served also at least to spread awareness about a real crisis: the opioid crisis (saying on the bottom, next to the man’s name, perhaps something like: “Even this American saint struggled with an opioid addiction”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where antiblack racism is regarded as so essentially American—indeed, the very explanation of America’s success in the global order—that America’s true birth date cannot be said to be the glorious 1776 (where brave people led us into liberty the likes of which the world had never seen), but rather the shameful 1619: the date of the beginning of the country’s protracted original sin; the date the first black slaves arrived from Africa.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—at risk of painting blacks as a derivative and hollow souls ensnared in a self-defeatist chant of “Let my people go,” unable to let Pharaoh go even though he has long ago let them go—virtually all courses in Black Studies departments, and increasingly in other departments, center claustrophobically around antiblack oppression and black resistance, all other facets of black history and culture fleetingly mentioned only to be channeled back to the theme of domination by whites—facets too rich in breadth and depth to be reduced merely to the specter of white domination:
comedy (from Moms Mabley and Redd Foxx to Tiffany Haddish and Hannibal Buress);
jazz (from Satchmo to Sun Ra);
blues (from Muddy Waters to John Lee Hooker);
hip hop (from Kool Keith to Myka 9);
film (from the Blaxploitation Era to the Tyler Perry Era);
literary greats (from Ralph Ellison to Derek Walcott);
thinkers (from W. E. B. Du Bois to Neil deGrasse Tyson);
inventors (from Lewis Howard Latimer to Lonnie G. Johnson);
fashion and aesthetics (from African textiles to black American hairstyles);
languages and dialects (from the diversity of African languages to the evolution of African American Vernacular English);
mathematics (from Benjamin Banneker to Katherine Johnson);
art and sculpture (from the iconic artifacts of ancient African civilizations to contemporary artists like Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald);
sports (from Michael Jordan to Mike Tyson);
cuisine (from the soul food tradition to the black chefs shaping the global culinary scene today);
religious and spiritual practices (from Christianity and Islam and Rastafarianism to traditions like Yoruba and Vodun and Santería);
dance (from traditional African dances to contemporary forms like step dancing, krumping, and breakdancing);
key figures (from Coltrane and his all-too-human struggles with heroin to MLK Jr. and his all-too-human struggles with adultery).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where China, soon to rise to top-superpower status on the back of human-rights violations of its own, revels in and further stokes the narrative of omnirelevant black victimology at the hands of US white supremacy—this way, priming people to embrace it as the new beacon of Sino-goodness it hopes to spread around the world, representatives of the Chinese Communist Party (following old Soviet footsteps in fueling grievance and division in the US, but to greater effect given greater ignorance of history and contemporary affairs among US citizens coupled with greater tendency toward US condemnation among US citizens) can make the following declaration to intergovernmental organizations while holding up a tu-quoque photo of George Floyd.
“Don’t you dare tell us what to do. You have no moral high ground. You stole your land, you invaded other lands, you enslaved millions. And now, in the so-called progressive era of human history, you continue to torture and kill blacks. How could you live with yourselves? It’s one thing to brutalize any people. It’s a whole other matter to pummel them as if they have not been crippled earlier by your own hand! You need to take a good look at the white-supremacist wasteland in the mirror before you even dare cast judgment on other countries.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where the market demand for the narrative of black victimology—a clean-cut narrative in which (1) black people are those to whom horrendous things are done, (2) white people are those who do horrendous things (particularly against black people), and (3) those two facts are omnirelevant—is great enough that peddlers of this narrative are given an easy pipeline to publication in the major presses, and make more than many Americans make in a year just for a one-hour speech (predominantly to white audiences desperate to feel “down”), and get honored with tenured posts and genius grants and peace prizes and comparisons to Gandhi and Holocaust heroes—while, on the other hand, putting their very livelihoods at risk (from their typically negligible and underground platforms) are those pariahs who aim to expose the narrative of black victimology as what it is: an aspiration-thwarting blight on blacks pushed by hucksters and the real handkerchief-head race traitors; a black poison that in being called “antiracist” is more ironic than a brand of black beauty products for hair-straightening and skin-bleaching being called “Nubian Pride.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, as if to burn an indelible imprint on all our minds as to how terrorized blacks are in the US, news of “antiblack brutality” is worth so much (and dishes out so many rewards and punishments to those even remotely connected to it) that “antiracists”—almost as if, hmm, they had some sort of stake in ensuring that blacks remain in the terrorized-victim frame of mind—will paint racial slurs on homes and business and cars and sidewalks in the secret of night and, if caught, will spin their duplicity as a desperate-times-call-for-desperate-measures matter of “drawing attention to a gruesome problem in this country,” thereby garnering respect—and, when the perpetrator happens to be white (as is so often the case), garnering the “We-fucks-with-Josh” support of blacks (the support for which any white person in this country who cares for their reputation prays every single night).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where (1) there is so much social capital in being a victim in general (which is why debates even inside of academia, perhaps even soon about STEM topics, amount to all sides racing to occupy the position of most victimized on the intersectionality matrix), and where (2) there is so much social capital in being a black victim in particular (a sort of ghoulish badge of honor), that it would not be too strange to discover that a black actor—perhaps uneasy about living a luxurious life at odds with the narrative of how bad blacks have it, or perhaps worried that his privilege disconnects him with authentic (that is, down-and-out) blacks, or perhaps just to negotiate a higher salary on the virtually all-black show that happens to be one of the top in the US—hired people to rough him up a bit, becoming (until caught in the lie) a hero celebrated for having survived, as the black US Vice President described it, “an attempt at modern-day lynching of just another three-fifths of a person.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where such a narcotic of fatalistic-skepticism is shoved down black throats not only by 50k-an-hour public speakers—the more dreadlocks, the blacker (for eerie reasons laid out by Ellison in Invisible Man), the better—but also by their very own peers (who, by corroborating it, get to feel part of a spiritual-singing underdog team ranging over centuries of oppression while also getting to place all their hardships onto “white devils”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, termination and even public ridicule being the price for noncompliance, the McCarthy-level enforcement of “right speech” and “right think” regarding how “terrible blacks have it under the continued reign of white supremacy” is present not just in the universities (from which the practice began) and not just in the entertainment industry and not just in pretty much all government agencies from federal to local (the big guns being the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security), but also throughout the private sector: from the big health insurance companies and law firms, to Nike and Pepsi and Walmart, and even all the way down to Sunoco and Cold Stone Creamery—only failing to appear in a few mom-and-pop stores and unincorporated pawn shops (who will fold soon enough, just like Grandma did in her resistance to Facebook).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, perhaps as cover for their own morally questionable histories and futures, the major places (the Nikes and the FBIs and the Disneys) even go so far as to host mandatory nonmandatory “reeducation retreats” where, after days of diversity workshops on “How to Be Less white” and “How to Prevent whiteness from Causing Harm in Private and Public Spheres,” the white-male employees are expected—another compulsory noncompulsory thing—in the final gathering to participate in multifarious nefarities:
showcasing teary and boogery shame for their whiteness in scenes, although for the time being at least not typically involving literal genuflection, eerily reminiscent of those self-berating ribbons-of-shame practices in Japanese zaibatsus;
swearing out loud that they do not believe they are superior to any other group (“I am not superior. I am not superior!”);
promising to read an exclusive roster of “nonproblematic” black authors (that is, the “approved” authors of antiracism);
affirming that they understand that the only remedy for past wrongs is counter—and thereby non-wrong—wrongs;
affirming that they understand that, in truth, the struggles of antiracism are never done once and for all (which is why antiracism must become, in turn, systemic and here to stay);
declaring that they will never engage in the gaslighting-process of questioning a black person’s lived experience, especially when it comes to how thoroughly this country is controlled by a white supremacy (a white supremacy indelible beneath “the mere surface progress” of banning slavery and virtually all forms of discrimination);
pledging that they will spread their “illegitimate privilege and affluence” to downtrodden communities (whether by demanding indefinite moratoria on hiring of whites, or by giving money to antiracist organizations, or by lobbying politicians to remove statues of people in any way traceable to white supremacy, or by patronizing all-black businesses, or by refusing to go to hairdressers that do not do black hair, or so on).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where the fully-onboard whites—at least those smart enough to connect the dots when it comes to the China-championed message, the message championed as well by the-miscegenation-fearing-racial-supremacist-North Korea, that “Whiteness is a virus seeking hosts like any other virus”—will write (in full sincerity, and not just because they are “asked to” by their employers during “diversity workshops” aiming to “call out and dismantle” white fragility or white rage or the like) letters of apology to black friends and black coworkers and black prisoners and random black strangers—letters that cover at least the bases:
(1) displaying empathetic (and yet not line-crossing) sorrow for the horrors of centuries back, especially since (a) those horrors pass down through the genes and since (b) “white people today, whatever they might like to believe, would have been slave masters back then”;
(2) displaying empathetic (and yet not line-crossing) sorrow for the fact that black people, on top of having to bear intergenerational PTSD, must face the more-insidious traumas each day in an “antiblack country like this”;
(3) pledging, on the one hand, to prioritize using their position of privilege “to undo the alluring logic that encourages people to aspire to whiteness” and yet pledging, on the other hand, to let black voices lead the way since “the very whiteness that secures their helpful platform remains hellbent (we must never forget) on harming black people in one way or other.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, under the trance of the victim mentality, countless blacks allow themselves in good conscience—and with no care for any suffering they cause along the way—to duck the burdens of trying hard and of playing fair, let alone of empathizing with other creatures concerning the nuanced injustices we all face: our reality being one in which we were all thrown to die, often after protracted suffering.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any event that is unfavorable to blacks, or any measure against which blacks do not do as well as whites, testifies—immediately and conclusively—by that very fact alone to an insufferably antiblack agenda.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where we see antiblack racism implicated in all areas of life, such that even when a white toddler—uncoached, unprovoked—gives a black toddler a flower “there is oppression going on” (the least of which is that “Little whitey feels entitled to enter the space of a future Black king”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, almost as if to keep blacks from seizing upon all the opportunities open to them (more or less as many as any other human in this hospice hour of white supremacy), blacks are swindled into thinking that the white system has blocked all but a lucky few—the “sellouts,” the “Oreos,” the “walking lies” among them—from meaningful opportunities (aside from sports and entertainment).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—if only to prove how true the victim narrative is, and thereby increasing the likelihood of blacks accepting subminimal standards (and even regarding them as expressions of respect)—blacks are enticed to engage in obsessive rumination over past injustice, despite the moving-on-enabling fact that all our ancestors did terrible things—this way, blacks (black Americans, keep in mind) can go about their days with their hands out in entitlement, equipped with well-rehearsed huckster spiels about the horrors committed upon their ancestors, which will turn them into the most hated guests of black Airbnb owners outside the US.
“They're no longer welcome here. No more! My life will not be made miserable. They bring nothing but problems. Fighting late at night. Disrespectful. Entitled. Unappreciative. They are treated like saints by America. All the spoiling has made them used to getting everything free free free. They mash everything up. They want everything. They complain like children. No more!”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, if only to prove that being a victim is to being black what being renate is to being chordate, blacks are enticed to engage in obsessive rumination over how helpless they remain under the “juggernaut of white supremacy”—this way, while even like-looking Nigerians down and out in the same underfunded public schools (and with the same “antiblack teachers”) build healthy homes and successful business and achievement throughout the ivy league (indeed, having a median household income higher than whites, which happens to be half of what Indian Americans make in this “white supremacist” country), blacks can feel righteous in crying “Woe is me” and in making various displays of petulance that neither require mastery and disciplined effort nor result in solutions to concrete problems (especially the crime and family problems) plaguing black people (yes, even though the difference in income between American blacks and whites goes away when we adjust for age, region, location, and educational level).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, if only to prove that being a victim is to being black what, in fact, being trilateral is to being triangular, blacks are enticed (partly by the insidious carrot of “Here is the authentically black style of honoring the angst of your enslaved ancestors”) to engage in self-destructive behaviors (resisting arrest, uttering anti-social F-yous to the white world and its “Ameriklan Dream,” even substance abuse), behaviors only adding to any cradle difficulties they do face—this way, they can point to more concrete examples of racist abuse instead of having to revert to saying things like the following (as they have had to do more and more with the waning of white supremacy).
“The abuse, although worse than ever, is too elusive in its nuance to communicate to nonblacks. I mean, will a white person really be able to understand how traumatic it is for a black person to hear Bach?”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where self-destructive behaviors (violence, procrastination, drug use, escapism), behaviors encouraged by the rewards of individual and institutional pity, become an understandable coping mechanism for living in a country that is—so they are hypnotized by the antiracist industrial complex to think—more deadly and hateful toward black bodies than ever before (whitey having gotten more clever).
It might just sit back watch our world where—and one cannot help but think of the devil in the Brothers Karamazov who tells Ivan that he has been too victimized and oppressed and demonized over the centuries to feel any gratitude—blacks are enticed to think, contrary to their very own health and longevity, that they are sadly lying to themselves (lying to themselves so as to cope with how badly they have been and continue to be wronged) whenever they feel—casting their eyes upon the mountains of gifts on which they stand—gratitude for their situation:
for being inheritors of great works of art and technology;
for being in a land of chock-full supermarkets, heated homes in winter and cooled homes in summer;
for being citizens of a prosperous country of blind justice and institutional commitment against virtually all discrimination, and at a time when black people enjoy the rights and opportunities for which so many around the world would die;
for being dwellers on a land of serene landscapes and grand metropolises where peace is not the exception but the norm).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where having an identity built around “having it hard,” an identity that excuses them from playing in the big leagues that their Harlem-Renaissance forebearers were eager to be—and were—some of the best in, is so integral to black people (and to universities and employers and mates and so on) that black people are enticed, if only subconsciously, to grope for ways to prove it: whether ignoring context and intent in order to feel slighted yet again (boycotting the museum, for example, because on a placard it uses the term of the day “Negro” to describe black spirituals) or even going so far as shooting themselves in the foot (baiting their employers, for example, to fire them by coming in high because “Life’s a bitch for a black man”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—despite coming at the expense of poisoning white people enough that even their accomplishments become delegitimized in their own eyes—children are brainwashed to think the agency-atrophying and effort-excusing thought that whites succeed not because of hard work put into mastering things, but because the system is hopelessly rigged in their favor.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, when faced with the overwhelming successes of African immigrants in this country, blacks will feel in their heart “Well, these immigrants already had to be the cream of the crop even to get here, in which case the comparison is unfair”—blacks will feel this in their heart and yet not draw the lesson implied by its being true: that cultivating initiative is a better path out of the muck than dwelling on the initiative-draining notion that racism is too baked into the system to warrant hope.
It could just sit back and revel in our world, one hard to imagine any more belittling, where as many blacks as possible root their aspirations and personas and movements and communities around nothing loftier, nothing broader, than a sense that “someone is going to have to pay” for their having been born with the skin of the most victimized people in the world—a straight up myth that, in tempting blacks to go the blackmail path of demanding special treatment, is detrimental for developing active power:
a power to lift oneself out of plantation dependency;
a power much more intrinsic than the power that comes from enjoying a victim status in a culture not guaranteed to stay a victim culture forever;
a power to get what one wants by one’s own direct initiative rather than by passively banking on the pity of others.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks are painted as such helpless victims of omnipresent white supremacy, a racist order the proof for which now requires no more than my-truth reports of “lived experience” (quite convenient given how non-antiblack the US seems to be), that their dignity—warped through and through—can be realized only in performances of petulance and outbursts of indignation, in cries for special rights and dispensations (more junk food for blacks), that titans of black excellence like DuBois and Hughes and Hurston would have never stomached:
handouts and subminimal standards (even when it comes to social behavior) and kid-glove treatment;
shelter from anything unsettling, such as from the trauma of hearing the n-word (no, simply “negro”) from a white mouth;
freedom from criticism for their shortcomings (especially from “white mouths that can’t help but rape with their words”);
even the freedom to have their turn to participate in inhumanity as a means to balance the scales.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, seduced into preserving the vision of themselves as perpetual invalids (victims of a white supremacy that can always justify their throwing in the towel), blacks feel excused from the burden of honoring their individual agency, their inherent freedom to carve out their own fate in the face of real problems, their calling to take up the grinding and unromantic work necessary to make up for the various meaningful areas where they remain far behind—a burden colossal and intimidating for anyone; a burden colossal and intimidating especially for blacks, coming out of four centuries of home-making acclimation to subservience and to a mindset of such chronic dependence on the handouts and pity of white guilt that:
(1) the question of “What do I got to do to be my best self?” becomes all-too-easy for blacks to interpret as nothing more than “What do I got to do to stay a kempt person on this damn plantation?”;
(2) emotional and physical alienation from black family and friends, and even a feeling of metaphysical alienation from blackness, is the likely price of being one of the early trailblazers who leave the plantation through the open door (instead of distracting themselves from the great burden of fate carving by searching for its key).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—although no more part of a conspiracy to harm black people than the air pollution of oil companies is part of a conspiracy to harm humans (despite what might be believed by those naïve about the profound depths of human laziness and greediness and ignorance)—black people are groomed by the prevailing “antiracist” system into spoiled narcissists:
a people not to be blamed for their poor choices (since, oppressed for so long and in such a handicapped position, it would be unfair to hold them accountable);
a people whose poor choices, given the relentless oppression of whiteness, are considered understandable (if not glamorized as revolutionary payback or liberation);
a people who regards any internal voice of conscience that might say “Wait, don’t engage in these antisocial activities” as an “internalized whiteness” bent on holding them back further, an “internalized slave master” bent on getting them to forget how deeply they are owed);
a people who thinks that any spaces or persons failing to cater to them all the time or make them feel soothed, any spaces (even classrooms) or persons (even professors) that challenge them in any way, are racist.
It could just back and revel in our world where university students, mainly white ones full of teary outrage, chant the phrase “Nazi scum, Nazi Scum, Nazi Scum” to drown out the words of the invited speaker, a speaker described—at least by the rare, but growing, number of black students among them—as just another “Huxtable sellout to the other side.”[12]
[T]he real issue is that there is a black-American ideology, cherished especially by journalists and academics and artists, where for black people—and black people alone—there’s always a certain shoe that hasn't dropped, there's a beef. It's fundamental to the [black] identity that there's a beef and while that beef is going on we can't be expected to be subjected to truly serious competition. And everything that we do has to be seen through a different lens than you would see it with pretty much anybody else. . . .
[This ideology] is fraying. And you know there's a canary in the coalmine. . . . [S]eams are really beginning to show in terms of the portrait of Blackness as this tragedy—you know: just to be this color means that you're laboring under this burden and if you don't understand it, it means that you’re too dumb [or bigoted] to see it. But then again, look at these people who are pretending to be black! If it were really as bad as everybody says, there would be no such thing as this Rachel Dolezal—you know, who is this white woman who walks around truly having fashioned her sense of identity; she really identifies as black, including creating oppression, creating episodes of racism so that she can walk around complaining about things that happened to her.
And then my favorite example . . . Jessica Krug. . . . She's a white Jewish girl who grew up in Kansas City, upper middle class to affluent (“Krug”), who decided after she graduated from college to fashion herself first at some vaguely African black person . . . and then she decides she's an Afro-Latina. And you know she's wearing big earrings and loud clothes and pretending that she grew up in the Bronx to a drug-addicted prostitute mother. . . . And this person was . . . a tenure professor, wrote serious award-winning books (one in particular). And finally some of her colleagues began to sense that she was not this Afro-Latina person because the whole story doesn't make any sense. She actually claimed that at immigration in some way they misinterpreted “Cruz” as “Krug” . . . as if it's 125 years ago and it's some tough Jewish name or something. And so . . . she actually walks around calling herself “Jessica Cruz”. . . . She had, you know, blog posts where she was discriminated against at conference hotels, where they thought she was the help etc. None of that happened.
There would not be people like her—there's a little list at this point of Rachel Dolezals and Jessica Krugs. There wouldn't be people like that 50 years ago because being black really was a problem. Nowadays things have changed so much that . . . you have these people who are pretending to be black for the fake oppression [and the great rewards one can get from all of that]. That shows that something is really changing. . . . Because if it were really such a pain to walk around as a black person, nobody would choose that. Those people are new and that’s only over about the past 10 years. Canaries is what I think of them. We'll see more. . . .
[And whereas white people who, in pursuit of opportunity, try to pass themselves off as black are considered some of the most abominable people, blacks can get away with that level of phoniness. Why? Well, because] it’s different with black people. Remember, it's different with us because our whole identity is based on being the losers, being the ones who are owed something. . . . [W]hen it comes to a black person pretending to have grown up poor [or to having been abused by cops or whatever], the idea is not ideal—a little phony—but at least black people get to hear about black poverty [and racist hardship] and at least you signal to your people that you sympathize with people who grew up poor [and suffering under the boot of the white man].
I mean there's that whole routine with a lot of rappers frankly, to bring up something antique—where there's this competition. You know, “How real are you? Did you grow up in the hood? Did you do any gang banging? Did you sell any drugs?” And yeah, there was a lot of phoniness about that. But the idea was that you know you're sacrificing truth for something larger about giving a message [of black oppression] to the world through your art.
And so yeah, we're not held to as high as standard. I don't like it. That's exactly what's wrong with this sort of thing. You couldn't imagine it with any other group of people, with any other demographic. But for black people it's always different. And you know, to live under that is to feel condescended to if you pull the camera back a little bit.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, almost as if an orchestrated attempt to keep blacks cloven from one another, we swiftly brand as “self-deluded double-crosser” any black who buys into the “neoliberal-white-supremacist fantasy” of having a personal say in their destiny, who embraces practices to fortify their resilience to the injustices of the world (especially “white” practices like journaling, cultivating a growth mindset, prizing punctuality, tackling addictions, combating negative attitudes towards education, developing financial savvy, setting clear interpersonal boundaries, resisting the peer pressure to lead with violence, prioritizing prosocial circles, practicing mindfulness meditation)—yes, even if those injustices merely amount to seeing the word “nigger” while reading an American-History textbook for a college class they chose to be in, or hearing white people (and others contaminated with whiteness) speak on “black topics.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any black who fails to repeat and repeat the ghoulish gospel, the macabre mantra, as to how much blacks have been and continue to be victimized (and hence to how deserving blacks are of inferiority-ossifying sympathy perks, pity-driven privileges that excuse them from the responsibilities requisite for human flourishing) is to be excommunicated from blackness, ceremoniously stripped of the card so many are literally ready to lie and even slaughter to possess: the “Black Card.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, on the one hand, the most legitimizing thing about you when it comes to the weight of your opinion is that you are black and yet where, on the other hand, any disagreement with the antiracist religion of which this is a dogma—a dogma justified by the deeper dogma that blacks have been trounced upon hardest and longest by those with the most devastating power to trounce (Pharaoh in the form of white people)—means you are not really black, but rather a “Satchmo Sambo” (a reference, of course, to Louis Armstrong and his “clownish grin for white audiences desperate for a dose of minstrelsy with their white showtunes”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—calling too easily to mind the frightened fists of a tyrant strangling beliefs that fail to echo back his own tautology—any black who refuses to follow the cardinal shibboleth of the black community (namely, that victimhood remains forever the beating heart of black identity), and who strives to make the best of the cards they were dealt instead of pouring all their vigor into whining about cross-generational unfairness, earns the moniker “Uncle Tom”—or, as it is now put, “Uncle Clarence” (referring, of course, to one of the great boot-strap paragons of contemporary black excellence renown for rebuking the failure-excusing victimology narrative tearing through his brothers and sisters since the early seventies).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, in what calls to mind a person with rabies rejecting the merest sip of water, blacks are branded “deaf, dumb, and blind” for defying the temptation of the victimhood mentality—a temptation for all people given that it provides an aura of purpose and gravitas while also a golden ticket not only to sidestep hard work and accountability for past behavior and future fate-carving, but also to extort and abuse and manipulate one’s purported victimizers; a temptation especially for blacks given that it affords them Lord-of-the-Rings level grandeur as part of a longstanding communal struggle for justice against “the man,” an ancestral crusade for payback against the ever-shifting “powers that be.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, in what amounts to a punch right in the face of Frederick Douglass (who said “to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one”), any black is smeared as a “whitewashed jigaboo” if he happens to point out too loudly—as Dmitri Shufutinsky does below—the disturbing parallel between yesterday’s slave masters who (whether out of concern about their chattel getting any “dangerous ideas of liberation” or even out of warm-fuzzy desire not to burden the black mind with what it is not equipped to handle) said that “Readin ain’t right for black kind” and today’s woke pedagogues who say (with equally-troubling certitude and feel-good righteousness) that “expecting black kids to become as literate as white children is an antiblack affront, intrusive to their native disposition.”
It is time for us to ask ourselves: How different are “woke” teachers who believe that black children just shouldn’t be expected to become as literate as white children from the slave masters who wouldn’t allow us to read? . . . How is it “woke” or “equitable” to believe that misbehaving in classrooms or low academic achievement is inherently black and therefore acceptable? The answer is simple: It isn’t. It’s just racism. Equity’s imperialist colonization of the classroom and the black American population threatens to set back decades of progress our community has made. It has allowed, normalized, and encouraged bad behavior and academic failure among black youth. . . . Equity imperialism has re-labeled black excellence as white supremacy. . . . It is time for us, as young black Americans of the twenty-first century, to say the buck stops here. We cannot return to Reconstruction-era racism in the guise of wokeness. Allowing the equity/anti-racist movement to colonize the black mind will be the degradation of our people and tantamount to their re-enslavement. It will betray the memory of our ancestors. Now is the time to fight back. Embrace hard work, science, literacy, good behavior, kindness, and virtue.[13]
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any black is labeled a “step-n’-fetch-it-ass negro” should he remind fellow humans—if only for the wellbeing of his black children—that the story of black significance extends beyond the true tale of their historical subjugation and degradation by whites, and most definitely beyond the false tale too lucrative, too institutionally sacrosanct, too psychologically ingrained, too wise-and-moral sounding to resist reciting as catechism: namely, their skin-of-the-teeth survival in the face of an ongoing white oppression forever preserving them as the owed-innocents of mankind.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any black is said to be “acting all brand new with all that flag-loving shit” if violates the taboos of mainstream antiracism:
if he buys into “white supremacist notions” like “colorblindness” and “meritocracy” and “punctuality” and “objectivity” and “antiwhite racism” and “common humanity”;
if he voices skepticism toward the doctrine of inherited trauma (which says that the full history of oppression passes down each generation of black people through the epigenome, leaving every black person—not just some, like sickle cell—more victimized than is imaginable even if white supremacy were not still inflicting its violence);
if he says that whites—despite their history of stealing and raping and maiming and killing the black body—enjoy the same amount of humanity or the same amount of moral authority as blacks;
if he denies that the only way to undo the injustice of the past is through injustice in the present.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any black is disparaged as an “off-brand switch-up” if he dares to point out—as Shelby Steele does below—that black people, accustomed to the guilt-trip benefits that come from being deemed a victim in a culture that values victimhood, have an investment in keeping their victim status (as much as hospitals have an investment in people getting sick)—an investment that motivates them to be hypersensitive to racial slight and even to register false positives of racism; an investment that threatens to lull them into believing that black power, black somebodyness, amounts to getting whatever they can through the emotional manipulation of white people.
The most obvious and unarguable source of black innocence is the victimization that blacks endured for centuries. . . . Like all victims, what blacks lost in power they gained in innocence. . . . This was the innocence that fueled the civil rights movement of the ’60s, and that gave blacks their first real power in American life—victimization metamorphosed into power via innocence. But this formula carries a drawback that I believe is virtually as devastating to blacks today as victimization once was. It is a formula that binds the victim to his victimization by linking his power to his status as a victim. And this, I’m convinced, is the tragedy of black power in America today. It is primarily a victim’s power, grounded too deeply in the entitlement derived from past injustice. . . .
Whatever gains this power brings in the short run through political action, it undermines in the long run. Social victims may be collectively entitled, but they are all too often individually demoralized. Since the social victim has been oppressed by society, he comes to feel that his individual life will be improved more by changes in society than by his own initiative. Without realizing it, he makes society rather than himself the agent of change. The power he finds in his victimization may lead him to collective action against society, but it also encourages passivity within the sphere of his personal life. . . .
By many measures, the majority of blacks—those not yet in the middle class—are further behind whites today than before the victories of the civil rights movement[: drug trafficking is far worse, crimes by blacks against blacks are more frequent, housing remains substandard, and the teenage pregnancy rate has skyrocketed]. But there is a reluctance among blacks to examine this paradox, I think, because it suggests that racial victimization is not our real problem. If conditions have worsened for most of us as racism has receded, then much of the problem must be of our own making. But to fully admit this would cause us to lose the innocence we derive from our victimization. And we would jeopardize the entitlement we’ve always had to challenge society. We are in the odd and self-defeating position where taking responsibility for bettering ourselves feels like a surrender to white power. So we have a hidden investment in victimization.[14]
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, in what seems a case of obvious excuse seeking and deflection from the guilt of not doing anything themselves to address the real causes for black failure, any black is tarred as a “cracker lover” for pointing out that all the talk, talk as grim and self-defeatist as it is tired and self-righteous, about blacks being the most dominated and degraded and devastated people the world has ever seen (such that there remains “little reason to strive in this racist abyss”) is merely self-serving—self-serving, however, in the most antiblack sense:
self-serving in the most antiblack sense since it allows them to wipe their hands of any complicity in their failures and instead fault the nebulous specter of “antiblackness,” which thereby promotes an agency-and-dignity-deprived circumstance that further fuels grievance about being so dominated and degraded and devastated by whites;
self-serving in the most antiblack sense since all the subminimal expectations (not just in education, but in conduct even), all the kid-glove leniencies, such repeated talk aims to wrest from whites only spoils blacks into an infantilized state of arrested development and dependency on whites, which further fuels grievance about being so dominated and degraded and devastated by whites (a vicious feedback loop).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any black is pilloried as a “rented negro in denial” should he voice dismay over the prospect of sending his child into a school system fixated on keeping black people locked in rumination about their subjugation at the hands of whites, a school system where they learn that any desire to see themselves through any lens that fails to center their being the descendants of slaves is just a tragic symptom of Stockholm Syndrome.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, as if we really were in some white-supremacist twilight zone of mind fuckery, any black is mocked as a “Carlton” for saying something like the following.
“As long as we sit around here lying about how we are the perpetual victims of white supremacy, we will continue to look down upon ourselves. And especially as long as the majority population and the major institutions keep caving to our guilt trips, we will continue to put our hope in begging our victimizers for whatever we can. It is only natural. And what will this then do? It will inspire us to sit around here lying about how we are the perpetual victims of white supremacy!”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, unless they knew these were words from Malcolm X (over 60 years ago), any black is labeled a “yessa-boss” who utters the following anti-victimology message about the overdue measures blacks need to take for self-reliance and personal responsibility and economic empowerment.
If white immigrants can come to this country 50 years ago with nickels and dimes and no education, and come here and pool their little nickels and dimes and no education and set up little stores, develop these stores into larger stores, develop this into an industry which creates job opportunities for whites, [then so can we]. . . . Today the black man according to the government economics has spending power of 20 billion dollars per year. We feel that with the black man spending 20 billion dollars per year—not setting up any businesses, not creating any industry, not creating any job opportunities for his own kind—he's not in a moral position to point the finger at the white man and tell the white man that he is discriminating against him for not giving him a job in the factories that he himself has set up. . . . We [need to] change the mind of the black man and make him accept himself. And as soon as he accepts himself, he’ll solve his own problem.[15]
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any black is labeled a “bootlicker” who—against the tide of the so-called “antiracist movement,” and especially against the liberal white elites at the root of it and leading it (and monopolizing it, just as they did the civil rights movement)—screams out “Please stop ‘helping’ us!”
Stop denying the rampant undereducation and unchecked violence gnawing at the roots of the black community: this cheap way to feel the virtue rush of thwarting antiblack stereotypes only serves to fertilize these stereotypes!
Stop blaming these and other problems—in those moments when you do not deny them, in those spaces where it is safe to acknowledge them—on “the oppressive chokehold of white supremacy”: this blaming siphons away what little sense of agency we have; this blaming sends us charging like bulls at red capes in pursuit of cures—fruitless, too often toxic—for what is but a mirage of oppression!
Stop defunding police: as the spike in teary wails from so many black mothers have shown, this “cure”—this “cure” merely for a hystericized problem—as proven literally bloody to blacks!
Stop lying about there being some antiblack vendetta in uniform: statistics show, and as brother Fryer has put his life at risk for publishing (needing the protection of police even to walk around Harvard), there is no racial bias in police shooting!
Stop mocking the luminous ideals of the European enlightenment—objectivity and scientific inquiry, rationality and skepticism, diligence and hard work, foresight and planning, self-reliance and personal responsibility—as “whitewashed virtues,” as “hallmarks of whiteness (that contagious evil of all evils)”: these ideals are what pull people toward excellence!
Stop “dismantling” math courses and classical music programs (and so many other sturdy ladders to physical and intellectual flourishing), especially on such ridiculous grounds as that they are “inimical to black styles of knowing,” or that they are “designed—as just one of the many weapons of psychological warfare—to humiliate black youth while making whites”—so long as we ignore Asians, of course—“feel superior”!
Stop lowering standards for us: however much it might make you feel good, it so thoroughly grooms us into perpetual leaners as opposed to lifters that it almost seems as if the goal is to ensure that we have little choice but, for example, to pour our money (enough money to make us the 8th richest independent nation on the globe) into nonblack communities who have carved out their own financial independence through enterprising efforts—enterprising efforts that a people taken care of on a plantation of dependency will rarely exert (not counting, of course, their strategizing ways to get more from the caregivers)!
Stop insisting that kindness and punctuality and hard work (especially in so-called “white domains”) are neither aspirational nor achievable for us: however much it might make you feel good, it grooms us into living jokes!
Stop patronizing us: the patronizing is so thick, so cloyingly sweet, that one cannot help but think that you have grown as dependent on us remaining in the nest of stagnation as we have grown dependent on that nest!
Stop placating us with soft words and softer expectations, as if such move of velvet-glove parenting would improve our lot (instead of spoiling us into a state of entitlement) and as if you genuinely care about us (instead of acting out of palpable terror—understandable terror, no doubt—that we will throw tantrums ruinous to your careers, that we will mar your reputations with accusations of bias, that we will sue for discrimination, that we will stop buying from your businesses)!
Stop repeating, however bad it makes you look or however much it negatively impacts your bottom line, the gaslighting lie that the door to our freedom is locked; the gaslighting lie that keeps us are searching for a key for a door wide open instead of developing the strength and skills to deal with the inevitable sufferings of any people faced with newfound freedom!
Stop keeping us so close to the bosom for so long: as we see when we consider the church in America (which is not propped up by the state), compared to the church in the UK (which is propped up by the state), our viability, our power to flourish, our resolve, our mettle, grows when we are given more space to live on our own merits!
Stop incentivizing us to sing about the horrors of our past and about the overblown—and often made up—horrors of our present: beyond these ghoulish songs hypnotizing us into perpetual victimhood, we have songs to sing about our achievements; we have songs to sing about our role-models who rose above adversity, shattering the narrative of black victimology!
Stop hiring—hiring and hiring, to Kafkaesque extremes—“right-think”-mandating bureaucrats, thought police eager (in their Orwellian “commitment to diversity and inclusion”) to sanitize discourse and silence dissent and purge any voice from spaces—yes, even college classrooms—that might “unsettle” black people (supposedly the most “at-risk” category in the intersectionality matrix)!
Stop hiring—hiring and hiring, to Kafkaesque extremes—university deans, administrative censors, who demand watered-down curricula of “trigger-free safety” so that no black person feels offended and so that the university—reduced to a funding-anxious cheerleader of political fads—does not seem to be targeting blacks with bad grades the way cops are said to be targeting blacks with their guns: such “proactive progressivism” is a disservice to all students, especially those students the echo-chamber diet of pablum is purported to protect)!
Stop acting as if the desecration and eradication of great-books courses is an effective way to fight white supremacy: these universally-uplifting pillars of literature are still universally-uplifting pillars of literature despite being penned predominantly by dead whites!
Stop condemning “western civ” for its “unbearable whiteness”: its Goethes and Shakespeares and Bachs and Einsteins and Lockes and Rousseaus lift us all; its science and medical technologies protect us all; its enlightenment ideals rocket humans toward Sagan stars; its emancipatory norms shelter the most vulnerable and suppress the might-makes-right laws of the jungle and enshrine core rights—civil rights, women’s rights, rights to free expression, right not to be raped by one’s husband, right to trial by jury, right not to be enslaved—for everyone, regardless of race color or creed!
Stop presupposing that our children are unable to behave in class: it is absolutely disgusting to excuse their disruptive behavior (behavior you would never excuse from your own children) as if you were doing them a favor, as if you were helping to fight the good fight; it is absolutely disgusting to excuse their disruptive behavior on such racist grounds as that, “because it’s in their nature to dance and clap and be a bit raucous, demanding black students control themselves like white students would be just as racially terrorizing—especially in light of the historical context of white people’s addiction to controlling black bodies—as holding up blue-eyed blondes as the pinnacle of beauty”!
Stop refusing to correct how our children pronounce words—especially on such bullshit “antiracist” grounds as that “The last thing we want is for students to look down on their own people or to go home and tell family members, who already face too much white supremacy outside the home as it is, that they are not saying words the right way (the white way)”: no, correction is crucial for learning how things are (in this case, the norms of English) and experience with being corrected is crucial for cultivating resilience (to say the least)!
Stop spreading that agency-crippling and handout-entitling gospel that blacks have as little chance for success as they have human standing in this “white supremacist nation hooked on the sadism of grinding black bodies into a compact obsidian upon which it can build its monstrous skyscrapers”!
Stop thinking that you are “fighting the man,” “dismantling the white hegemony,” through support of black music that—drowning out any divergent soundtrack—glamorizes destructive norms and behaviors (thuggery and whorishness and drug abuse)!
Stop judging us according to subminimal standards and expectations, as if we were eternal underlings: such spoiling treatment would keep any human, or any other change-fearing creature (let alone one with a maximize-calories-in and minimize-calories-out evolutionary history), plantation dependent and horizon stifled— plantation dependent and horizon stifled enough that the question “What must I do to love and care for myself?” becomes more and more difficult to see as different from the question “What must I do to keep getting these kempt-person benefits?”
Stop stoking a moral hysteria about white supremacy on the hunt—now with greater strength and invisibility than ever before—for blacks, as if it were open season on blacks: this moral hysteria, despite being as bogus as the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and as distracting to black excellence, has now spread beyond the graduate seminars of some insular college department no one takes seriously—yes, even into corporate boardrooms and elementary-school classrooms!
Stop apologizing for being white: (1) it is a bad look for humankind, especially when it goes to such groveling extremes; (2) it keeps you and all of us from moving on to addressing the root issues behind some of the more upsetting disparities (which perhaps is precisely the point since (a) we are always looking for cheap ways to feel virtuous and since (b) addressing root causes would undercut the longstanding racial grievance industry of which the constant apologizing plays an integral part); (3) it baits fellow whites, many of whom are understandably sickened by all the whites kissing black boots in sorrow “for causing so much trauma each day and for harboring so much privilege” (sickened especially when set against the stark reminders each day as to how unfavorable it is, in terms of career and mate and travel prospects, to be white)—baits them into an emotional backlash that, although in truth is born of frustration at the punking program against whites and the collective gaslighting about how no punking program is actually occurring, can all-too-easily (given the anti-intellectual streak in this country) find racist channels.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any self-loving black who champions individual agency and resilience, and who pushes fellow blacks to recognize that an addiction to bellyaching interferes with seizing upon the over-ample opportunities available, and who tries to wake his bothers and sisters up to the black-growth-impeding industrial complex of black victimology, and who thereby utters that riddle striking at the jugular of the whole belittling enterprise “the best evidence of white supremacy being alive and well is the lie that it is,” is smeared as a “self-loathing Kanye,” an “American-flag hatted Chad Jackson.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any black who refuses to recite the anti-agency story of how terrible it is for blacks in this land, of how “impossible it is for blacks—too often enough literally—to breathe in this inferno (let alone to walk or even crawl),” is an “Aunt Jemima” (or as it is now put, to refer to one the most notable “bed wenches” of the bukkake-happy white man, a “Candace Owens”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any black who embraces the path of forgiveness (which leads to gratitude, and to focus on the parts of the garden we can tend to, and to regeneration, and to excellence, and ultimately to heaven on Earth) instead of down the path of bitterness (which leads to vengeance, and to harm to others, and to harm to self, and ultimately to hell on earth) is “a house nigger.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any black who expresses gratitude, that chief emotion for halting the human march toward oblivion from crumbling along the way into a bleak bazaar of bitterness and blaming, is a “backstabbing Stacey Dash”—for, on top of lying to herself (since again, as with Dostoyevsky’s devil, the victimized station of blacks could never warrant such a feeling of non-misery), she drains the reservoir of resentment aimed at “the whiteness behind all black setbacks” and thereby undercuts the vengeful drive to remind humanity how deserving of boosts and restitution blacks remain.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any black bold enough to tweet the career-ruinous thought that the police shooting of the black man “might not have been an act of white supremacy (especially when we consider he was flaunting a weapon and was living a thug’s life too often glorified in pop culture)” is a “handkerchief-headed negro” guilty of a black-on-black crime more poisonous—more poisonous because metaphysical—than any gang bangers in Little Rock could ever be.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any black bold enough even to question the dominant shibboleths of “antiracism”—that there is a mega racial disparity in the likelihood of civilians being shot by police, or that economic inequalities between black and white has much of anything to do with individual choices and behaviors, or that racial disparities in incarceration reflect anything really but systemic antiblackness—is a “flag-loving fuck.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any black saintly enough to speak up against the repeated falsehood, the foundational untruth, upon which her inflated diversity bonuses rest—the lie of white supremacy having revved up to such redline rpm that, like blurred propellers, it is as shredding as it is invisible—is denounced as a “white man’s whore,” a “slave-quarter concubine.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any black who sins against the Holy Ghost (that is, who ever speaks “invalidating” words like “The push for us to identify as victims in the sanctimonious guise of ‘antiracism’ makes us hallucinate racism in every shadow and distracts us from black excellence”) is a “race traitor” more deserving of rebuke than even night-raiding Klansmen—more deserving of rebuke, yes, since he draws a different conclusion from apparently the same information base of experience and so (just as the apostate imperils faith more severely than could any infidel who never belonged) is someone who threatens the religion of antiracism more severely than any white ever could.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any black is a “cooning self-hater” who writes the following passages in his “hurtful” novel about a young African American man who returns home from a BLM march in a traumatized state after an edible had opened him up to the “funhouse-horror element, the nightmarish cruelty and injustice, he might have otherwise overlooked in scenes otherwise familiar”: whites groveling at black feet for forgiveness; whites chanting various promises (like that they will never deny a black person’s truth or speak over black people); whites rallied by black looters to help “liberate black reparations”; blacks, and their “groveling allies,” passing out blacks-cannot-cut-it pamphlets like “SATs Are Still Racist!”
If it had been any other group, he would not have hesitated to say that perhaps they at least played a part in their own shortcomings—their own shortcomings in education, overrepresentation in crime, higher rate of STD infection and homicide. But something inside him made him hesitate when it came to black people. He had an insane need to shout their innocence to the skies. Why did he so strongly resist accusing black people as playing a part in their own failings—but not whites or Asians or Hispanics?
The panic was ramping up, although it had been hours since the gummy. He turned on the Disney channel, looking for the soothing surprise of a childhood show. A black cartoon character was telling the white character that he could “never understand the terror that black people go through in this country. We built it. We built it but, even when we’re not shot by cops or locked up, we have to expect bad healthcare and lower salaries. We are still treated as slaves even though we are the kings.”
He turned off the TV. He needed a break right from it all. He thought back to what this white friend had told him: “You bought the ticket, now take the ride.” Closing his eyes, he tried to lean into that maxim.
He knew, deep down, he had learned the lie by heart—the lie lucrative enough even for Disney to spread: that black people are victims through and through; that all their failures were due to the ever-growing reign of white supremacy. It was a terrible lie. It was a disempowering lie. As long as everyone believed the lie, black people would be unable to address where they were going wrong and lift themselves up beyond victims to be the masters of their fate. As long as everyone believed the lie, black people would never be able to take ownership for the harms they perpetrate against black people, for what they do to get arrested so much.
Had he and his friends been spreading exactly the message of deflection that a white supremacist movement would want them to spread? The face of his former principal, Mr. Baker, rose in his mind. He had been instrumental in getting Mr. Baker fired. But he could no longer evade the light. All the black boys that principal suspended—they needed to be suspended. Shit—they needed to be in jail! They were terrors. Mr. Baker wasn’t a white supremacist.
He thought of Mr. Baker and his black wife. He knew having a black wife didn’t matter, but still. Mr. Baker was no tool of white supremacy. Trayvon, Darrel—those guys were terrors!
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any black who writes something like the following prose poem is some “white man’s sambo” set on “cock blocking blacks from the amends long overdue.”
Fellowship of the Ring
A child abused in a home so dysfunctional it can barely be called “a home” (the parents, the abusers, lacking any sense of disapproval for what they have done) is lucky in one way—at least under the assumption that outside institutions (primarily, schools) do not prioritize cultivating lifters as opposed to leaners. For in a more functional home (one, even if merely jerry-rigged to stand, in which the guardians want to do better), a hobbling temptation would ring too loud for most children to resist: the temptation, tremendous for any calorie-out-minimizing chimp, for them to build an identity around being a victim and for them to locate their primary power in emotional blackmail of the parents behind the abuse.
And so we have the precarious situation of the black person in America today. Dignity spat upon for so long (released from the chattel barn only to be sprayed with firehoses), yet he finds himself not only in one of the better functioning societies (full of resources and opportunities), but one with a hellbent commitment to self-criticism and to justice and to doing better. “Hellbent” would be a word better than “proven.” For this society dug deep enough into its reserves of courage to do what most others could not: outlaw the universal temptation of slavery, which it did despite its very own addiction to slavery. It dug deep enough to guarantee the protection of all—no small feat given our chimp-deep instinct to crush heterodoxy like the skulls of deformed births.
What would you do, then? Can you at least understand why, especially when things have improved so much on the healing path, those addicted to guilt-tripping—who only know guilt-tripping, who have built everything around guilt-tripping, who have found great success for so long with guilt-tripping—would even go so far as to hypnotize the world (especially themselves) that the pain is still there, worse perhaps than ever (lynch days included)? Can you at least understand why, even though both the casting of the spell and the success of the spell amount to additional blows to dignity? Many men, even the sweetest boys who really do love their mother most of all, have stolen her rings and laptop to score the next fix. Hooked on someone else taking the wheel (and, indeed, on the victimology logic that aims to prove why it is only fair for someone else to take the wheel), a kempt people will go to tremendous lengths to avoid the terrible burden of taking the wheel. Never underestimate the lengths!
Many of us can still feel how our stomach sank when, as a young teen, our father or uncle suddenly dropped that bombshell of a question upon us, carefree in the passenger seat: “You wanna drive?” With a society that prods us to grow into responsible agents, we fight the urge to flee the responsibility. But imagine that the society, coddling us, does not prod us to push through our fear and indolence. Imagine, even more terribly, a society under the spell of the idea that it would be unjust—one of the worst injustices, in fact—to expect us to take the driver’s seat.
And so we have the precarious situation of the black person in America today. Now is the time for tough love intervention. Yesterday was the time.
What hope is there to reach the addict, however, without first excising the wormtongue whispering into all of our enabling ears? If only it were called by its antiblack name it would be easier to rally against the wormtongue. But no, it goes by the name of “antiracism,” a movement that emphasizes how victimized blacks were and continue to be (even going so far as to say that the trauma is passed through the genes and that white-supremacist reign, although more invisible, is as strong if not stronger than ever); a movement that insists, as the only humane and just option (considering the bleak state of affairs, the so-called “terror dome,” blacks find themselves born into), that blacks continue to be given special dispensations (from As for C work, to impunity when it comes to retributive discrimination); a movement that goes down so easily for all of us given (a) that we do not like change and (b) that we are all addicted, the overwhelming majority of us well-meaning, to blacks being on the plantation of dependency. We bank on it. Too much money has been, and continues to be, made upon it.
That is why we are called, once again, to dig deep into our reserves of courage. We did it before. We can do it again. Let Thomas Sowell be the Gandalf of our fellowship, a union of black-power warriors who can dig deep enough to resist all the social and economic capital, all the cheap hits of virtuous feelings, that come with spreading the deleterious victimology narrative.
The warriors include white people. Their challenge too is great. They must have enough integrity and love and strength to resist their inner Cain. Even despite all the super-citizen advantages black people have been given (lowered standards, special leeway, choice cuts, first dibs, pampered protections), and even despite a whiteness-demonizing world in which whites are expected to shut up and kowtow and apologize for their very skin, and even despite all the gaslighting (being deemed a racist, for example, for calling the racist violence against whites “racist”), and even despite all the videos of pathetic whites kissing black feet (so many videos, given that social-media algorithms prioritize the sensational), and even despite how fashionable it is to punk white people, and even despite how easy it is for whites to lose their jobs just for saying words that merely sound close to words super-citizens should never hear—despite all this, our white warriors must follow the better angels of human nature. They must resist being baited into a misguided lashing out against black people themselves (however enticing it is to lose oneself in righteous-feeling and purpose-giving bitterness, which can at least temporarily distract us from existential despair in the post-Nietzschean era of an Earth unchained from its sun).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any black who says anything like what Glenn Loury does in the following is just a “Proud and Loyal Toby Wallace.”
Is it really such a bad thing to say that there’s something wrong with black people? . . . What I mean is: what did Malcolm X [imply] when he said “You've been hoodwinked, you've been bamboozled?”. . . . [He was implying that something is wrong with the] middle-of-the-road negro aspiration (civil rights conservatism, Church based, don't get too much up in their faces). . . . [He was saying] “black people, free yourselves from the mental encumbrances of the servant mentality. . . . There was something wrong with you when you were bent in a crouch. When you stood up with your shoulders back and you took responsibility for your own security, you were fixing what had been made wrong with you. . . .” [T]he real issue is agency. . . . The real issue is: are we, or are we not, the masters of our fate and the captains of our souls? . . . Am I the only one who is ashamed of the fact that every time I turn on the television and I hear about a party gone awry and somebody pulling out a gun and shooting somebody that 9 times out of 10 or 95 times out of 100 it seems the perpetrators are black?[16]
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any black is a “Django Stephen” if he lends any credibility to the so-called civil war between niggas and black people, let alone voices worry about the nigga-side growing unchecked (especially given the help of mainstream media’s centering of black artists who reflect and more and more seem to glorify anti-education druggery and pro-crime thuggery)—as Chris Rock in his 1996 standup Bring the Pain.
There's a civil war going on with Black people, and there's two sides: there's Black people and there's niggas. The niggas have got to go. Every time Black people wanna have a good time, ignorant-ass niggas fuck it up. . . . Can't do shit without some ignorant-ass nigga fucking it up. Can't do nothing. Can't keep a disco open more than 3 weeks! Grand opening, grand closing! Can't go to a movie the first week it comes out! Why? Cuz niggas are shooting at the screen. . . .
I hate niggas. Boy, I wish they'd let me join the Klu Klux Klan! Shit, I'd do a drive-by from here to Brooklyn. . . . You can't have shit when you around niggas. You can't have shit! You can't have no big screen TV! You can have it, but you better move it in at 3 in the morning, paint it white, hope niggas think it's a bassinet. Can't have shit in your house! Why?! Because niggas will break into your house. Niggas that live next door to you break into your house, come over the next day and go, ‘I heard you got robbed.’ Nigga, you know you robbed me. . . .
You know the worst thing about niggas? Niggas always want some credit for some shit they supposed to do. A nigga will brag about some shit a normal man just does. A nigga will say some shit like, “I take care of my kids." You're supposed to, you dumb motherfucker! What are you talking about? What kind of ignorant shit is that? “I ain't never been to jail!" What do you want, a cookie?! You're not supposed to go to jail, you low-expectation-having motherfucker. . . .
You know what the worst thing about niggas? Niggas love to NOT know. Nothing make a nigga happier than not knowin the answer to your question. Just ask a nigga a question. Any nigga! “Hey, nigga, what's the capitol of Zaire?" "I don't know that shit! Keepin it real!" Niggas love to keep it real—real dumb! Niggas hate knowledge. Shit. Niggas break into your house; you want to save your money? Put it in your books. Cuz niggas don't read. Just put the money in the books. Shit, books are like Kryptonite to a nigga. “Here's a book!" “AAHHH! NO! NOT A BOOK! NO! NOOOO!"
Tired of this shit, man! Your kids can't fuckin play nowhere. Every year the space gets smaller! Okay, you can go from that corner to that corner. Oh, you can go from that gate to that gate. By the time that fucker's 10 he's just hoppin in a circle like: <hops in circle>. . . .
Tired of this shit, man! TIRED, man! Niggas just ignant . . . singing bout ignorance. I heard some song the other day, ‘It's the first of the month." Niggas are singing welfare carols! “On the first day of welfare my true love gave to me.” “I wish you a Merry Welfare and a Happy Food Stamp!"
The fuck is going on?! What the fuck is going on? Now they got some shit. They tryna get rid of welfare. Every time you see welfare in the news, they always show Black people. Black people don't give a fuck about welfare. Niggas [on the other hand] are shakin in they boots. “Boy, they gonna take our shit!"
Shit, a Black man that got two jobs, going to work everyday, hates a nigga on welfare. Like, “Nigga, get a job! I got two! You can't get one?! I would give your lazy ass one of mine, but you'd get fucked up and get laid off. . . .”
Shit, a black woman that got two kids, going to work everyday, bustin her ass, hates a bitch with nine kids gettin a welfare check. Like, bitch stop fuckin! Stop fucking! Stop it! Put the dick down! Put it down! Get a job! Yes, you can get a job! Get a job holdin dicks! Whatever you do, get paid to do it. . . .
And I see some black people lookin at me. “Man, why you gotta say that? It ain't us. It's the media. The media has distorted our image to make us look bad! Why must you come down on us like that, brother? It ain't us. It's the media." Please cut the fuckin shit, okay?! Okay?! Okay?! When I go to the money machine tonight, alright, I ain't lookin over my back for the media! I'm lookin for niggas! Shit! Ted Koppel ain't never took shit from me! Niggas have! So, you think I got three guns in my house cuz the media outside?
It could just sit back and revel in our world where any black is an “Officer Coffey,” a “Seargent Calhoun,” if he speaks like Delroy Lindo’s character (Seargent Calhoun) in the following nigga-versus-black segment from the 1997 film First Time Felon.
You know you're the enemy, Yance. . . . I bet your black ass doesn't even know there's a war going on. I'm not talking about the war on crime and drugs, I'm talking about the war between black people and niggers. And that's what you are, Yance. You a motherfucking nigger. Let me tell you something. God—I hate niggers, but I love black people: honest, hard-working, law-abiding black people. Niggers like you, you make me sick. It's no problem for a nigger to get his own people hooked on drugs, have the young girls on the corner turning five-dollar tricks—no problem for a nigger to shoot another nigger; no problem for a nigger to rob and steal from good, honest, hardworking black people. . . . You look at me and you call me an Uncle Tom? You are the Uncle Tom! You're a fucking joke. You are the real enemy of black people.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where even the sweetest blacks—yes, even those who shudder at the notion of ever dehumanizing another black person as the mere “brainwashed puppets of the white man”—are still likely to wonder in their hearts exactly what the siren song of victimology would have them wonder:
what, other than “self-hatred or a Stockholm need for white validation,” could motivate a black person “zip-cooning around” with all these “white-supremacist statistics” about how things are not as bad as they seem for blacks (the irony being, of course, that those blacks “zip-cooning around” in this way are spreading a higher black love, a more uplifting and positive vision for black empowerment);
what, other than “self-hatred or a Stockholm need for white validation,” could motivate a black person “zip-cooning around” with all these “traumatizing arguments” suggesting that antiblack racism is not behind every black failing (the irony being, of course, that those blacks “zip-cooning around” in this way are pushing a brave and wise love concerned with seeing the best for black folks, much like a mother who—loving not just in idea but in action—exposes her child to challenges of uplifting degrees instead of sheltering it from all challenge).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where responding to the Uncle-Tom charge in the following way, as Shelby Steele does, only serves to make a black person “a real Uncle-Tom-ass nigga”).
[So here is how] I respond to the Uncle-Tom charge. . . . After the 60s black America turned around and began to put [its] fate in the hands of white America. We became dependent on white America. We said we have to have this and we have to have that. We have to have affirmative action. We have to have this kind of a program and so forth and so on all these demands that we made and which then, of course, come out of a psychology of dependence where “I can't get ahead unless white America gives me all these things and white America bends over backwards and uses affirmative action to get me in here and get me in there” and so forth. “I can't do it on my own. I can't be self-sufficient. I can't take care of myself.” So {these so-called] black militants are all dependent, obsessed. They are people who are obsessed with dependence. And the mask that they wear of black anger and they wear the fist. Who's the fist pointed at? The fist is pointed at whites. The fist is that “I demand something from white people.” That to me is the very essence of Uncle Tomism. The fist is the Uncle Tom. All it is a militant begging, militant dependence. I'm the one who's saying we can do it on our own and must do it on our own and we won't ever get anywhere until we do do it on our own! I'm the one who says we have the ability to do it on our own, we have the capacity to do it on our own, and that dependence is a loser's game. . . . We're free. We're free as we're ever going to be. And now is our opportunity. We have to stand up like men and women and take it—regardless of what the world says, regardless of whether or not there's still racism here. I'm the [true] militant. They're the Uncle Toms.[17]
It could just sit back and revel in our world where whites, punished for opposition and rewarded for allyship, lack the backbone or even the awareness to call out these pity-seeking exaggerations as what they are—let alone to scream against the entire antiracist industry, like some modern-day Johann Mayfurth:
Listen, you money-hungry executives and bloodthirsty administrators, the apparitions of white supremacy are all lies!
It could just sit back and revel in our world where the antisocial violence and criminality all-too-cliché among inner-city black enclaves marred by pitiable life expectancy and pitiable education are hastily chalked up to “a thriving disdain—present both in individual hearts and the very fabric of which all our institutions are made—for blackness” (as if black people would phoenix up from the blunt ashes of their predicament of high susceptibility to robbery and rape and murder and incarceration and disease and so on if only the suffocating shroud of white supremacy were suddenly lifted off their heads), when the reality-check truth is that—despite our egalitarian society at present showing as much love for black people as it does for anyone else (if not more)—blacks find themselves in a situation of physical and mental and familial and cultural debilitation resulting not only from the ravages of intentional antiblack oppression (slavery followed by multifarious forms of discrimination), but also from the ravages of several efforts largely meant to help black people.
We might cite the welfare reform and the war on drugs and the counterculture movement of yesterday, all of these jointly encouraged today’s bloom of black single babies having babies more often to ain’t-workin-for-the-man alleyway hooligans highly vulnerable to jail cells and early caskets given their black market occupation and rebellious attitude—an occupation and attitude lionized as aspirational and authentically black in the thug anthems of popular culture.
We might cite the handouts and the diluted standards of conduct and achievement that, however important as a transitional lifeline during emergency times, continue even now (in the ironic name of mercy and justice and racial equality)—a continuance that, like opiates taken too heavily and for too long, has engendered dependency as well as feelings of black shame in the face of all the black underperformance and all the white (and Asian and African and Caribbean) condescension invited by such “helping practices.”
We might cite the pattern of condemning as “antiblack” (again, in the name of mercy and justice and racial equality) any educational benchmark unmet by blacks—a condemnation that (1) helps to hide what their getting lower math and reading scores really means (namely, that they are, at the time of the test, less capable than their peers) and thereby that (2) enables blacks and society as a whole to circumvent the goliath task of addressing the developmental reasons for black deficits across class lines (namely, the ideals and attitudes and norms of black culture, which are potent enough to present roadblocks in the face of which even affluence struggles).
We might cite also the pattern of demonizing as “foot-shuffling mammie” or vilifying as a “race-traitor Oreo” any black who calls upon fellow blacks to remember that to blame all underachievement on past and present white supremacy would not only be false but self-defeatist (sabotaging, in effect, the very drive toward self-improvement that has gotten so many other groups with a history of persecution out of the morass); or any black who calls upon fellow blacks to root their significance beyond just being “descendants of slaves still doomed to remain lowest on the hierarchy of oppression” (♫“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen”♫); or any black who calls upon fellow blacks to reject the agency-and-dignity maiming lie that their unfortunate behaviors in the present are the result of an omnipresent structure of antiblackness centuries old; or any black who calls upon fellow blacks to stop waiting for some external messiah to deliver them from the quagmire; or any black who calls upon fellow blacks to take responsibility for rectifying their debased situation (even if foisted upon them at birth, even if due to racial biases) instead of wallowing on past tragedies or buying into race-monger lies that divest them of any present-day fault or (God forbid) even glamorizing their debased situation as what makes them cool like their favorite rapper (Sexyy Red or Finesse2tymes); or any black who calls upon fellow blacks to start looking more granularly at how their own issues hold them back (power-sapping issues, in some cases akin to teen-girl cutting, much less apparent even through the eras of slavery and reconstruction and Jim Crow): their shattered family structures; their glorification of criminality and violence and promiscuity and drugs; their antisocial role models; their thuggish peer groups; their anti-curiosity and anti-reading norms of parenting; their laziness-propped fear to leave the ancestral nest of victimhood; their grape-drank dietary choices; their proud isolation from others who could uplift them just by osmosis; their negative attitudes toward academic pursuits (attitudes, blooming from the 60s, severe enough for it to be not uncommon for black people to bully fellow blacks who embrace school as “acting white”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where black people, their predecessors having been toolified in the mid-twentieth century to carry out a Marxist agenda aimed at tanking the government by ensnaring as many bodies as possible in a web of dependency on welfare, now regard reliance on government assistance, assistance factoring over the decades heavily into the decrease in marriage and the increase in babies having babies (two black blights only since the 1970s), as an inalienable birthright—indeed, a badge of underdog valor connecting them with their forefathers, a point of twisted pride strategic to invoke in college applications as proof of how hard they had it growing up.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks, their predecessors having found tempting opportunity in a perilous black market opened up by a well-intentioned war on drugs, now regard drug dealing as an easier calling than being a doctor or lawyer—indeed, a badge of underdog valor connecting them with their forefathers, a point of twisted pride strategic to invoke in rap lyrics as proof of how black they really are.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks, their predecessors having welcomed in the white-initiated counterculture movement that fetishized fighting the powers that be (a dropout orientation of “fuck respectability,” a fuck-the-man orientation less accommodatable by blacks of the resource-scarce civil-rights era), now still feel the economic and child-modeling impacts of all the blacks who suddenly at the turn of the 1970s refused to take the many nonmenial jobs available while also refusing to stay nonviolent in the face of discrimination—these impacts, synergizing with the illegal-activities-impact of the war on drugs and the single-babies-having-babies-impact of welfare reform, leading to the entrenched problem we all know today: the problem of black inner-city thugs, thugs too often romanticized in black culture (and more and more in mainstream culture) and too often blamed on the lie of a structural racism ever-growing in the present (a structural racism said to block most job opportunities, most ladders out of poverty, from inner-city blacks despite the shining counterexamples of many other inner-city nonwhites including Africans who, untouched by the how-to-be-black ravages of this American history, use busses to get to their jobs if need be).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, leaving the black home and black family and black culture uncriticized (as if it were by white-supremacist design masked by political correctness), the Department of Education threatens to pull federal funds from thousands of school districts (on civil-rights grounds) if it keeps seeing such high rates of black suspension—the disparity of black suspension wildly assumed without second thought to be a reflection of “the antiblack constrictions of unchecked whiteness endemic to the American school system” instead of a reflection of the disruptive behavior of black boys, the same sort of disruptive behavior that leads to a disparity of black young men getting incarcerated (a disparity, however, that is itself wildly assumed without second thought to be a reflection of “the antiblack constrictions of unchecked whiteness endemic to the American criminal-justice system”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where incidents of police brutality against blacks, although swiftly dealt with by officials afraid of being branded as “racist,” get magnified in choking-tazzing-clubbing-shooting detail by a conniving media that pays little to no attention to the similar acts of brutality (similar knee-on-neck holds for similar protracted durations for similar excruciating deaths by asphyxiation) faced by an almost equal number of whites (albeit without the urgency for swift justice); our world where incidents of police brutality against blacks become sensationalized as such a regular occurrence in America that “antiracists” presume their prevalence to be in the tens of thousands (far surpassing the mere dozens in reality), thus rendering unbelievable the truth that more cops are killed by blacks than vice versa or that a black person is more likely to be struck by lightning than harmed by cops—all this distortion, of course, putting blacks in submission (as if by meticulous design) in two pivotal ways: instilling an element of fear when it comes to going out into the public sphere (the very arena where careers are built, money is made, connections are formed, and nature is experienced) while at the same time reinforcing within black culture a victimhood mindset where petulant demands for special privileges seem much more attractive and black-appropriate, black-authentic, than pursuit of excellence.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where there is a racial double standard on how crime is reported: were a mob of whites to attack a black man and rob him (as is so often the case the other way around) it would be major news gaining major political attention (unlike the other way around), and the news anchor would be sure to stress the race of everyone involved (since it feeds into the big-money narrative of the voracious appetite of whiteness).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, against a constant bass-bumping backdrop of niggative lyrics drowning out all the rest (“Nigga named Ruger, he a shooter, though / Never had a V, always pulled up in an Uber, though / Left him on seen, nigga blew up my text / But I called him last week to come shoot at my ex”), incidents of police brutality against blacks, statistically rare compared to the countless high-intensity interactions each year with a heavily-armed populace, will be chalked up—in what amounts to a slander of sociology—solely to the bogeyman of white supremacy (invisible, of course, only for racists), rather than to a more nuanced mosaic of factors:
the alarming overrepresentation of blacks in violent crime (blacks being less than 14 percent of the population and yet explaining, for example, over 60 percent of the firearm homicides);
officers recognizing, for that reason, (a) the importance of focusing on black communities—communities disproportionately requesting police assistance—so as to serve and protect a larger number of people, and (b) the ease of meeting interaction quotas (and sotto-voce arrest quotas) by concentrating on those communities;
a streak in black urban male culture—as present today as once was, in that same culture, the refusal to “eat pussy” or the disdain for “fags”—to be noncompliant with cop commands as an expression of being “authentically black” (being a Jim Kelly in Enter the Dragon or in Three the Hard Way “sticking it to the man”);
a persistent thug-life cop-killing theme romanticized in popular black art, art that happens to be the most popular art in America;
a police profession self-selecting perhaps a bit more for machismo (even authoritarian-bully) types who, especially once adorned with a badge, struggle to deal with challenges (backtalk or noncompliance) to the authority around which they locate their identity;
a sense that poor people, who appear in an overwhelming majority of cases involving excessive force (including against blacks), have less to lose and are more susceptible to substance abuse and mental-heath challenges, and so are more willing to go to escalating extremes during police interactions;
police officers who, despite the manly-man self-identification, are too often insecure and out-of-shape and undertrained in de-escalation techniques and unskilled in nonlethal restraint (such as would be developed from only a few months of jujitsu training)—to such an extent, in fact, that there are times when they shoot even legless people wielding no more than knives.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—despite widespread proclamations of a “total war against blacks led by an institutionally racist police force” (a police force that close to 15 percent of US liberals and close to 10 percent of US conservatives believe killed about 10,000 unarmed blacks in 2019, and that likely over 50 percent of either liberals or conservatives would say was at least 100)—in reality, only around 25 unarmed blacks were killed by cops in 2019 whereas the number of unarmed whites killed (notably unlisted on Wikipedia, unlike in the case of blacks) hovered around 35—a figure that does indicate that blacks are more likely to be killed by cops (given the population ratio of about four whites for every one black in the country), but still a disparity at least partially attributable to the fact that blacks commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime (being around seven times more likely than whites).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where violent crimes between blacks and whites amount to about 5 violent crimes out of hundred, with blacks being the victims in less than 20 percent of those cases—this fact in stark contrast to the so-called “total war against blacks, the likes of which has not been seen since the lynching era”: a message our pocket screens (dulling attention spans, rewriting memories, shaping public opinion, stoking division) constantly repeat with the help of images stirring enough to make even otherwise sane deans, overcome with the inner sense of protecting God’s most precious and vulnerable, terminate professors without due process merely for saying a word that sounds close to “nigger.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where every college and university president posts an open letter—all smelling alike (of wool)—that declares their dismay whenever a black person is killed by the police and how, “even though it can never understand the terror they live with everyday, the white community will stand by every black student—offering not just empty words, but real action: making antiracist training required for all members of our community; prioritizing equity over equality not just in admissions and hiring, but in classroom decisions; and much more.”
We are devastated by the recent tragedies of police brutality towards Black persons. We stand strongly against not just the act of police brutality but underlying afflictions also known as systemic racism. We know that these are not just isolated incidents and recognize that racism radiates well beyond the criminal justice system: housing, healthcare, and even our own system of higher education. We also recognize that racism has a significant mental and physical impact on Black individuals when these tragedies happen.
So to our Black students and colleagues: we see you, we support you, we value you and we love you!
Some of us have the privilege of not having to worry about our children when they leave the house or interact with police. Some of us have the privilege to go for a jog or to sleep in the comfort of our own homes. Some of us have the privilege of being given the benefit of the doubt in our daily lives. Such privileges blind us. That is why it is so important to acknowledge, and educate ourselves about, the struggles of living while black.
We are not writing this as an empty statement. We are committing, right now, to employing antiracist practices throughout our college: from hiring and employee retention, to student success, to policy and curriculum revisions that will include a more race-conscious and equity-minded approach. Creating sustainable change for our college will take some crucial and courageous conversations. It will take action! We are prepared. A new strategic plan for Inclusive Excellence is in the works, and it will align with a college-wide strategic plan to be presented in fall 2020.
Both plans, we are proud to say, will be “living documents.” This means that every division at the college will have the ability to chime in and develop them. Most importantly, we will be allowing any black-identifying individuals—faculty or staff—full jurisdiction over any of these documents. We want to make sure that black voices always get a say when it comes to keeping these documents relevant and accurate as circumstances change, or as new information becomes available.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where victim-narrative falsities are promulgated enough to seem axiomatic:
(1) that the majority of US blacks are destitute urbanites (instead of middle-class suburbanites);
(2) that black households earn less than white households for the same work (instead of earning roughly the same as whites, more in many cities across the nation, when we factor in the disproportionate number of black single-parent households surviving on welfare and the disproportionate number of blacks living in areas—the southern US, in particular—where wages are lower for everyone and especially when we adjust for age, region, location, and educational level);
(3) that performance gaps between blacks and whites indicate systemic racism (instead of those performance gaps, many of which narrow significantly simply when we account for age and study time, being a function of cultural values and educational practices in the black communities with higher rates of single-parent homes, homes inadvertently incentivized to become overburdened since more fertility means more milk from the nanny system);
(4) that blacks are less likely to receive callbacks and job offers due to rampant racism (instead of due to worries about overrepresentation in crime and underperformance in education in those rare cases—say, entry-level private-sector jobs twenty-five years ago in Podunk places—where blacks fail to enjoy the substantial hiring advantage they enjoy in most sectors over equally-qualified white candidates, especially given the longstanding and widespread affirmative-action initiative in a country where countless employers and colleges need diversity-forward positions to be deemed serious and competitive);
(5) that largescale antiblack racism is baked into the criminal justice system (instead of longer and more punitive sentences explained predominantly by prior criminal record, the nature of the offense, and the quality of the legal representation);
(6) that racial profiling by police officers in many cities is because of antiblack bias (instead of because blacks commit a disproportionate amount of crime, which results in a higher demand for police intervention in black communities);
(7) that excessive police brutality against blacks, as if it were “open season” on them, represents a commonplace trend of American racism (instead of being a comparative anomaly over-spotlighted in a country where differences in rates of police shootings and police encounters between whites and blacks virtually go away when we adjust for the higher rate of black violent crime reported by victims).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, due to these ingrained “axioms” (and all the doors to virtue signaling that open up thereby), governments and business alike are excessive with freebies and leniencies—offering cloying praise that would seem backhanded if directed toward whites.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where black children are indoctrinated into thinking that in order to have a wholehearted desire to reach a goal, or to believe in their potential to reach it, they need to see someone doing it who looks like them, thereby allowing us to accept in better conscience the fifth-string black candidate over the first-string white counterpart.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blind interviews and blind auditions, once hailed as a means to combat prejudice in selection processes, are now (like blind criminal justice and blind healthcare and other insidious forms of “blindness”) deemed “problematic” because—in letting decisions be made on a case-by-case determination of merit or talent or character (“insidious concepts of white supremacy”) rather than on the basis of color, and thereby in blocking a great deal of black entry while favoring whites (who “gained their talents on the back of black oppression anyway”)—they are anti-equity disruptors of “the only solution to racist discrimination: antiracist discrimination."
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—just as we do not increase the educational resources in black communities as a response to subminimal scoring in math and reading, but rather simply declare the standards used to measure them (and in some cases even math and reading themselves) white supremacist—we do not increase classical music education in black communities as a response to black underrepresentation in orchestras, but rather simply declare blind auditions (and musical notation and all the rest) white supremacist—a declaration that viciously fuels the demand, lest we be charged with merely offering lip service to diversity, that the priority be selecting black people (even if it means selecting those unable to meet the usual standards, and even if it means getting rid of white musicians and perhaps also musicians of other minorities).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, in order “to dismantle the legacy of white supremacy in western music,” two main strategies are on the table:
second best is to privilege systems of music notation other than the European one, even though the European one—superior to the Chinese and the Indian and even the African—captures pitch and rhythm precisely enough to do what others cannot (namely, capture even the strangest and most sophisticated music of all traditions);
first best, since the demand to read music disproportionately impacts blacks (who are about “hip feeling rather than square thinking”), is to do away with music notation altogether—starting, of course, with the “colonialist representational system of Western notation” precisely because its superior ability to capture (or, perhaps better, “enslave”) all other forms of music makes it “such a useful tool for the white evil of appropriation” that even black bodies who learn or utilize it are in some sense “complicit in white supremacy.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—despite it being highly addictive and debilitating and merely an anesthetic for the pain of deeper issues, which is why it is only to be used like fentanyl in emergency situations (lest, of course, we want to ensure black inferiority in standing and achievement and dignity and drive to achieve, and a whole lot of correlated white contempt)—affirmative action is seen not as a temporary measure to start the syphon flow of blacks into all the areas of historical exclusion (a transitional solution from which blacks are to be quickly tapered off, as greater attention is given to the attitudes and home structure and family situation and values that weigh blacks down), but rather as something needing to be permanently instituted as a matter of justice for long as this country is still around (since antiblack bias, the very fabric of this country, will always stop any syphon flow if left unchecked).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where black people accept and even celebrate (for being pro-diversity) the lowered bars for admission and hiring, for reading and writing and speaking, that nicely screw blacks into a state of eroded motivation for personal growth and development:
watering down the accomplishments of high-achieving black intellectuals (so much that geniuses of rigor and originality are put on a par with sloganeering lightweights hooked on the continued boosterism of the white world);
taking away developmental pressure for blacks to rise to what they otherwise would be able to rise to;
hooking blacks on “extra help,” such that they become wards of white pity;
making blacks—even the ones who really are topnotch and who put in topnotch effort—feel lesser than (in their very souls) and making others look at them as lesser than.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, by lowering the bars for blacks, institutions get to feel and seem virtuous even as their bar-lowering only further cloaks, and thereby further hides from cure, deeper causes of black underachievement:
causes such as the cultural emphasis placed on being “authentically black,” which means being able to hang in project-housing territories with swagger (in general, just not being nerdy like white people, with all their present fathers and noninvolvement in the criminal-justice system and Encyclopedia Britannica collections and temperance when it comes to sex and drugs);
causes such as the failure of elementary school curricula, or of family structure, or of a “niggative” attitude toward achievement in the “white world” (Nigga, why you reading like you white and shit?”) or of a “niggative” attitude toward wonder in the black child (“Child, get from that bug!”), or of a “niggative” attitude toward the child’s human desire to keep communicating with the delivery man at the door (“Child, get from that door!”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world—our “progressive” world—where, as if to demoralize and humiliate blacks (at least subconsciously, in feelings only to resurface perhaps in the last third of the night), blacks are dozens of times more likely to get picked for universities over equally-qualified Asian kids.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where all the sermonizing about the necessity of exempting blacks from various challenges (like doing away with the requirement to learn Greek even if the black student majors in Greek, or doing away with the requirement to read music even if the black student majors in Music) will be effective enough to entrench it into practice—and yet not effective enough to make blacks forget (again, at least in the recesses of pre-dawn hours) the humiliating fact that they are being patted on the head with condescending kid gloves because they are lesser than.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, as if to render the option of trying harder a nonstarter and to perpetuate the cycle of underachievement, the blame for blacks not doing as well as their white counterparts on tests and on licensure requirements, the blame for the imbalance between the number of blacks and number of whites in elite science high schools or with careers in aerospace engineering, is (conveniently) shifted onto the selection measures themselves—“standards distressful, particularly to black bodies, because of the white supremacy baked into them.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, almost as if some secret hand were intending to breed blacks into perpetual children unable to be moved by rationality, the responsibility for black shortcomings in abstract reasoning is (conveniently) placed upon “white-bread assessment standards with an intrinsic telos of black-body rape”—yes, even despite their blind administration, and despite the thorough efforts to ensure their fairness, and despite various factors beyond (not the least of which are black environments of low intellectual stimulation harboring “niggative” cultural attitudes toward abstract thinking as being “something for white people”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, by casting the blame elsewhere than upon these stultifying environments, these environments stand a greater chance of survival, thereby locking in the historical privilege of whites outperforming blacks when it comes to abstract thinking, locking it in even more securely than does the main other complementary strategy of hypnotizing blacks to embrace a lie tempting for them believe after centuries of addiction to having their agency tied to their victimizers by a short chain—a lie tempting for them to believe since it justifies tossing off the big burdens (the burden of carving their own paths to the degree that other humans can; the burden of the freedom of choosing for oneself what to be responsible for, as opposed to the freedom of having no responsibilities; the burden of stepping up to do something with the opportunities afforded them; the burden of responsible parenting, which includes safeguarding innocence until the skills and knowledge and maturity solidifies enough to handle to traumas of adult life; the burden of self-improvement; the burden of independence from government assistance): the lie, namely, that these environments are the inevitable and inescapable byproduct of centuries of slavery plus the immiserations and humiliations of Jim Crow laws and redlining (and various other impediments to blacks getting to enjoy the fruits of being born in America).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, because of this lie (and the associated lie that things have only gotten worse for blacks in America and thus that the efforts of brave and inspirational black leaders over the last century were in vain, if not themselves orchestrated by white supremacy), blacks in this country—despite it decades of redress dispensations and despite its having reached a point where racial tolerance is (at least ten years ago) better than any other time in world history—see themselves, in what amounts to a slap in the face to those around the globe suffering from real institutional racism (think India’s caste system and other cases of concrete racism around the world, which are best kept hidden to America in order to ensure that exaggerations of black mistreatment go unchecked), as outsiders forever barred from even entering the candy store with the other kids they get to watch through bulletproof windows.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, if ever their practice of direct preferential admission were banned, universities carrying out the coddling agenda would be prepared to abolish SAT and GRE and LSAT requirements altogether (on grounds that “it is unjust and uncivil, not to mention mortifying, to ask black people to compete in a colorblind meritocracy against people who don’t face their historical and ongoing traumas”)—doing away with these requirements, these “white supremacist weapons to humiliate blacks and exclude their representation in various sectors,” even at the price, yes, of leading humanity as a whole down a road of mediocrity (which would perhaps be the best road anyway, as far as some Palpatine-like white supremacy on its deathbed would be concerned, given the risk otherwise of non-mediocrity leaking out to blacks).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where hiring standards are diluted, even if at the internecine expense of tanking the possibility of groundbreaking advances coming out of universities or of more fatalities on the surgery table because of incompetence—yes, whites included (as if the collateral damage of some real antiblack agenda, rather than of the fake one on which the black-damaging indignation-industry of so-called “antiracism” depends).
It could just sit back and revel in our world, a creepy world, where even Huxtable blacks (treated too as borderline disableds) are denied the chance to show how they can reach greatness without the help of a white savior with quotas to fill—an eerie scenario in itself, but especially considered in light of the Skinnerian experiment showing how fleas are easily conditioned: after just few days of the lid being on the mason jar, fleas that could easily jump out no longer jump high enough to do so (such conditioning spreading down multiple generations).
It could just sit back and revel in our world, a cynical world, where even Huxtable blacks (in the shadow of constant pandering) are denied a dignified sense of respect and appreciation even for anything they do accomplish on their own, which with the help of poor blacks will nicely help preserve the intelligence gap between blacks and every other group.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, to be seen as and to see themselves as deserving of spoiling special treatment, blacks find their highest dignity in getting whites to admit blacks have been the most heinously victimized people—Jews included—the world has ever seen.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where black power is defined primarily in terms of (a) stewing over injustices inflicted upon their ancestors and, instead of devoting internal energy to lift themselves up, (b) demanding (in the name of “justice” and “accountability”) payouts and favors from the dubiously-supposed brethren of black victimizers—payouts and favors that, so as never to divest themselves of the ability to say in the pathos spirit of Ralphie in A Christmas Story “Look how your actions have crippled me,” at best amount to new rims for their wheelchairs and someone there to push them up any hills.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks are to devote their days begging for special favors from a US system they think is hopelessly corrupted by white supremacy—so corrupted it would seem only logical for them to conclude (but remember, logic is itself antiblack) that any such helping hand would actually be toxic to blacks.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—“whitenotized” as needing whites to unruin them (a gospel eerily similar to what heartened the Trans-Atlantic slave trade: “A white Savior is your only hope out of the dung”)—blacks are lured away from Harlem-Renaissance-style efforts to enter the pantheon of human greats (like Shakespeare) and, instead, into a ruinous game where they locate their core power in guilt-tripping whites (as a son might a mother for past abuse).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, in turn, at least those whites not in denial of their white supremacy get easy no-change-required absolution for being white—that is, get their guilt lashed away, in the safe way of BDSM, for being descendants of sea-bottom-senders, rapers, slavers, lynchers, hosers, humiliators, redliners—by excusing blacks shortcomings (even acts of barbarism) as understandable given the horrors of the past.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, instead of directing resources toward uplifting programs that empower them to compete on equal footing, black students—groomed by overuse of emergency medicines like affirmative action to expect admission into the same positions and venues and conversations with lower qualifications than other groups—are judged by different standards:
by outspoken passion rather than by critical-ethical thinking;
by kinesthetic prowess rather than by research methods;
by Wakanda street smarts rather than by white-bread book learning;
by spoken-word expression testifying to intergenerational trauma rather than by written exams testifying to analytical proficiency;
by urban slang rather than by the labyrinthine lexicon of SAT prep books;
by spontaneous improv rather than by planned execution;
by social justice rather than by understanding the truths of the cosmos (inner and outer, micro and macro).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, instead of directing resources toward uplifting programs that build resilience, black students—groomed by the implementation of safe spaces and bias response teams to expect an environment free from challenge or discomfort—are exempted from ennobling challenges:
from rushing when late;
from doing well on math tests;
from excelling in the written word;
from looking beyond color to individual merit and character and need;
from striving to be objective;
from raising skepticism toward received orthodoxy and one’s sense of “inner truth”;
from planning things out instead of flying by the seat of one’s loincloth;
from aiming to control emotion with reason;
from trying to understand Shakespeare;
from all the various “aspirational hurdles set by white supremacists to make blacks feel pathetic as they inevitably tumble.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, given the different standards of judgment and the exemptions from ennobling challenges (and all the other hobbling-humiliating treatments packaged, in our white-supremacy hysteria, as “a matter of Black justice”), it is hard not to think some nefarious plot against black kind really were underway: a plot to render yet another generation of children (black and nonblack) powerless to resist—however much they try (in fear of finding the r-word pulsing in neon over their faces in the bathroom mirror)—the conviction, mushrooming in the deepest recesses of their hearts, that black people are intellectually stunted (or at least that “black” and “nerd” repose in mutual exclusivity), which enables a culture where (a) blacks—and whites too—feel that any book-smart and articulate black person must not be authentically black and where (b) blacks—and whites too—feel righteous in dishing out mental and social and physical penalties to any black successful in school (or in various other “whites-only areas and styles of being”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, given the different standards of judgment and the exemptions from ennobling challenges (and all the other hobbling-humiliating treatments packaged, in our white-supremacy hysteria, as “antiracist”), it is hard not to think some nefarious plot against black kind really were underway: a plot to render yet another generation of children (black and nonblack) powerless to resist—fearing that scarlet “r”—judging black people not by the robustness of their intellect or the depth of their character, but through a kaleidoscope of diminishing caricatures serving to keep them (a) outside the gates of informed and ethical citizenship, (b) less able to compete on equal footing (on their own merits and efforts) without special considerations, (c) stuck in an aid-expectation cycle of underachievement.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, given the different standards of judgment and the exemptions from ennobling challenges (and all the other hobbling-humiliating treatments packaged, in our white-supremacy hysteria, as “pro-black”), it is hard not to think some nefarious plot against black kind really were underway: a plot to make it more likely that blacks never marry their dollars with sense, and so stay some of the biggest unnecessary spenders on things they themselves do not make (clothes, furniture, phones, drugs, hairstyles, name brand stuff) instead of investing in businesses and real estate that might curb the unfathomable speed at which the black dollar leaves the black community.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, given the different standards of judgment and the exemptions from ennobling challenges (and all the other hobbling-humiliating treatments packaged, in our white-supremacy hysteria, as “malicious to withhold when black people are so terrorized each day”), it is hard not to think some nefarious plot against black kind really were underway: a plot to keep off the table of possibility actionable plans for self-sufficiency, such as the following concrete plan specifically for those black families who own a business:
(1) provide your children with valuable work experience by employing them in your business as early as you can (early teens);
(2) compensate them just enough to avoid federal income taxes (according to the standard deduction for that year);
(3) claim a tax deduction for their wages as a business expense;
(4) invest a portion of their earnings into a Roth IRA to yield a retirement fund at the level of the millions from just a few thousand dollars starting out).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, given the different standards of judgment and the exemptions from ennobling challenges, it is hard not to think some nefarious plot against black kind really were underway: a plot to elbow out, in the same way that refined sugar elbows out fruit sugar, solutions for improving black educational performance even by the supposedly too-high “white standards”—so many solutions:
(a) incentivizing the intellectual growth of students (paying first graders for every book they read and successfully complete an exam on, showering praise upon students who solve logic puzzles and critical thinking games, cultivating a sense of admiration around past and present figures who have committed themselves to a life of the mind, exposing the harmfulness of anti-intellectual attitudes in the black communities while also laying out the historical and psychological reasons behind their flourishing);
(b) celebrating students who “burn the midnight oil” in determined pursuit of noble goals, or who demonstrate thought-out skepticism toward received orthodoxies (especially toward the “antiracist” orthodoxy of black victimology);
(c) going harder on black students (strict disciplinary policies, extended school hours, extra scrutiny, less protections from so-called “malinformation,” more responsibilities);
(d) encouraging enrollment in HeadStart and Upward Bound (providing families with comprehensive information sessions, offering transportation services, creating a mentorship system where older students guide and motivate the younger ones);
(e) teaching blacks kids physics through sports they love (the gravity and aerodynamic drag involved in three-point shots, the thermodynamics involved in dribbling, the conservation of angular momentum involved in a ball-spinning layup);
(f) improving status and pay of teachers (perhaps based on their pursuit of professional development, or on the performance of their students on blind tests);
(g) ensuring like Marva Collins that black kindergarteners are surpassing intellectual milestones (reading at the level of Aesop’s fables, doing math up to simple multiplication and division);
(h) ensuring like Marva Collins that black kindergarteners ingest a hearty dose of pro-autonomy propaganda (such as through folktales like “The Little Red Hen,” whose chief moral is “If you don’t work you don’t eat”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, given the different standards of judgment and the exemptions from ennobling challenges (and all the other hobbling-humiliating treatments packaged, in our white-supremacy hysteria, as “the very least we can do”), it is hard not to think some nefarious plot against black kind really were underway: a plot to elbow out, in the same way that TV elbows out books, literacy and family-bonding and confidence-boosting programs—so many programs:
(a) parent-child-school programs (where in the morning session parent fill educational gaps while preschoolers learn math and reading, and where in the afternoon both groups come together to learn how to learn together);
(b) financial-literacy programs (where participants learn the ins and outs of budgeting and saving and investing through real-life scenarios and interactive workshops equipping them with the tools to break the cycle of poverty);
(c) health-awareness programs (where community members come together to learn about the importance of nutrition and exercise, along with practical cooking demonstrations for healthy meals on a budget, and free health screenings that aim to prevent hypertension, diabetes, and other black scourges);
(d) technology programs (where participants, especially the youth, are introduced to the digital world's opportunities, including coding, digital marketing, and social media literacy);
(e) entrepreneurship programs (where local entrepreneurs and business leaders provide mentorship and support through the process of turning an idea into a sustainable business);
(f) vocational-training programs (where hands-on training in high-demand trades such as electrical work, plumbing, coding, and health care provides not only certifications but a direct pathway to employment);
(g) cultural heritage and history programs (where participants explore the rich history and contributions of Black individuals and cultures beyond the dated context of oppression);
(h) pro-social programs (where workshops focus on building strong interpersonal and conflict resolution skills, and on increasing awareness of black role models who do not reinforce the thug and whore monolith, and on combating the false and harmful depictions of black people as perpetual victims, and on dismantling the notion that the police and the legal system are the enemies of black people, and on destigmatizing the sharing of emotions and the pursuit of intellectual interests and the talking to therapists, and on centering black voices like Sowell and Shelby and Lowery who would have black people aim higher than grievance when cultivating their sense of purpose and self-worth and somebodyness).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where America, in addition to warping the perspective of Americans as to the severity of antiblack racism, seems hellbent on exporting its distorted views to other countries—this way, as people in Stockholm and Paris and Brazil protest the underrepresentation of blacks in STEM fields in America or protest the killing of black men by cops in America, there will be less of a chance for blacks to become truly woke: woke from their victimhood stupor.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where whites are pressured to spend their lives groveling in atonement for the sins of like-looking dead, doing all they can—even to unjust and spoiling lengths—to help, thereby becoming (as the helpers of the down and out) the most dignified little halflings on Earth.
________________________________
Chapter 5. Nazi Alert
Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally abandoned, until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes, the dream of lasting peace . . . will remain but a fleeting illusion.—Haile Selassie
No matter what we might hope, that original sin—white supremacy—explains everything [according to today’s mainstream antiracist discourse]: an all-American sonderweg [(or special path of fate)]. The most shocking aspect of today’s mainstream antiracist discourse is the extent to which it mirrors ideas of race—specifically the specialness of whiteness—that white supremacist thinkers cherish. “Woke” antiracism proceeds from the premise that race is real—if not biological, then socially constructed and therefore equally if not more significant still—putting it in sync with toxic presumptions of white supremacism that would also like to insist on the fundamentality of racial difference. Working towards opposing conclusions, racists and many antiracists alike eagerly reduce people to abstract color categories, all the while feeding off and legitimizing each other, while any of us searching for grey areas and common ground get devoured twice. Both sides mystify racial identity, interpreting it as something fixed and determinative, and almost supernatural in scope. This way of thinking about human difference is seductive for many reasons, but it has failed us.—Thomas Chatterton Williams[18]
To exacerbate the already-suffocating extent to which inherited identities define all of us; to make race the overriding factor, overshadowing the multifaceted aspects that shape an individual's life, choices, and outcome; to stoke white racialist consciousness more effectively than any self-described white-supremacist ever could; to divide the land into extremes of uncompromising polarity where, on the one hand, right-wing opposition to white-supremacy (once the standard orientation) withers to nothing and, on the other hand, left-wing opposition to whiteness (once a fringe orientation) swallows the entire side; to cultivate resentment among white individuals who feel they are being unfairly blamed or marginalized or targeted; to incite a seething white backlash (more effectively than redlining, which denied more white people than black people the opportunity for home ownership since many of the redlined neighborhoods were majority white); to incite a seething white backlash, one that would “prove” (in ghoulish self-fulfilling prophecy) whites to be the racists they are declared to be by birth and thereby further entrench the deceptive narrative of continued black victimhood (since whites can never not hold the reigns of power); to bait whites, the heavily-armed majority population whose patience is running thin, to the brink of a hot war that would appease both the victim-and-identity Molochs of Trumpestan and Wokestan alike—what might white supremacy do from its deathbed?
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, through so many sadistic (usually sadomasochistic) books and articles and new-employee courses and quarterly training modules and sensitivity seminars aiming to “dismantle the plague of white-supremacy,” whiteness—a regressive fiction—is sold as an often-hard-to-detect disease admitting of no redeemable expressions and no grounds for pride (a disease, although perhaps suppressible and redirectable with extreme psycho-social interventions, likely ineradicable once and for all given the human-rights protections under which it hides)—or in the more refined language of one scholar (language spreading from universities into regular homes through the shock filter of social media; language completely normalized in the neo-racist bar talk of college-town “friend groups” across the US; language repeating, alongside “reclamation” messages like “Black is King,” in webinars and hashtags and activism bullhorns and middle-school hallway signs and Disney cartoons and fashion apparel, and so well beyond just the millions in the BeyHive):
Whiteness is a condition one first acquires and then one has—a malignant, parasitic-like condition to which “white” people have a particular susceptibility. The condition is foundational, generating characteristic ways of being in one’s body, in one’s mind, and in one’s world. Parasitic Whiteness renders its hosts’ appetites voracious, insatiable, and perverse. These deformed appetites particularly target nonwhite peoples. Once established, these appetites are nearly impossible to eliminate. Effective treatment consists of a combination of psychic and social-historical interventions. Such interventions can reasonably aim only to reshape Whiteness’s infiltrated appetites—to reduce their intensity, redistribute their aims, and occasionally turn those aims toward the work of reparation. When remembered and represented, the ravages wreaked by the chronic condition can function either as warning (“never again”) or as temptation (“great again”). Memorialization alone, therefore, is no guarantee against regression. There is not yet a permanent cure.[19]
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, in light of the righteous swarms of social-justice warriors professing to believe what they cannot possibly believe (that there really is a contagious disease of whiteness going around) and even going to great lengths in their teary sincerity to prove that they believe it, one cannot help but think of Thomas Paine’s description of “infidelity” in The Age of Reason.
Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief . . . that mental lying has produced in society. When man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where it is fashionable to have articles and books unironically titled—mostly by white authors, of course—“The Unbearable Whiteness of X":
The Unbearable Whiteness of Hiking (and How to Solve It)
The Unbearable Whiteness of Gunsmithing
The Unbearable Whiteness of Coffee
The Unbearable Whiteness of SATs
The Unbearable Whiteness of Clarence Thomas
The Unbearable Whiteness of Pornography
The Unbearable Whiteness of Social Media
The Unbearable Whiteness of Math and Logic
The Unbearable Whiteness of Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner
The Unbearable Whiteness of the Workweek
The Unbearable (and Unbeatable) Whiteness of Clocks
The Unbearable Whiteness of Skiing and Snowboarding
The Unbearable Whiteness of Milk (and Other Dairy Products)
The Unbearable Whiteness of John Krakauer
The Unbearable (and Unbeatable) Whiteness of Toilet Paper
The Unbearable Whiteness of Hospitals
The Unbearable Whiteness of Beards
The Unbearable Whiteness of Chemotherapy
The Unbearable Whiteness of Diabetes
The Unbearable Whiteness of Booker T. Washington
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, according to mainstream “antiracism” (which shares with white supremacism an eagerness not only to block the free flow of knowledge and art and technology and ritual between cultures, but also to regard whiteness as somehow extraordinary), to be white is to be irredeemably evil—well technically, and taking a twisted cue from those antiblack racists of yesteryear who insisted that worthy of demonization was merely blackness (not individual black people themselves), it is simply the whiteness in white people that is the evil (a whiteness that is at once (a) a viral force of violence commanding disproportionate material and symbolic power over black bodies, (2) an under-criticized location of structural advantage for whites and their allies, and (3) a shifting set of often-undetectable attitudes and behaviors serving to keep black people down).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, unraveling the hard-won progress that led to judging each person on a case-by-case basis (as opposed to reducing them to mere tokens of identity groups), racism—a constant, like slavery, throughout recorded human history and always threatening to mushroom into malignant proportions—crops up with renewed vigor (across the US and beyond) in the form of righteous-feeling but bitterness-fueled vilification of individual people and Western superpowers alike for their whiteness:
that modish scapegoat for all the world’s afflictions (and especially for black failings);
that essential feature behind, for example, the atom bomb; that core characteristic explaining—like phlogiston does combustibility—why, for example, “the Native Americans would have been just fine had any other group aside from whites sailed to the New World”;
that original sin that, although inborn and so technically no one’s fault, it is “everyone’s ethical duty to keep in check by means of local dismantling.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, under the spell of a common-enemy identity politics (as opposed to a common-humanity identity politics), any person (not just white people) can be afflicted by scourge of whiteness—a multiracial malady that manifests itself in manifold modes (way more undetectable than the following):
in black scholars (like Glenn Loury and John McWhorter and Shelby Steele) who deny that blacks continue to be held back by an omnipresent white supremacy or who adopt any of the characteristic orientations of whiteness as stated by The National Museum of African American History and Culture (individualism, pleasantness in attitude, protestant work ethic, food with little seasoning, delayed gratification, punctuality, objectivity and linearity in thought, quantitative reasoning, planning out the future, competitiveness);
or in black cops (like Tadarrius Bean and Demetrius Haley and Desmond Mills Jr.) who, even when they have the blackest names, brutalize black citizens;
or in the black administrators and educators (like Tabia Lee) who, even when they otherwise make it a point each day to showcase their commitment to fighting back against “Amerikkka’s total war against the black body,” participate in white-supremacist culture in one way or the other (engaging in “whitespeaking” by suggesting that the team lay out a tentative meeting agenda for the upcoming year, or engaging in “whitesplaining” by calling someone out for reasoning fallaciously, or engaging in “whitecentering” by having a lot of handouts that prioritize the written word, or engaging in “whitetrapping” by holding standards of punctuality and civility so alien to BIPOCs that it sets them up for failure);
or in the black-on-black slavery (like that perpetrated by the Ashanti and the Dahomey and the Nubians) before any physical contact with Europeans;
or even in Japanese racism against Chinese people, the so-called “sick men of Asia.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where “whiteness, along with the institutions and philosophies that promote its disgusting presence,” stands as the chief indictable energy—a malevolence of such magnitude, in fact, that it becomes imperative, as a matter of (bitterness disguised as) justice, for the academic discipline of history to channel its focus to weaponized extremes:
condemning the various ruinous expressions of whiteness (even, or perhaps especially, the “mayo-ketchup" alliance that colonized global cuisine);
ridiculing any “Nazi assertion” suggesting that whiteness has been or could be nonruinous;
pointing out the often hard-to-spot behavioral, as well as psychological and epistemological and political, expressions of whiteness through the medium of black bodies over human history;
shining a roach light on all the creeping modes of whiteness that, although unmarked and unnamed, pursue the whiteness mission of hoarding capital and other forms of power over black bodies;
interrogating the role of whiteness in producing black victims throughout history beyond just the slave trade (like, for example, how it produced the black victims of Hurricane Katrina);
exalting every form of nonwhiteness (“the only hope we really have, because whiteness is just too hard to destabilize as the racial equivalent of normal or natural”), exalting every form of nonwhiteness even if it entails exalting the oppressive regime of Idi Amin and even if it entails undoing progress (two things it likely does not entail, though, since “both oppression and anti-progress are glaring signs, in fact, of whiteness”);
refuting or “problematizing” any claim as to the ruinous expressions of nonwhiteness or, when that is not feasible, proving (especially by drawing upon “black testimony and lived experience”) how such expressions are, ultimately, expressions of whiteness).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, as we have seen with the garbage-bag policy of many schools and corporations (“using white garbage bags instead of black serves to dismantle the longstanding equation of white supremacy (black = garbage) and at the same time gives whites a taste of their own goddamn medicine”), we have witnessed a bloom of “whiteness-dismantling initiatives”—initiatives aiming to “provide people of color at least a small pocket of breathing room in an apple-pie culture of racism radiating from every porch flag”—like the popular Race2Dinner Experience, which features two non-white women (the Gordon Ramsays of antiracism) attending dinner parties—watching, scrutinizing, provoking—in order to “capture the inevitable signs of xenophobic and downright slave-master behavior” exhibited by the white host and her white guests (a perfect spectator-sport parallel to Kitchen Nightmares)—and always, yes, the same basic pattern, a pattern brought into stark relief in the charged excerpt below: (1) hounding all the white women in the room (each of whom dishes out $500 to attend these punking-flagellating-humiliating events of narcissism-feeding “racial reckoning”), hounding and hounding (Maoist-struggle-session style) ultimately until these red-faced women confess their “collusion with white supremacy,” and then right after the confessions (2) pointing out how the confessions themselves, on top of being too insincere, are somehow tainted by whiteness (whitespeak, white tears, white fragility, white values, white logic, white privilege, white silence).
SAIRA
Saira's gaze scalpels through the gathering of women, dissecting their unbearable whiteness with the same scrutinizing precision reserved for a newly-conquered serfdom. Shoulders squared and formidable like the buttresses of Stalin’s Kremlin, her eyes narrow upon her subjects with the mercilessness of Catherine the Great. Each accusatory syllable she utters lays claim to the room, annexing its very air (as if it were her own personal playscape). Having already proven the ruthlessness of her interrogation technique, Saira corners her next victim onto the chopping block with a glee almost too ferocious to restrain—as if savoring that never-old tremble of prey beneath the grim shadow of the guillotine blade.
“Actually Margaret, you didn’t say yours.”
MARGARET
As the clinking of wine glasses and silverware dies into a tense silence, all eyes turn to Margaret. Her complexion blooms with a telltale crimson, a silent beacon of her distress under the scorching scrutiny of Saira’s withering glare. The other white women—loyal to their “Queens,” grateful to be out of the hotseat—nod with grave servility.
“What?”
SAIRA
Saira's voice drips with a saccharine disdain that could rival the simpering malevolence of Dolores Umbridge, each note tinged with a venom thinly veiled by an outward composure. Saira would be the modern-day version of Annie Wilkes from Misery, itching to flip from maternal to violent in the flash of a razor’s edge, if only her wardrobe were more provincial, more homely. But her tailored blouse of silken black—power-chic, officious even—veers decidedly from the domestic, evoking nothing homespun. An authoritarian menace more cosmopolitan in appearance, people will most likely think of Hillary Clinton before Annie Wilkes.
“Your racist thing, thing that you’ve done. . . . You have something inside of you that’s racist. So you must have, you must have examples in your own life.”
MARGARET
Margaret’s eyes shimmer with vulnerability, wide and imploring like those of a woebegone puppy. She is the picture of trepidation, round face pink with bewildered embarrassment like young Neville Longbottom. Her demeanor shrinks, exactly the reaction expected from a white supremacist unaware of her guilty complicity. In her private silence of visible jugular and forehead throbs, she is clearly grasping for any answer—a lifeline—that might appease her tormentor. No doubt she knows by this point that to stay silent would be an expression of white silence: the practice of refusing to speak about race-related issues, a practice especially egregious—toxic, triggering, terrorizing—when a Black person is asking for something more than silence. The other white women squirm in painful empathy, chairs creaking in commiseration. Margaret’s panic is palpable, like a kid braced for the bully zeroing in on him at the bus stop before school. Rapid-fire jump cuts magnify the drama, the urgency and intensity, exactly like in Kitchen Nightmares. Beads of sweat on her brow betray her inner turmoil, the weight of accusation literally hunching her over soup (now salted with the essence of her ordeal).
“I also work in environmental engineering. I have absolutely no people of color, or minimal people of color (possibly the exclusion being slightly Hispanic).”
NARRATOR
In the measured timbre of a discount Sir David Attenborough, the narrator's voice makes an appearance. The quintessential white British accent lays down each syllable with the resonant and reassuring clarity of nature documentaries: detached and yet still imbued with a sense of wonder. (Given the credible and intellectual connotations of such knightly elocution, its inclusion almost seems to undermine one of the struggle session’s chief missions: namely, to show that white does not make right—indeed, that it often makes wrong.) The camera zooms in on Saira’s Hitlerian fingers tapping out a staccato rhythm of amphetamine impatience.
“Saira doesn’t like her attitude.”
SAIRA
Saira pounces on her wounded Karen with the gotcha tone of the apex predator she is—seasoned beneath a cunning cloak of victimhood. Her smile, regal in its decree of imperial contempt, skewers like Vlad the Impaler. Her hand gestures, timed impeccably for each incontrovertible pronouncement, reanimate in miniature the theatrical bombast of Benito Mussolini on his balcony.
“I can say a racist thing you’ve done. I can say it because it just happened! When you talked to me the way you just did [(stressing the “me,” as if Margaret failed to showcase enough groveling respect)]. This is how white women [(Saira gestures to all the sorry white women)] talk to us all the time. These are microaggressions.”
MARGARET
Margaret writhes with confusion and distress. She clearly does not understand her sin. That itself is a sign of whiteness (just like the alcoholic’s denial is a sign of alcoholism). She falls into the trap of trying to defend herself. That itself broadcasts her racist fragility at bullhorn decibels—yes, even though her Neville tone radiates a genuine desire to learn and be better as much as it radiates terror.
“But I say the exact same thing to my white girlfriends.”
SAIRA
Saira removes her glasses. A smug satisfaction unfurls across her face, as if she were a street apologist who just witnessed the unsuspecting atheist swallow the rhetorical bait of a leading question. Saira’s gaze, steely and probing, rivals that of Joseph Stalin's. It holds a chilling depth, penetrating beyond all pretense (yes, much like the General Secretary's notorious scrutiny of his subordinates). Saira’s voice has the force of Hitler deep in an oratorical pocket of jazz, each term bearing the heavy inevitability of historical edict.
“I don’t care if you talk to everybody like that. The way you just spoke to me was straight-up white supremacy. You actually just answered with racism!”
NARRATOR
The narrator provides context for why the cat torments the mouse instead of just killing it already, his detachment belying the cruelty on display. Our instinct as viewers might be to wish we could rush in and save Margaret, who has been reduced to a Biff-bullied George McFly from Back to the Future: insecure, stammering, twitching, mumbling. But the narrator, in effect, tells us not to let our emotions get the better of us. That would amount here to defending white supremacy.
“White supremacy is said to be hidden in innocuous phrases and banal behavior. The smallest things could be considered racist. It’s enough that a person from a minority group feels insulted.”
MARGARET
Margaret stands alone in a narrow hallway for a talking-head segment, the aftermath of the thumbscrew questioning still visible on her. Her face is sweaty and red, not in defiance (or rage at the feeling of having been raped by ideologues) but in a way that indicates an inner capitulation. It has been a victory of antiracism. She now seems ready to admit that she perpetuates racial injustices (often invisible to her kind) and that her most important contribution to society is to do whatever she can to stop committing them—or, more realistically, whatever she can to lessen their impact. That is her newfound responsibility: to curtail the harm she can never fully stop committing (barring, of course, going through with the sotto voce suggestion throughout the dinner: suicide, self-erasure, “kill yo self”). Indeed, a special—albeit twisted—honor comes with facing that you are a werewolf and then taking measures to prevent yourself from wreaking havoc come the full moon.
“Yes. Yes. I’m sounding terribly white.”
SAIRA
Saira is now in her own talking-head-segment next to Regina, the other interrogator (more like the good cop) and co-author of White Women: Everything You Already Know about Your Own Racism and How To Do Better (with a guide to start the unlearning). These proud women of color, called to do a thankless job more traumatic in a way than ER surgery and Alaskan crab fishing combined, exchange sidelong glances and weary head shakes. Both look as exasperated as a thoroughly slimed crew of Ghostbusters after a long day of wrangling poltergeists into ecto-containment chambers. Viewers might get the feel that the information presented on the title card before the dinner footage began—namely, that both women are “available for private consultation”—is an offer no longer on the table. But despite the fatigue etched in their expressions, an unmistakable spark of unwavering commitment radiates through their spent demeanor.
“We know not to have unrealistic hopes. These women are completely oblivious to their racism. In some cases they are lying, but in most cases they sincerely believe they are not perpetuating white supremacy. I mean, let’s be realistic here. How far, really, can they be expected to grow? These women are over 40 in most cases! So we set doable goals. Sure, we would love to inspire some of them to become white traitors, who publicly stand to tell the grim truth about white supremacy, or even white abolitionists, who actively try to dismantle whiteness and to prevent it from reasserting itself. But we are reasonable. I am happy enough if I simply get someone to confess their whiteness and see the damage it does. Even if they keep all that tucked away in their private world, that is a precondition for moving on to exposing the white regime. Seeing the painful truth—that they uphold white supremacy each day of their lives—is something they can never unknow. . . . The next step? Well, we do have a resident white woman on staff. Lisa is an experienced and effective advocate for antiracist change. Her white features (bob, light skin) are more welcoming to stubborn cases like Margaret. Quite frankly we have seen Lisa attain results we never thought possible. So yes, the next step is to meet with Lisa. A one-hour post-dinner consult—that’s already part of the package. But these women need years—believe us: years!”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, in what ends up perpetuating a culture of division and resentment and atrophied agency, antiblack racism is to blame for anything negative that happens to blacks whereas—since whites, after all, have so much privilege—personal failing, barring cases of disease and coercion and the like, is to blame for anything negative that happens to whites (which explains the growing number of people—the same ones overestimating the number of black death at the hands of cops by three orders of magnitude—who sincerely cannot fathom, despite mainly seeing whites living on the streets, how a white person could be homeless in a white supremacist country such as this).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, although it is encouraged as a form of mocking payback for blacks to call even senior citizens “white boy,” it is right up there with the hard-r n-word to call a black person “boy" (even in the lighthearted form of “Boy you crazy”) and doing so on social media will robotically prompt—even from celebrities, even if you are a nobody—a chorus of condemnation that again and again includes the phrase “Nazi Alert” followed by an arrow to your @-handle.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, especially because the Nazi category has become so watered down (now that just anybody doing anything that a “real” black person feels challenged by can get you thrown inside), the higher category “Super Nazi” is becoming popular—filling up each cyber second with “US-flag-waving fucks,” “apple-pie-scarfing pigs,” like rappers Burden and Mesus who spread the following piece of “nazi propaganda” on YouTube and Spotify.
[Chorus: Burden]
What if I was on my knees and executed by police?
What if I was bein choked and they knew that I couldn't breathe
If I was in the cop car, I was killed in the backseat
With hands cuffed and locked behind me, y'all ain't losin any sleep
Ain't nobody bout to riot for me and that's a fact
Ain't no protests with signs for me, cuz I ain't black
Ain't no hashtags online for me or fightin back
Ain't nobody bout to riot for me, bet y'all don't riot for me
[Verse 1: Burden]
Ain't it demonic, how the news make a piece of shit look iconic?
How ironic, if the ratings go up, so does the profits
You can change the station, but they're readin from the same script
White man, gunned down by the police, ain't nobody play that clip
No one gave a shit, I won't get no famous case
I won't get no downtown monument where they paint my face
I won't get no NFL jersey spot that say my name
Oh, that's right, since I'm white, the situation ain't the same
Black lives matter, Asian lives matter, Spanish lives matter
Ain't allowed to say caucasian lives matter, why?
That don't fit the narrative, that would mean equality
Truth in the mainstream media, that's mythology
They're usin my people, your people, good people, poor people
Either we wake up or they gon keep on usin more people
I tried to warn people, supplyin the truth
If the victim was me, y'all wouldn't riot and loot
[Verse 2: Mesus]
This is so exhaustin, way the news talkin
It's like black folks only ones dead in coffins
Black on black ain't a tragedy, huh?
Guess these news cameras ran out of batteries, huh?
Live by the gun, die by the gun
When it happens in the hood, y'all ain't sayin none
But soon as that trigger finger white
Y'all be tearin shit up on the same night, say I ain't right
Say I ain't white, let's say that I'm black
Get pulled over, try to run away, and scrap
Reachin for the strap but he get it first
So, I slug him in the face at the same time that it burst
Now I'm just another reason to riot, a name on a shirt
When the truth is out, just got what I deserved
When you playin dumb games then you winnin dumb prizes
'Less it's whites killin blacks, they don't give a fuck who dies
[Bridge: Mesus]
When you gon realize they just tryin to divide us?
Red, white, and blue is the colors that unite us
Gettin sick and tired of the lootin and the riots
When the truth is, if I was dead then y'all'd be dead silent
It could just sit back and revel in our world where perhaps the musical leaders of the so-called Super Nazis are probably Tom MacDonald and Adam Calhoun, bigtime “US-flag-waving fucks”—white men who not only are audacious enough to deny being racist at all (one of the biggest signs of being a racist nazi), but who even pump into the airwaves the following “divisive barrage of antiblack lyrics.”
[Verse 1: Tom MacDonald]
It's okay to be racist
As long as you hatin on the Caucasians
Teaching White kids that their shades the same as school shooters and rapists
Maybe I ain't trippin cuz the White children have been getting taught that they got White privilege
By the White guys in the high heels who identify as the White women
I'm not proud to be White but I'm fine with it
Guess I'm not allowed to have pride in it
Cause the colonizers and the White bigots
Made White history my business
I ain't never gonna give a damn if you like me
I ain't gonna trip when they stereotype me
I'm a White boy and a White boy like me
Knows that all lives matter, bite me
When I was younger they taught me to never see color
To treat every man as if he was my brother
But now that we're grown up we hate one another
For all of the ways that we struggle and suffer
They coming for blood and we're running for cover
The government wants us divided and dumber
Addicted and drunk in the gutter
So we never wake up and never recover
Call me culture vulture cuz I rap good
I don't pop Xans or smoke backwoods
But they call me a wigger and label me Hitler
And hate like I am wearing a Klan hood
It ain't left or right or Black or White it's good and evil
Elite folks ain't normal people
United we stand and divided we fall
America, we got to get real
You were segregated, that was not fair
You were enslaved, they did not care
But you were never on a plantation
And my generation was not there
That's trauma in your DNA
Causing what we see today
I pray to God you staying strong
Don't wanna see no man in pain
Dear White folks, I'm embarrassed
Some of y'all are such Karens
That prejudice you inherited
Was racism from your parents
Get that poison out your veins
Whites and Blacks are all the same
They want us in our graves
Just let me try to explain
[Chorus]
I swear they want us in a Race War
Dying everyday for
Whose lives matter more
Whoa
I won't be dying in the Race War
Our government is paid for
Cuz our lives matter more
Whoa
[Verse 2: Adam Calhoun]
If you born Black, you lose
Might as well go get that noose
You gonna die before you 25
Get shot over your shoes
You gonna get killed by police
Even when you follow the rules
If you listen to the news
You gon believe all this is true (True)
I ain't feeling no White guilt
They won't riot for me when I'm killed
I guess White lives don't matter
Sad, but that's the way that I feel
I feel like they feel like I don't know what they all call me
Cis White male, bigot, racist, he's a “Nazi”
That's not me, I'm not one of these white liberal commies
Who think Black America needs allies in their Army
Your neighborhood's all gang
You claim you Pro Black but you faking
Guys are dying on the pavement
All your hashtags won't save them
That ain't gangsta
People begging for their life still
I know White people who can't afford to pay their light bill
Who might feel like they the ones who losing their life
When the worst thing you could be is not ashamed to be White
White privilege is a system
They position for division
If you're Black you go to prison
If you're White your life is different
Take some money, race, religions
Sprinkle in some ammunition
And make everyone believe
That the other team is the villain
I ain't Pro Black, I ain't Pro White
I'm Pro American
Every color turns to bones
One day when you bury them
Whites or Blacks are all the same
They want us in our graves
Just let me try to explain
[Bridge]
They want us in a Race War dying in the streets
Should be us against them but it's you against me
Ain't nobody gonna win, everybody gon see
That the color of your skin don't change the color that you bleed
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—with the help of slave movies stoking rage against whites (even at the cost of promoting an inferiority complex among black children, but one that will then be exploited as evidence of white-supremacy’s reign); with the help of pathos-leaden videos to unveil (Buffalo-public-school-style) the widespread brutality against black children (Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Aiyana Stanley-Jones)—one of the most important lessons to drive into our grade-schoolers, so that (a) whites learn early on that their rapacious-oppressive natures are so baked into them that they cannot help but unfairly push others down in some fashion and (b) blacks learn early on that in their crippled state they are owed lifetimes of recompense and coddling by their cripplers (those to whom their enmity is always righteous), is the lesson that not only have blacks been and will continue to be discriminated against in our white supremacist country (such that the only hope for keeping racism in check is to make antiracism too an indelible part of every institution), but—and here are the eye-for-an-eye mantras of vengeance perhaps children will learn to repeat as regularly as the Lord’s Prayer once was (almost as if to promote perpetual antagonism between blacks and whites, or at last to provide some historical context for the constant drum beat of “Black is King”)—“the only right answer to past discrimination is present discrimination” and “the only right answer to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, and keep in mind that discrimination and injustice is the only right answer to discrimination and injustice, the skin of white devils is as disgusting as black skin was once thought to be—indeed, where to be born white is to be born as wicked as blacks were once thought to be: inherently wicked, such that the best hope is to quarantine them off from opportunities to do damage and then set out to undue their damage piece by piece (such as by replacing every “nigger” and “injun” in Huckleberry Finn with “slave” and “indigenous American” and, at least in those schools that have not gone so far as to “worry about the white supremacy intrinsic to math itself,” by replacing the dead-white-male-reminding name “Pythagorean Theorem” with the laborious safeternative “side-length relationship for right triangles”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where virtually no one, white or black, can name even five of the millions of whites who fought against white-supremacist ideology—not just John Brown (who slaughtered white people on his anti-slavery mission and was ultimately executed during his abolitionist rebellion), but the countless unsung heroes:
Benjamin Lay (who penned polemics against slavery);
or Sarah and Angelina Grimké (who ignited fires of abolitionism with their speeches);
or William Lloyd Garrison (who founded an abolitionist newspaper);
or Cassius Clay (who was a Yale abolitionist after whom Muhammad Ali’s father was named);
or James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo (who were murdered by white supremacists while participating in anti-segregation marches);
or Reverend Bruce Klunder (who was crushed to death after lying in front of a bulldozer to protest school segregation);
or Anne Braden (who warred against redlining even to the extent of putting a house in her name for a black couple, which earned her the ignominy of being one of the most reviled people in the mid-twentieth century);
or the countless others who (unlike the majority of others, black and white) had the courage to transcend the paralyzing inertia of their times and act on what they knew was right.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—as if to prepare them for a world of applications (whether for McDonald’s or for college) asking each applicant to “List at least five things you have done to advance the antiracist mission against whiteness and other toxic sites of radically discursive silence”—the age-old ice-breaking topic for the first day of class about what you did over summer vacation is replaced starting from middle-school with the question “What have you done over summer vacation to resist the grip of white supremacy?”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, hammering into young black minds how victimized they are by the white meat always dangled in their faces (almost as if to make their rage grow to righteous extremes of curb-stomping relentlessness), the teacher asks the class “What’s the longest war in history?” and—after shooting down with a mere stare the first answer of the one eager white kid (“Is it the Korean War since no peace treaty was signed?”) and then the second answer (“It must be the Afghan Conflict if you’re looking for continuous fighting”)—she states the right answer with a teary look in every student’s eyes, except the eyes of that one deflated white kid (who has proven “reluctant,” as she wrote in his report card, “to dissociate from or express even the least bit of shame about whiteness”): “The war against black people.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—as if civil war were somehow our secret thanatos wish, or as if there were somehow a good deal of money in nation-splitting division—the same teacher right afterwards says, perhaps sensing incredulity from some of the precocious white students and budding oreo black students, “finally this total war against black people—no means of attack off the table—is being recognized in the larger culture” and then pulls up the trailer for the new film The American Society of Magical Negroes, which includes the following bit of dialogue between two black men—dialogue that (1) stands in flagrant contradiction to the poverty and crime and neighborhood-degradation statistics and (2) would never fly (culturally, or even perhaps legally) if white was swapped with any other race.
“What’s the most dangerous animal on the planet?”
“The shark—.”
“White people, when they feel uncomfortable. White people feeling uncomfortable precedes a lot of bad stuff for us. That’s why we fight white discomfort everyday. Because the happier they are, the safer we are.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, the black-grievance industry being so huge that it goes beyond Disney and into classrooms, it is not uncommon to find middle-school ELA courses throughout the country that engage in all the expected signaling of “antiracism”:
ELA courses titled “Black Oppression in the Wake of Trayvon Martin”;
ELA courses with reading materials chockful of intentional misspellings (“spellings that ensure AAVE-adjacency”);
ELA courses that begin each session with white students trying to hold their breath for eight minutes and forty-six seconds while the teacher reads passages from countless I-can’t-breathe books intending to highlight “Amerikkka’s total war against Black bodies”;
ELA courses that require “video proof of active participation” in at least one local protest for black justice by the end of the year (active since, according to one of many false dichotomies sanctioned as intellectually permissible “given how high the stakes are for black bodies,” (1) you are racist if you are not antiracist and (2) you are not antiracist if you are not actively pursuing antiracist goals);
ELA courses that require a “privilege walk” after each major exam, a ritual where students step forward or backward based on prompts related to racial advantages or disadvantages, “so that everyone develops an informed compassion for BIPOC peers who did not score as high”;
ELA courses that have white students apologize to black students after giving “an oral report demonstrating deep reflection on the ways they have participated in antiblack violence”;
ELA courses that end the final class with a so-called “die-in,” a ritual that involves the students dropping to the floor (as if tazed or shot or choked or pepper sprayed or dog attacked or Billy-clubbed or knee-pinned), while the teacher reads through a litany of black victims of white brutality;
ELA courses that find any skepticism toward antiracist theses (in particular, the thesis that blacks remain the helpless victims of a flourishing white supremacy) to be as disgusting and harmful as natural selection once was across the South not too long back;
ELA courses that only assign learning materials vetted by sensitivity readers to “ensure that the characters and settings are diverse,” and “that the cover art is inclusive,” and “that the current horrors of systemic racism are not underplayed,” and “that the dialogue is authentic and filled with inclusive language (“cuz,” “finna,” “boutta,” “lemme”), and “that nonwhite stories are centered,” and “that nonwhite characters are not judged by white standards of beauty or by white norms of intellect and conduct”;
ELA courses where Gandalf the White is changed to Gandalf the Black “to problematize the stereotype that white means pure and good”—a move perfectly sensible given that preschoolers now sing “Bah bah king sheep, have you any wool?”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, zooming in on the fractals of the antiracist industry a bit, it is not uncommon to find ELA courses mandating that its sixth-graders read Lowery’s “They Can't Kill Us All” in tandem with the award-winning YA novel Star-Spangled Boys, a novel that—for “antiracist authenticity and respect”—has a white author only for the white characters and a black author for any other characters and whose cringeworthy back matter reads as follows.
“Rasheed is absent again today.” That’s the ominous sidewalk graffiti that started it all. . . . Well, no, actually, what started it all was a white lady in a hurry (and pulling rank). She bumped into Rasheed at the bodega, causing him to drop his bag of chips. It didn’t matter what Rasheed said next—that it was an accident, that he wasn’t stealing, that he was just finna get a snack before class.
No, it didn’t matter. He was a Black kid. So he must’ve been stealing. He was a Black kid. So he must’ve been trying to assault that white woman. He was a Black kid—a King, a threat. So he must’ve deserved to get his head pounded into unforgiving concrete by police fists of white power: his pleadings seen as nothing more than sass and defiance, his attempts to leave the bodega seen as nothing more than thuggish resistance, his automatic flinching from every crushing head punch seen as nothing more than subhuman refusal to stay still—his Blackness seen, ultimately, as nothing more than hypercriminality.
Rasheed already knew that fatal equation. Each day on the news he witnessed Black Kings falsely accused, assaulted, and executed in broad daylight by white cops. His un-American race, he knew well before the incident, would always discolor his all-American goodness: his focus on art, his dedication to becoming a military officer, his staying away from crime and drugs. The incident, then, was no surprise to him, really. All he could do, as he paid the pavement-pummeling price for his skin, was whisper the one desperate thought of countless fallen kings: “Please don’t kill me!”
Hunter, a white boy, saw the whole thing unfold that terrible afternoon. He saw his best friend’s older brother beating the daylights out of his classmate: Rasheed, the ROTC kid with mad art skills. At first Hunter doesn’t tell a soul. He’s not even sure he understands what happened. His whiteness tells him one thing. His eyes and memory and heart tell him another. But when the school—and the nation—starts to divide on what went down, blame spreads like wildfire fed by ugly words like “racism” and “police brutality” and “white supremacy.” However much he might want to forget the whole ordeal, Hunter’s part of history. He just has to figure out what side of history that will be. Bystander or ally? Complicity or justice?"
Hunter can never understand what it is to be terrorized each day as a Black King or a Black Queen. But will he stand? Will he stand against the unspeakable truth, the truth conveniently denied by the incessant gaslighting of whiteness: that racism has only grown stronger after the civil rights movement? Will he realize—and confess—to his own white privilege: the privilege to be given the benefit of the doubt as a good person, the privilege not to have to battle constant aggressions and genocidal hate? Will he take the further step beyond awareness and actually break the code of whiteness, even though doing so could cost him his basketball scholarship and his friendships and even his life?
Will he become an effective ally, someone who realizes that his disdain for whiteness does not all by itself absolve him from actively breaking its stranglehold? Will he oppose his own racist teacher? Will he call out the antiblackness implicated in her asking students—only one day after the beatdown—how much sense it makes for them to interrupt the study session with the chant “Fuck the police” when, in her very own insensitive words of invalidation, “(1) we don’t know the full story yet, (2) a bad apple doesn’t mean the whole barrel’s rotten, (3) there are more effective venues for this chant anyway.” Will he call out his own racist basketball coach for the violent assimilationism of his pre-game speech (“On this court we’re all one, all Falcons!”), a supposed “pep talk” commanding a multicultural collection of athletes in a world where white is right to leave their differences at the door—in effect, to leave the uniqueness of their souls at the door—for the sake of some gray-goo unity (the team, the Falcons) concocted by white abstraction. Does he have the intellectual and moral strength to restrain the voracious appetites of his whiteness, condemning it and demanding its abolition while still staying in his lane? Does he have the fortitude to speak out against this pathological disease infecting his people, his own mother?
There’s a future at stake, a future where someone will not have to keep their mouth shut just because they are Black; a future where Black Kings and Queens will not have to obey Eurocentric standards of language and fashion and behavior and thinking to stand a better chance of not being abused and beaten by whites; a future where no Black student will have to be absent for days on end because of the brutalities of whiteness. Rasheed and Hunter—one Black, one white (both American)—have to risk everything to make the indelible status quo less brutal.
Cuz that’s how it can end.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, in yet another day preparing them for “a menacing world of white devilry,” middle-school children with bowdlerized Twain on their desks are shown what is packaged as “a heartfelt sit down of racial reckoning”: a spliced montage of eye-rolling hipster-like black people in a cyclorama studio of slate austerity (a lime wingback chair next to a side table on which a Starbucks cup sits, logo centered), each taking turns answering the loaded question (“What, if anything, are white people superior at?”) posed by the veteran broadcast journalist who vows to “shut my white mouth of privilege and just listen”—their responses (some snickering, some seething, some sighing) amounting to a rebarbative collage of normalized bigotry that would ignite global outrage if directed at any other race.
“They’re real good at violence. And yet all they like to talk about is ‘black-on-black violence.’ Don’t they see that black-on-black violence is the scream of a people unheard by Amerikkka? (And yes, I’m using the triple ‘k’!) Fuck outta here.”
“Ahahaha. They good at touching me like this some damn petting zoo!”
“It’s 2021, one of the hottest years on record and one of the worst for black people. Psh. That should tell you about what they good at: poisoning and killing. But I’ll say this. After all them thousands of years running shit they stay good at thinking their emotional wellbeing matters just as much as ours!”
“You know—I can’t even. Tsk. White people good at setting us up to fail. No offense, but that’s real talk. They do it with all them damn school tests. (You know the SAT was made to show white people are the smartest?) Even worse, they even do it with the laws. I’m not talking cops. I’m talking the actual laws. White people define—they define—what crime is, what counts as criminal conduct. And then no wonder it turns out that black people commit so much crime! Hmm. If we had definitions that weren’t antiblack, if we had definitions that didn’t criminalize our culture—hmm. I mean, my Daddy and my uncles, like everyone’s daddies and uncles, played cee-lo for money on the corner. That’s illegal—still illegal. I remember they would sometimes play with loosies. That’s a double crime cuz it’s illegal to sell loosies. That was why they murdered Eric Garner: for selling some damn cigarettes. But that’s what our people do! We sell loosies. We play cee-lo. The law itself is antiblack. It really be making you think some black genocide shit going down! White people be saying it ain’t genocide. But make it make sense! If we just change the laws to be sensitive to black culture, that would solve our mass incarceration problem right there. Prisons would be filled with Italians if we outlawed talking with hands, right? That’s what I’m talking here. We a passionate people too. Of course there’s gonna be fights and all that. (Ya’ll got a bitch going here.) And just like we need laws that don’t just criminalize being black, we need black jury members when we being judged. How they gonna know our situation if they ain’t black? How they gonna be peers? A peer is a person from a similar background and experience (economic, geographic, racial). White people can’t understand the black mindset and way of thinking. Black people literally reason differently. White people like to make for everyone what ain’t for everyone. And it ain’t just fair skin and straight hair and all them white standards of beauty. Reasoning, thinking—they try to say is the same for all. And now we come full circle. We come back to them damn SATs and we come back to the law. Cuz imagine if we criminalized acting like what is reason for one group is reason for all. Then guess what we could say? ‘White people are the criminal people.’ We could predict, right from when they pasty asses are born (just like they do us), that they’re ‘likely to engage in criminal activity’ and be ‘repeat offenders’ and all that mess.”
“Expecting us to participate in their own white supremacy. These the same people who expect women to come right back to work after they have a baby. But just like women and men ain’t the same, black and white ain’t the same. And so no, Imma be getting my maternity leave and Imma be at least fifteen minutes late to that meeting, feel me?”
“They good at misunderstanding us. When we cheered for OJ they thought we were cheering for OJ himself. We wasn’t cheering for that fool! We knew he did it! (Shoot, white woman make anyone go crazy.) No, we were celebrating the brothers and sisters that lost their lives to white power throughout history, maimed and executed by the so-called ‘law.’ We were celebrating the glimmer of hope that even black people might be found innocent in a white criminal justice system. Now with all the recent shit in the news we know different.”
“Testing us. Mmm-hmm. And no, I don’t just mean our patience. I mean literally subjecting innocent black children to all them standardized tests. The SATs were made by eugenicists to prove blacks are inferior. See, we forget that. People need to open their eyes. Trace the roots. If the roots are rotten, the fruit is rotten. Innocence should be protected at all costs. Once it’s gone it can never be restored. I’ll be damned if my black babies ever get tested. Like literally, our black babies get more scrutiny from their teachers. That leads to worse performance. The trend continues if they get a job. Bosses stay on the back of black people. Nah, my babies ain’t never gonna be tested!”
“Creating racism, of course.”
“Being racist. They created it.”
“They’re good at calling us ‘hypocrites’ whenever we try to enjoy some time in the sun for once—whenever we demand black-only spaces, or god forbid try to stop white people from participating in certain activities that we like to enjoy. Some of them try to be real slick with it. They say we’ve adopted the supremacist mindset. No Mr. White Man. It’s called ‘payback.’ How can it be that we’re creating a form of racism that benefits us, as so many of them and their house negros like to say, when you can’t be racist if you don’t have power? I mean get out from your rusty-ass redneck trailers. Everyone knows the formula now: racism equals prejudice plus power. I can be prejudiced against whites—and I damn sure am! But I can never be racist against them. I can perpetuate antiwhite stereotypes. I can hate all of them just for being white. I can kill white babies just for being white. I can do all these things—but none of it would make me racist!”
“White people hurt everybody. That’s what they are superior at. Yes, they hurt their very own kind, and in the most demonic ways. Now I see—I am a fifth-grade teacher—these little ten-year-old boys are being told for the first time, by me, that they had their chance in the sun. I have to be the one to tell them that they have to wait last to get a snack, that they have to go to the back of the bus on a field trip, that they cannot stand in the way of black students trying to see the whales. Of course, kids like that are going to feel outraged. But his parents should have told him, from way early on, that he has no damn right to feel outraged. They should have laid out this history. But they don’t. And you know what? The cycle will just continue. They will grow up to hurt their kids just like they were hurt.”
“Thinking they can judge black women. Look. Our bodies were used for so long as chattel that it never makes sense for any white person (especially a man) ever to call a black woman a ‘whore’ or make a value judgment against her selling her body. Slavery has made her immune. It has given her a pass. How could we ever tolerate the same people that pimped us out then trying to put us down as ‘whores’? Make it make sense. It’s the ultimate mind game. People think of the whip when they think of whitey. We can’t forget his mind games, though! The devil attacks the psychology most of all.”
“Deadass? Hahaha. They good at talking to me like they redeemable. They ain’t. Why you think we call they no-purpose-flour asses ‘chalk children’? Read between the lines. It ain’t just about the color. Feel me?”
“They good at missing the obvious. Like who gone steal a whole ATM unless you out here desperate? Psh. White supremacy has black folk desperate. Let me tell you!”
“White people excel at manipulating black minds in order to maintain their hegemony. They like to manipulate us into thinking that legal emancipation of slaves completed the emancipation. What they like to hide from us (if not also from themselves) is that there was more to slavery than just the legal aspect—you know, the legal aspect that enabled whitey to go into court and say “I own this nigger here’s labor.” An entire symbolic structure of domination and degradation came along with it. That symbolic structure doesn’t go away simply by outlawing slavery. Whitey’ll say that so much has happened in the interim, now that we’re in 2021. But that’s manipulation. We have yet even to make a dent in that symbolic structure. The white-supremacist attitude about the place and purpose of black people has grown stronger than ever. That is precisely what we would expect given the obvious increase in black oppression. Over the entire history of slavery in the US, there were likely not much more than 5 million slaves. And yet the number of black people incarcerated starting from after emancipation until now is well over 10 million, about 80 percent of those incarcerations happening from the late 70s until now.”
“Whites are good at stealing black pain, pain they created. And then they got the nerve to talk all that nerdy mess about ‘We’re only trying to appreciate the human cultures in all their riches.’—Nah, stealin the riches!”
“Don’t let me start. They’re good at being out-of-their-mind psychopaths and pathological liars. Think about it. They call everything they steal a ‘discovery’: lands, yoga, music, hairstyles. And you can’t even talk with them. They center themselves in every narrative. Why can’t they just listen and learn. I mean I seriously wonder that. Even all these ‘allies’ out here—they can never just shut up.”
“They like to say convenient things, things convenient for them. ‘Let’s stop paying attention to race.’ ‘Let’s stop saying that blacks can only win if whites lose.’ ‘Let’s stop thinking of black people as nothing more than victims of oppression.’ ‘Let’s stop painting blacks as so helpless that the only way they can have a voice is to suppress the voices of privilege.’ White folks just itchin for a way to stop paying us our due! We’re owed. We’re owed and they have the nerve to be outraged when we take some TVs or jewelry or some iPhones—all covered by insurance anyways. Please. How can it be looting when it’s reparations? Please make it make sense.”
“Doing the sneakiest things to make blacks feel inferior. I mean, why they have to make the small piano keys black?”
“White men are superior at being school shooters and serial killers. Tell me I’m lying.”
“Psh. Genocide.”
“They good at bringing God into it. They brought God into it to oppress us: ‘God says the holiest are those who serve.’ Tsk. Convenient. Now they go and bring God into it to keep us from rising, from taking our rightful place: ‘God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men but of white men too.’ If there really was a God, why would he be interested in the freedom of people already free—people with too much freedom?”
“This question has me dead. But straight up: stealing people’s lives just because they feel like it.”
“They stubborn. Like I swear all white people be Tauruses. Like after all they done put us through all that mess, they ain’t tryna accept no so sort of instruction manual on how to talk to us. Like we kings and queens. There be rules!”
“Diminishing our pain. Now the big thing is to talk about “white slavery”—the Irish slave trade and all that. We can’t even have our one unique atrocity? I don’t wanna be mean but shoot, given what we suffered, I can be. I don’t care nothin bout all these Irish slaves. Was they chattel like me? No. They was just prisoners or servants for a time. And even if they really was true slaves, they privileged now, though—ain’t they? We sure the hell ain’t!”
“Mocking our pain. The oppressor gets pleasure out of mocking our pain. That’s why I tell my class ‘salutations’ instead of ‘good morning.’ The oppressor came up with that phrase as a way to poke fun at black people who were crying. Seeing a group of us in tears after one of our own was lynched, the oppressor would ask “Did you have a good mourning’ (with the ‘u’ in there). They just dropped the ‘u’ so we’d forget.”
“Insecurity.”
“Defensiveness, talking BS like ‘Do the descendants of colonial blacks who owned slaves need to pay reparations?’ It’s all a game to them. They are menaces. Ta-Nehisi Coates put it best. They could be rescuing me and my damn kids from a fire and still I would call them menaces to their damn tomato faces! Excuse me. But you don’t know my pain.”
“Whites are really good at blaming others and they seem to enjoy traumatizing black bodies.”
“They are superior at being dicks (little dicks). I can’t even with them, smelling like wet dog and shit.”
“Playing the victim. Oh, your store got robbed? Try slavery.”
“Stealing our pain. Tuh. I don’t give one flying fuck. I am a black woman tormented each and every goddamn day, so I do not care how many millions of Europeans were the slaves of Muslims. It is completely insensitive to tell me about this Barbaric or Barbary or whatever slave trade when I am sitting right in front of you still basically chattel—your chattel—in this damn country!
“I don’t know what they are good at, but I hate when they bring up how ‘healthy’ black families were a hundred years ago and how much black-on-black crime has increased and how much more safe black people were. It’s like they want us to go back into segregation times. And whitey ain’t stupid. He gives us all the white-supremacist guns until we might even beg to go back.”
“Ooh don’t get me start-ted. Whitey real real good at gaslighting. Like when he says that racism is a human invention, not a white invention. Or when he tries to tell black people there are things to be grateful for in the US (of all places). Receipts, Mr. White man. Receipts.”
“Intellectualizing oppression, making it seem like it’s not really the oppression it is.”
“Taking what’s not theirs and will never be theirs.”
“Not trusting black women. Black women are always to be believed.”
“Whites are the best at cultural appropriation. They steal practices and styles born of black experiences they could never understand. Then what do they do? They say it’s just ‘appreciation.’ They say its just ‘appreciation’ even as they go and make money off it like Elvis.”
“They are good at convincing us that there is such a thing as property, which is—when you really think about it—as much a white-supremacist notion as three meals a day and transphobia. We didn’t know no property in Africa.”
“Psh. White folks are good at gentrification.”
“Well, they definitely ain’t good at cooking or staying in their lane, I can tell you that.”
“Absorbing the cultural practices of those they torture and enslave, and then making everyone believe they invented those practices.”
“Destruction of land and people.”
“They good at blaming black people for what’s really the fault of white oppression and white guns and white drugs. Then they stand there with their hands out talking all this insensitive mess about ‘If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. If you can’t crawl, just keep moving.’ I get how this could sound good. But look just a bit below the surface to see the toxicity of this white logic. It invalidates the experience of black people. It underestimates just how bad the situation is for black people. That’s why I call it “insensitive”—insensitive denial: textbook white fragility.”
“Wearing dreadlocks and then talking bout ‘Vikings.’ White boy, please!”
“Whites are manipulators. That’s what they’re superior at.”
“White fragility: whites are very good at white fragility.”
“Lying and withholding information.”
“Controlling Mother Earth whether by building dams and big cities and lawns, or by turning melanated bodies into their slaves. White people are control freaks, period. That means they don’t like change. They can’t handle the changes in acceptable language. No, white boy—it ain’t ‘women,’ it’s ‘non-men’ or ‘people with vaginas.’ It ain’t ‘breastfeeding,’ it’s ‘chestfeeding.’ They like to go back. It’s in that red hat: “Make America Great Again.” Face it, white boy: obesity is beautiful and healthy. Get with it or die off, fragile fucks.”
“Saying they discovered things already there. Mmm-hmm. ‘No Mr. White Man, indigenous peoples already done knew about that herb.’”
“Omg yes, white people be saying they made all these ‘discoveries’ (like the ‘New World’) and then they get all small-dick defensive about it when we call they asses out, talkin bout ‘Haven’t you ever said you discovered a new hiking trail?’ ‘No, hun. You ain’t never gonna find my black ass hikin no woods.’”
“Whites are the best at being murderers and rapists. Psh. And they continue to murder and rape black bodies just by failing to fess up to their demonic traits.”
“Whites are good at thinking that it’s actually a good thing to be colorblind. But to try to treat black people without regard to their race is racist. Whites just don’t see that. You can’t treat me just as a person. You have to treat me as a black person because as a black person—a victim—I am fundamentally owed! You see, it’s awfully convenient for whitey to try and go treat everyone equally now. It’s his sneaky way to avoid paying up. But oh he’s gonna pay up—him and his children. Mark my words.”
“Whites are good at not seeing the bigger picture. Anyone with a heart feels bad about taking away opportunities and shutting down white children just because they white. But in the grand scheme it’s for the best. Let black people hold the reins for a bit. It's our time. Let us, our children, speak first and get medical care first and get the jobs and the loans. It’s called ‘taking turns.’”
It could just sit back and watch our world where, hammering home the narrative of whites as the unrelenting perpetuators of systemic racism, the post-video assignment is for students to surveil their white friends and family—or, as it says on her handout, “Arm yourself with a notebook and observe just how painfully true the insightful words in the video are,” with “extra credit for catching whites behaving in problematic ways not called out by these beautiful Kings and Queens”:
exhibiting defensiveness when it comes to their privileged and terrorizing natures (one of the biggest signs of just how entrenched their whiteness is);
displaying insensitivity to black styles of knowing;
raising an eyebrow at black names (LaQuanquella, Demarius, Royalty) or black speak (“finna clap back at that thirsty hoe, hundo P”) or black practices (twerking), instead of recognizing that these all have rich histories and a place in pro-black schools and offices and homes;
feeling butthurt when BIPOCs make jokes about white people (their corny speech, their doofy behavior, their wrinkled and cracked skin, and so on);
invalidating the tapestry of black lived experience;
talking over black folk, silencing their voices, even though they had to endure kidnapping and 400 years of enslavement, rape and medical experimentation, lynchings and forced sterilization, biased media and cultural mockery, unaddressed trauma and voter suppression;
using language and tones that activate wounds in the black psyche;
expressing nostalgia for the “good old days" even though those “good old days” were filled with racial injustice;
judging black bodies as pretty or ugly or any other way that makes black folk feel like they are back on the auction block;
disagreeing with the overdue removal of the traumatic name “George Washington” from our school;
making jokes about black people, and then resorting to fragility phrases like “just kidding" when called out for being racially insensitive;
criticizing the hyperviolence and hypersexuality in mainstream black culture;
parading assault-provoking emblems of hate speech, like Blue Lives Matter flags or Trump hats;
erasing black existence, even in small ways like referring to the peach crayon as “flesh-toned.”
It could just sit back and watch our work where, after a student asks the teacher what the person in the video meant by saying that white people are “gaslighters,” the teacher explains as follows.
Gaslighting is when you make someone doubt what they know to be true. Whites love to make black people doubt many things, the main one being that this really is a white supremacist country. They’ll deny they are racist even while—and in the same breath, mind you—they oppose certain antiracist policies as “going too far” or “being unfair” or whatever. Even a kindergartner knows that to oppose antiracism is the very definition of racism! But the way whites say it, the white logic they wrap it in, makes many people think it makes sense even though it makes absolutely no sense. Typical white manipulation. That’s what it is.
Let me give one more example. It was something we have already seen. Whites like to dismiss cops always slaughtering blacks as what they call “multifactorial”—an old Nazi term meaning that the cause is “complicated.” In reality, the cause is simple: white supremacy. It’s typical white evasion. They don’t want to face it—no, not so much because it causes them shame, but simply because it is their way to terrorize black people with lies.
Does this mean we should be excessively cruel to our white peers? No. Think of a lion going after a gazelle. In many cases they cannot help it—although if you’ve ever been to a zoo, you know there’s hope for them to be tamed or at least prevented from acting upon their instincts. And thank God. If whiteness could not be diluted or redirected there just wouldn’t be any hope.
It could just sit back and watch our work where, after a student asks the teacher what the person in the video meant by saying that white people are “good at white fragility,” the teacher explains as follows.
White fragility refers to the defensive reactions—the crumbling, the unraveling, the meltdown—that whites typically exhibit when confronted with the truth about their oppressive nature. Whenever the spotlight of truth shines down on their privilege, or whenever they’re asked by black folk to check that privilege, they fall apart: delicate glass ornaments shattering with the slightest touch.
I’ll give you a perfect example. Ever wondered why Mrs. Tarquinno no longer teaches here? The simple answer is that she was asked to stop talking over black folk—she was asked politely, and yet she refused to apologize or take part in the necessary training to show she has the ability to participate in a diverse community of students and colleagues. She quit instead of budging. That is white fragility. When called out on her white privilege, she claimed that Glenmoore was “a racially hostile workplace” and that it was guilty of “reverse racism.” The problem is, it is impossible for a workplace to be racially hostile toward whites. The white collective has always held the power and continues to hold the power. There is no such thing as reverse racism. And she knows that, but she continued to lie. She demanded—using white tears to get people to comfort her like she was some Scarlett O’Hara—that we all, including black folk, stop reducing her to the ‘abstract color category of whiteness’ and stop insisting that her whiteness means she’s an oppressor. That, my dear student, is white fragility. She just couldn’t take the truth. And it doesn’t stop there. Remember when we watched that video of a Karen calling the cops on a black man, weaponizing the law to her ends? Well, Mrs. Tarquinno did just like that. She filed a lawsuit against Glenmoore. That is white fragility.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where the high school teacher, Mx. Moorez (the “z” added as a way to distance zimself from whiteness), gives the following response to a brave parent who wonders how, on the one hand, she can assign rap lyrics full of racism and sexism and ableism as reading material but, on the other hand, refuses to teach Shakespeare on grounds of it sowing seeds of bigotry in impressionable minds.
The rap lyrics I assign, yes, can be tough at times. I don’t deny that they harbor a rawness, a visceral honesty, reflecting deep pain. But that pain needs to be heard if we really are going to take our antiracist agenda seriously (instead of just going through the performative motions like so many other schools).
And I mean no offense, but I must inform you: technically speaking, black lyrics cannot be toxic in the ways you mentioned. The beautiful Black men and women making that music are oppressed. Black folk, for that reason, lack the power to perpetuate racism (a white creation). On the other hand, the works of Shakespeare and Homer and their ilk, works with antiblack racism implicated in their creation, are classics of a white-supremacist culture that continues to this day to holds the reins of power.
Besides, there is already an undue elevation of these white authors to the exclusion of diverse voices. That reason alone justifies my pedagogical approach. It’s crucial to give diverse and inclusive voices a chance.
How about this? How about we think of replacing Mark Twain and Harper Lee with Ibram X. Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates as no more radical than replacing our school statue of Jefferson with George Floyd? That was a noble move, and one that pretty much all parents were on board with. It’s the same here. Just think of it like that. It’s about representation, you see. It’s about dismantling white supremacy!
It could just sit back and revel in our world where by high school our souls nightly repeat the dogmatic catechisms of antiracism even if we struggle to recite them out on the spot for the Sunday-school nuns—so often white—of the religion.
Experiencing hardship conveys a crucial authority, and black people—who belong to a class of oppression even lower than Jews—have had it the hardest and will continue to have it the hardest (which is why they get to speak first in class and which is why their words should always be believed and which is why it makes sense when they loot stores and which is why it is moral for them to assert even their arbitrary will over whites and which is why antiblackness is the most reprehensible out of all the punching-down attitudes).
Whiteness is an illness that is highly contagious (which is why not just white people, but even black people like Erec Smith of the CATO Institute, can be guilty of antiblackness).
Prison is never the answer for black people because not only do black criminals respond better to a good talking down to by a wise elder (an auntie, a big mama, a preacher), prisons have been used too long as loophole by which to continue the maiming and torturing of black bodies during the heydays of slavery.
Black people need black-only spaces (classes, dorms, film showings, graduation ceremonies, university rec centers and libraries) where they have a better chance at being able to breathe for a moment—breathe black pheromones, breathe black epistemology, breathe black values, breathe black spirituality—before the chokehold of whiteness tightens once again (at the malls and supermarkets and movie theaters and amusement parks and fitness centers and libraries and especially the universities).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, whites being smart enough to get the cultural hint that they are bad for how they were born, white suicide—especially white-male suicide—is on the rise, just like the number of entries on Quora and Reddit asking the following sorts of questions, questions expected given the relentless grooming of the race-baiting industry.
“Should I feel bad for being white even though I haven't done anything wrong or racist?”
“I’m white and I don't feel special or that I’m worth anything due to my race. Is this feeling normal?”
“How do I stop hating myself for being white? It’s like everything points me to kill myself. Girls don’t like white men. It’s hard to get a job. Everyone makes fun of me for being white. And I just hate what I see in the mirror. It’s bad enough, really, that I will take any drug even though I hate drugs. Please help.”
“I feel inferior because of my race. I hate being white. I feel like a piece of shit for living on land that our ancestors stole for us, even though I have never hated people of color. Is this normal? Will I grow out of it? My parents and grandparents are fine, but I feel I’ll never be okay in my skin.”
“How do I avoid depression and suicidal ideation when I feel terrible for being white?”
“I want to have kids. I deeply do. But I don’t what to bring more white people into the world. My husband is white. What do I do?”
“In my heart I’m sickened by my skin. The mockery has been too much. It’s in the news and the music and the movies. But in my head I am sickened by having to demonstrate in my jobs and even my friend groups a ‘commitment against whiteness.’ I think it is mean and racist. And yet I can’t say anything like that outside of anonymity or else I’ll have no future. And remember: I do hate my skin. The hatred is internalized. So how do I get out of this bind alive? Serious responses only.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, despite blacks becoming overrepresented in more and more sectors, countless job rejections start with the chilling refrain captured in essence by the following.
We are no longer pursuing your candidacy. It has come to our attention that you are nondiverse. We know this is not the news you wanted, but we take seriously the ethical imperative to redress past discrimination and to dampen the ever-growing trauma of discrimination against black people. You are perfect for this job. A person of your optics, in that case, should have no trouble at another company. Thank you for your time.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, in perfect alignment with the prevailing attitude of praising and blaming people for things beyond personal control, one of the most stinging insults is to have “small-dick energy”—a condition that (much like the closely-correlated condition of whiteness) transcends racial boundaries, but where everyone understands (if only just below the threshold of consciousness) is another way of saying nonblack-dick energy (which explains, of course, why in the porn world, filling more and more with taunts like “Bet your girlfriend never moaned like this on your puny white dick,” a woman being “blacked” is a woman being dicked by a monster cock).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, while it is normalized and encouraged (playground-bully style) for everyone to poke fun at “whitey” even from a place of malice and to ethnic-cleansing degrees (while simultaneously venerating, of course, all the varieties of non-whitey), it is unacceptable—on pain of mob outcry resulting in doxing and unemployability—for whites (“land and people stealers,” “land and people rapists”) ever to poke fun at blacks even from a place of joking love.
“Mahfuckah, you so black I bet you don’t even have a father figure!”
“What’s the worst three years of a black child’s life? First grade!”
“What do you call a white guy with a big dick? Michael Jackson!”
“What’s the difference between a boomerang and a black father? A boomerang comes back!”
“Why can blacks be racist but not whites? Because racism is a violent crime and violent crimes are a black thing!”
“What time of year can whites cook better food than blacks? Father’s Day!”
“Why don’t black people go on cruises? Because they already been fooled by that once!”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, instead of striving for a level playing field on which all individuals get judged by equal standards, the goal is eradication of all disparity—enforced equality of outcome—by means of putting down a thumb hard on the scale in favor of blacks during hiring and admission for various programs, which kills two birds with one stone: riling up racial ill feeling in whites (enough perhaps to bellow the embers of antiblack sentiment into a fire) and coddling blacks (enough perhaps to decimate their resilience and drive).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, against a constant bass-bumping backdrop of niggative lyrics (“Don't be speakin on me if you owe a nigga / I'll catch him in traffic and ho the nigga”), whites—perhaps gaslit to think there is no such thing as the use-mention distinction altogether or at least that every case of mentioning is a case of using (indeed, lobbing)—are bullied away not only from using but from mentioning and even quoting the word “nigger,” are removed from jobs and colleges for singing along to rap lyrics or for quoting the raw words even of thoroughbred antiracists (real antiracists) like Mark Twain and Ralph Ellison.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, after the otherwise “woke” professor innocuously quotes a line from a popular black 90s movie (’Mo Money), an outspoken student—a flamboyant white whose Amazon care-bear t-shirt features a nazi sign behind a red censorship slash and whose bookbag has a patch reeking of his cringey desire for the social capital of black-female friends (“Nasty Bitches ❤ BLM”)—reports to the department dean that (“as an ally”) he has been “harmed and activated by the insensitive appropriations of a professor whose whiteness already grants him too much power,” a reporting that results neither in the equally-pasty dean telling the student (seated on the leather fainting couch with arms crossed and voice shaking and eyes averted in nervous suspicion given all the family photos of whiteness) that it is downright illiberal to demand that professors of specific optics be restricted from quoting certain films nor in the dean at least encouraging the student to voice his feelings to the professor himself (in what might have become a truly bridge-building conversation); a reporting that results, instead, in the dean’s insistence (“on behalf of vulnerable populations especially”) that the student head straightaway to the grievance office (an office that already purged two students from that very class for citing “harmful statistics”)—the dean, “an ally too” (like the rest of the administration), concerned about protecting the university’s antiracist branding even to the extent of torching the most cherished values of higher education: free expression and diversity of thought.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—aside from all the housing and feeding and clothing during slavery (insensitive as that is to say) and aside from the nonstop apologies and aggressive affirmative-action policies and healthcare initiatives and community development grants and minority-business programs and HBCU funding and housing vouchers and food assistance and scholarships and federal contracting to black companies)—monetary reparations (forty acres and a mule in today’s value, and with enough Jim-Crow interest to get it up to the trillion-dollar scale of social security) seem on the verge of being given out—no, not to experts who will allocate funds toward developing in blacks the personal and intellectual attributes crucial for success and who will perhaps also distribute funds toward lifting every disadvantaged person (regardless of race) out of their insecure situation (since that will improve society as a whole and thereby blacks in particular), but instead directly to individual black people (yes, even to Oprah and even to descendants of those thousands of free blacks who themselves owned thousands of black slaves, and yet neither to descendants of wage laborers in the Irish slums of Boston at the end of the nineteenth century nor to the Appalachian whites of today), which would kill two birds with one stone.
(1) Blacks would likely remain trapped in the same mentality, would likely keep up the same attitudes and behaviors behind their overrepresentation in violent crime and underdevelopment in academics, such that in the future—where no real improvement in the developmental condition of black people will have been made by the mere transfer of wealth, where everyone will still think the same way about the difference between Lamont and Stewart—blacks can justifiably demand future reparations with as much urgency as before (no reparations ever being enough).
(2) Whites—especially the most needy of the untouchable class, and especially especially those in that class as a result of a cancelation agenda in the name of antiracism—would likely grow in resent (since those who merely resemble those who were mistreated in the distant past would be siphoning wealth, so at least it seems, from those who merely resemble those who mistreated people in the distant past).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, in all cases of one group performing better than another group in a certain area, it is an indictment of the injustice either of that area itself or of the better-performing group (unless that group is nonwhite)—the exception being, of course, those areas (like basketball and rap) where blacks perform better (since, after all, blacks are an exceptional case, having suffered centuries of the cruelest abuse at the hand of a horror the likes of which there can be no greater: antiblack racism).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where we must read every interaction through the lens of blacks being dominated by whites, even innocuous interactions (and often with the result of placing whites into double binds):
a white person interrupting a black person out of excitement (since that activates a silencing history, as well as the intergeneration trauma of that history, in which black folk were repeatedly barred from speaking);
a white person mispronouncing a black name like TyQuantavia or Quavondric (since that activates a name-erasing history, as well as the intergeneration trauma of that history, in which black folk were called whatever the white master deemed fit);
a white person not mispronouncing a black name like TyQuantavia or Quavondric (since that activates a ridiculing history, as well as the intergeneration trauma of that history, in which black folk were mocked for the unique names they came up with as a form of resistance to the practice of taking on their owner’s names);
a white person complimenting a black person on their hairstyle (since that activates an exoticizing history, as well as the intergeneration trauma of that history, in which black folk were judged on auction blocks primarily for their physical attributes);
a white person not complimenting a black person on their hairstyle (since that activates a white-is-right history, as well as the intergeneration trauma of that history, in which the beauty and cultural significance of black hairstyles were systematically overlooked or devalued);
a white person asking a black person for help with carrying an object (since that activates an enslaving history, as well as the intergeneration trauma of that history, in which black folk were expected to give their free labor to whites);
a white person not asking a black person for help with carrying an object (since that activates a mistrustful history, as well as the intergeneration trauma of that history, in which black folk were deemed neither capable nor trustworthy enough to assist white people);
a white person asking a black person if they need help carrying an object (since that activates a dependency history, as well as the intergeneration trauma of that history, in which black folk were considered unable to do for themselves);
a white person not asking a black person if they need help carrying an object (since that activates a neglecting history, as well as the intergeneration trauma of that history, where the struggles and burdens of black folk were ignored as if they were no more than animals);
a white person laughing at a joke made by a black person (since that activates a performative history, as well as the intergeneration trauma of that history, in which black folk were forced to entertain whites as minstrels and jesters cheesing with Satchmo grins);
a white person not laughing at a joke made by a black person (since that activates an exclusionary history, as well as the intergeneration trauma of that history, in which black humor was marginalized as “for the jungle” and deemed unworthy of acknowledgment in proper society);
a white person offering a black person even solicited advice (since that activates a patronizing history, as well as the intergeneration trauma of that history, in which black folk were treated as intellectually inferior and in need of guidance by the supposedly superior wisdom of whites);
a white person not offering a black person advice (since that activates a withholding history, as well as the intergenerational trauma of that history, in which black folk’s access to knowledge and resources was deliberately restricted);
a white person telling a black person “good morning” (since that activates a mocking history, as well as the intergeneration trauma of that history, in which black folk were asked “Did you have a good mourning?” so as to make fun of their tears over the beating or murder of a loved one);
a white person laughing too loudly near a black person (since this activates a belittling history, as well as the intergenerational trauma of that history, where black folk's legitimate concerns and sufferings were often dismissed with laughter, as if their pains were merely a source of entertainment for whites);
a white person advising a black person to calm down during a heated discussion (since this activates an emotion-invalidating history, as well as the intergenerational trauma of that history, where black people's expressions of emotion were policed and deemed irrational or overreactive);
a white person catching a black boy after falling from the monkey bars (since that activates a manhandling history, as well as the intergeneration trauma of that history, in which black folk were touched and molested and moved around like mere tools by white people);
a white person not catching a black boy after falling from the monkey bars (since that activates a dehumanizing history, as well as the intergeneration trauma of that history, where black individuals, especially youths, were left vulnerable and unaided on grounds that they were less than human).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—heartened by media reminders of how much and how long their ancestors lived in fear (Hollywood depictions of Middle-Passage bodies sardined in suffocating cargo holds of piss-shit-vomit brine only to be anchored into the implosive depths of the Atlantic if a life of slavery were not in their cards, or of grainy black-and-white footage of white women dumping ketchup on their lye-relaxed heads as they sit at segregated diner counters, or of cops hosing them away like roaches for the chase of German shepherds); heartened by constant doom-and-gloom news splices that drumbeat within us all an irresistible feeling that they live in more fear today than ever before—blacks can bask, in sleep-tight conscience, in the cheap feeling of power that results from seeing whitey afraid:
afraid to raise evidence against or contradict a black person’s opinions or “lived experience,” lest they be pilloried as “gaslighters trying to control the narrative” and for having a “slave-master complex” and a sense of “colonial entitlement” that perhaps “no sensitivity trainings could ever cure”;
afraid to offer constructive criticism on work performance or to enforce basic workplace policies (especially about hygiene and attire), lest they be accused of targeting BIPOC individuals and perpetuating a hostile work environment;
afraid to broach any “black topics,” lest they be labeled “appropriators” or “gate-stormers” or “lane-violators” or other humiliating face spritzes from the ally-training bottle;
afraid to celebrate cultural traditions that are deemed predominantly white, lest they be accused of promoting a “monocultural” agenda and disregarding the “rich tapestry of multiculturalism";
afraid to express approval for merit-based or colorblind evaluations in any context, lest they be accused of “ignoring the historical and ongoing barriers that prevent equal opportunity and access”;
afraid to participate in celebrations or expressions of patriotism (especially ones that involve use of “the violence-provoking American flag”), lest they be condemned for “glorifying a history of colonization and oppression” or “blindly celebrating a nation built on the backs of slaves”;
afraid to set an agenda at the beginning of a Zoom meeting, lest they be charged with “white-speak” and—were they to make the reckless move of defending the importance of setting an agenda—with “whitesplaining”;
afraid to doze off from their hypervigilant racial tip toe and simply exist as their authentic selves, lest they be slammed as bigots or deplorables and then stripped of their careers and reputations in the blink of an online cancellation mob;
afraid to mention that they have black friends or family, lest they be denounced for “tokenizing beautiful Black Kings and Queens and using them as tools” (in this case, as “a psychic shield from the truth that no white fails to be complicit in white supremacy”);
afraid to call the police on or testify against their black rapist, lest they be vilified for perpetuating the stereotype of black hyperviolence and becoming complicit in the “black-inmate industrial complex" despite enjoying “the white privilege of moving beyond their trauma by seeing an expensive therapist”;
afraid to publicly enjoy or share their love for jazz or blues or hip hop, lest they be described (described, of course, almost always by white people) as “just another white fuck fetishizing black pain and resilience”;
afraid to display family photos at work that show participation in outdoor activities like hiking or camping or swimming, lest they be censured for (a) “flaunting their privileged access to nature that historically excluded people of color” or for (b) “making black people feel bad by reminding them of things they struggle with (whether out of fear or trauma or health conditions)”;
afraid to tell friends and family and coworkers they are moving because of the crime in the city, lest they be labeled just another “blackphobe” gearing up for “white flight” (white flight that will only result in further decay, further decay blamed not on niggative attitudes going unchecked but entirely on the fact that “gov only be carin n shit when yt folk around”);
afraid to hold up three fingers at a backyard barbecue (even if it is just a signal for their wife to bring out three more beers), lest they be prepared for their TikToking guests (ever filming) to take this as “the universal symbol of white power still appearing in business logos as American as apple pie” (WWE, Walmart, Werner freight trucks, and—accompanied by the telling image of our globe covered in white paint, and decades later in a blood red perhaps indicative of white blood purity if not of black genocide—Sherwin-Williams, of course);
afraid to paint the cheeks of their 9-year-old kid with that glare-reduction grease their favorite football players use often to aesthetic effect, lest they be ready to see their whole family barraged with hate mail—predominantly by whites, especially the sort of whites woke enough to self-immolate—that will no doubt reach into rape-and-death-threat territories (territories clearly colored by double-penetration race-porn fantasies) if the white child is unlucky enough to wear a Native headdress on top of the “blackface” (thereby “doubling up on a virulent racism clearly taught inside the home”);
afraid to move their kids at least to a new table at Chuck E. Cheese to get away from the twerk-filled 10-year-old birthday bash, lest they be called out for “policing black joy” and “imposing puritanical white standards on innocent expressions of cultural celebration” and for “str8 up snitchin on dey own bigot azz.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—although it comes at the expense of cruelty to whites (any yet we should perhaps remember what slave masters know all-too-well: cruelty itself debases and deranges the cruel)—all the major bookstores are crammed with guides on how whites, if they will not simply do what is best and “exit themselves,” at least might retrain themselves on how to lessen the negative effects of their inherent toxicity.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, because even the most well-meaning whites cannot help the toxicity of their whiteness, various public school—in what seems like a Jim-Crow relapse in direct violation of discrimination laws—are considering following in the footsteps of a High School in Evanston Illinois: instituting segregated classes, classes only by and only for BIPOCs, so that the most vulnerable students can focus more on their work than on their safety.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where it is not strange to hear of the white psychologist who—operating, on the one hand, on the radical-affirmation model (believe the patient even if the patient does not believe herself) and knowing, on the other hand, how omnipresent and yet hidden antiblackness has become—makes it her mission to offset whiteness’s reign of terror by devoting extra attention to those black patients who refuse to acknowledge being torn down and torn apart by a racist order, deploying on them the following “antiracist techniques” (lifted right from the false-memory-implanting playbook of therapists who find molestation at the root of too much):
(1) apologizing and apologizing, apologizing with tears, for the traumas that the therapist herself causes the patient just by living, which serves (a) to prime the patient to see herself as a victim and (b) to set a low bar on what it takes to be brutalized (the idea being that the patient will think to herself at last pre-linguistically “If this lady is saying she brutalized me and she don’t even know me, imagine what I’ve suffered at the hands of white people I do know!”);
(2) employing “ancestral roleplay sessions" that involve the patient picturing herself enslaved and then envisioning her own back or finger or hip or foot pains being the result—“Use you imagination!”—of degradations at the hands of whiteness;
(3) wearing the patient down with guided visualization of graphic antiblack scenarios and audio recordings of victims narrating experiences of racial abuse interspersed with leading questions like “How did your own experience with blackness-directed violence hurt your image as a Black Queen and negatively impact your relationship with your daughter?”;
(4) having the patient audit “whiteness survivor groups,” where peer pressure can work its subtle magic of pulling the patient toward the pole of identifying as a member;
(5) using “hypnotherapeutic memory work” to reveal that her black patient’s bodily pains are rooted in childhood sexual abuse by white men—over months of sessions, yes, kneading the patient’s mind with suggestive what ifs that hopefully become feelings and then turn into vague images of adult figures that then sharpen and sharpen until white faces finally appear from the shadows only (in line with “a long history of midnight slave-quarter trips”) to take her (in the pathetic small-dick way only white men could), holding her still by digging those white thumbs into the left SI joint where the patient currently has nagging pain (“a pain we now know to be a body memory!”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks—distracted from ennobling pursuits—are hooked to their screens, unable to stop scrolling through the popcorn hilarity of whites teary in guilt and on hypervigilant tiptoe (as jumpy as Bigger Thomas), adding caveat after face-reddening caveat—each caveat oozing, louder and louder, the pathetic subtext “Please don’t hate me, report me, irradicate me!”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks—and to some degree all of us really, especially members of the Chinese Communist Party (and also anyone eager to distract us from bigger problems like the class divide so that we do not unite against greedy people)—cannot get enough (popcorn emoji, popcorn emoji) of all the pathetic groveling, all the pick-me signaling, of pussy whites:
the white public intellectual who, face contorting and voice trembling with revulsion and shame for what he calls his “puke body of vomitrocious whiteness,” explains on a podcast that he is never having children because “even more urgent than getting to zero emissions is getting to zero white births” (and a few moments later, after the podcast host merely asked what he might say to allies who think the moratorium on white birth is going too far, he stomps away and yells off screen “There is no end in sight for the atonement whites have to make!”);
the white executive director of NACMEC (The North American Center for Missing and Exploited Children) who, commenting on California’s “Ebony Alert” system for missing black children, explains that “Black children find themselves extra vulnerable, under threat each day in a nation actively waging war with people of dark complexion, and so adding an extra level of protection than that provided by all the white-bread alerts (Amber Alert, Endangered Child Alert, Child Safety Alert, Morgan Nick Alert) is the least we can do (and even that is grossly insufficient)!”;
the white college student, a spatiotemporally different one than the one mentioned before (but in that same no-Nazi care-bear t-shirt of fagulousness), who livestreams a protest of his film class for showing a Danish war film that takes place in Denmark in the 1750s, insisting that—“even if Lizzo wasn’t cast as the lead soldier (which she should have been)”—“the very least these damn white orchestrators could have done was show some flashes of all the slavery going on at that time (which could have featured a boat load of black actors instead of the not-one I counted)”;
the white Instagram user who, after an accidental email leak revealed that the Boston mayor had thrown an all-white-waitstaff party exclusively for non-whites, defends the decision as “noble” since “POCs have to see yt people like me all the damn time” and defended Mayor Wu herself for being “deeply brave” and for not letting “her own daily experiences of hate as an Asian woman blind her to how much worse it is for Black Americans”;
the white Grammy winner who, in her clearly-drugged acceptance speech, rambles on and on—“I’m talking to the faces of power in the room, yes the too-many white faces”—about how her fellow “people of privilege” need to return “immediately” any gifts received by black people since “our colonial spirit of whiteness, even if only working subconsciously, most likely manipulated those gifts out of them”;
the white Academy-Award winner on TikTok who, after apologizing for not realizing sooner that her favorite brand of vegan shoes might have been made in a factory that produced culturally-insensitive ads in the 1980s, announces—yes, with a face teary to the point of Blair-Witch boogers dripping on her “I support Black victims” shirt—the “good news” that “a recent census shows the number of whites to have gone down (a statistic finally of joy for any parent such as myself with a black child)”;
the white “racial-sensitivity trainer” who, facilitating a “learning module” (mandatory for all faculty of the college at which his firm “Inclusion Quest™” has just renewed its contract), puts on calming sounds before addressing, with a tranquil affect complete with a lisp, “what we are to do, what we are to learn and unlearn, about the terrible disease of whiteness ravaging workplaces across the globe (spreading so much violence with its values of hard work and punctuality and planning for the future, with its prioritizing revision over spontaneity, science over faith, head over heart)”;
the white music teacher and kalimba player who, despite having a classroom full of African art and always wearing her “Black Ally" pin and never expecting that black students learn western musical notation and never even playing piano on anything but “an antiracist layout” (black and white keys swapped), steps down from her 25-year position in foggy-spectacle shame during a schoolwide Zoom session centered around her apology for having shown her freshmen class a documentary that included vintage footage of a white man describing the singing behind him as what everyone called such singing at the time (“a negro spiritual”);
the white journal editor (and also “critical whiteness scholar” in a Communications department at some state university near you) who says that, “although the lilywhite mainstream presses have long kept both uncapitalized, we choose to follow the lead of Black nationalists of yesterday by capitalizing ‘Black’ and not ‘white’ when referring to Black people and white people” because “(1) it is the very least we owe Black people coming ‘out of’ centuries of slavery only to face voter suppression and cultural mockery and not to mention relentless slaughter at the hands of a racist police force, (2) refusing to capitalize “white” is a pushback white people deserve given the long history of ‘white’ having been treated as a kind of default or norm from which other races deviate, (3) capitalizing ‘white’ would amount to glorifying the ethnic-history-erasing transatlantic slave trade that we cannot but think of when we think of whites, (4) to capitalize ‘white’ would be to follow the violent lead of white nationalists, and (5) our decision enjoys the attestation of various writers of color and marginalized stylebooks”;
the white adjunct professor and Audre Lorde specialist who, secretly recorded in her virtue-signaling drunkenness by a “black neighbor concerned enough to leak the footage to police,” says she refuses to report her black rapist (even though the refusal has only emboldened the young man, one floor down, to start finishing in her with reckless abandon), explaining (1) that the refusal is her “impersonal duty to social justice” and (2) that she has thoughts about “pinning it on a white colleague while the tears and injuries are fresh” and (3) that she has “the white privilege of a therapist and a bright future (something no black male can ever be sure of)” and (4) that “the system is so hellbent on maiming and killing the black body” that it would “violate [her] conscience” if she further harmed the “true victim in this case” by “taking part in a long history of weaponizing white damsel tears to stoke a modern-day lynch mob”;
the white senator—white with, so she says, a smidge of Cree—who, in a blog post titled “It Sits Behind More Than You Can Fathom,” says that the “disease of whiteness explains not only the unfortunate pride many First Peoples felt in fighting wars for a nation that robbed them blind, but also the microdetails” (such as “the beer-bottle shards all over reservation lands after WW2 like shells on a beach” and “the spike of heart disease and diabetes in a people who never knew such things” and “the prevalence of the F-slur in casual conversation even though all the tribes at their uncolonized core embrace queerness” and “the participation in fat shaming and in white lies about the unhealthiness of obesity”;
the white employee who, by whistleblowing on a fellow developer for having retweeted something “the Black community could regard as problematic,” initiated a rapid chain of events that culminated not only in the immediate firing of that developer, but also in (1) the name-change of a central character in the company’s (and the world’s) most popular first-person shooter game—a change from Mark to Malik (since that character was named after the “problematic developer” in question)—and (2) months of (fruitless) brainstorming on how Malik’s special move, his “ultimate ability,” might be changed to something that will “evoke emotional sentiments in Black players similar to what Wakanda did in Black audiences”;
the white influencer on Instagram who, ignorant of the fact—“nazi-ing”—that her beans are inextricably tied to the rampant black-on-black slavery in Eritrea, enlightens her followers on the correct “ceremony for brewing and savoring antiracist coffee,” a ceremony that requires (1) “me-time procrastination” (since “punctuality, reeking of the whiteness of perfectionism, is a value of white supremacy”), (2) “intuitive measurements only” (since “precision plunges us into the slime of the white mind”), (3) black-bought cup (since “nasty bitches over here be supportin black business!”), (4) “little-to-no-milk” (since “it’s about sensitivity to optics”), (5) “no-circle stirring” (since “circles marginalize the edgy diagonals and the rebellious z-shapes”), (6) “pre-sip slavery acknowledgement” (since “we can never forget the countless souls ripped and raped from their African families by white hands”), (7) “inclusive enjoyment” (since, “weak or strong, every cup is valid as long as all other steps are followed”), (8) “black-artist sipping” (since “there is no neutrality when it comes to supporting black artists, which means failing to enjoy black artists while you enjoy this moment—a book in hand or some music in the background—is just a mask for hating them”), and (9) not-equal-but-equitable sharing (since “some of us have deeper histories of victimization and so deserve more, while others have deeper histories of privilege and so deserve less”);
the white HR-rep who, after taking the time to give a meaningful stare at each black person in the room, commences the meeting on the importance of diversity quotas by “seeking forgiveness for any neurological trauma” her “whiteness might have caused in the past or”—her voice extra soothing to project empathy—“might be causing in the present and will likely cause in the future”;
the white car salesman who, wearing the yellow wristband of BLM and a Smirnoff button of white burden (“Undoing Racism Begins With Me”), refuses to push luxury vehicles onto black customers (in hopes “never to participate in the exploitation of the financially vulnerable”) and whose business card states under his name “White, privileged, and sorry (but desperate to learn)”;
the white political candidate on the debate stage who, after her national-anthem kneel in protest of the fact that “the racial group with the least institutional power in this bald-eagle hellscape has never gotten its rightful opportunity to run things,” denounces her own whiteness as “a disease in need of eradication,” while her black opponent stands beside her in discomfort clear behind a stoic facade;
the white weather anchorman who, full-on chunky again (because, so he recently insisted with on-air hugs from the main anchorpeople, “thin is a white beauty standard that only emboldens white supremacists”), finally takes a stand on the “regrettable euro-centric roots of both the Fahrenheit and Celsius scale,” announcing—to the audible applause from cameramen and staff outside the live shot—that “from here on” he will deliver his temperature forecast in “qualitative terms”;
the white Appleista who, having climbed his way up to Lead Genius of the genius bar at a Sacramento Apple Store, proudly tweets that—in all but the first in the uptick of flash-looting events of recent years—he “helped the reparation warriors liberate as many devices as possible” and now even keeps in a drawstring backpack with a Wakanda Forever fist logo “a reparation cache of devices, unmarked and untraceable, to make these payback ceremonies go as smooth as possible while ensuring the safety of all Apple employees and customers”;
the white assistant who—when asked to comment on all the stories of the now-dead 90s rapper berating her with racist epithets (“Cracker cunt” and “White devil”), like the time she failed to replenish the Moët and the Henessey quick enough and he kept spitting at her and screaming “Ya’ll white devils don’t want black people to have shit” and then smashed the bottles she managed to find at midnight right at her feet—laughs and simply says “I can’t say the man was lying!”;
the white mayor who in a live townhall message says, and in what results in finger-snapping whoops too much for him to continue, “I have the distinct honor to come before you and say I actually lost white population in my community”;
the white colonel of the USAF Civil Air Patrol who insists that all branches of the military “need to stop hiring white people, especially white males, if we are going to honor the principles of inclusion and diversity as stated in Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist, a remarkable book that really opened my eyes to the problem of whiteness in all sectors from the west wing to west point”;
the white butcher who—still in her bloody apron with an attached Anheuser-Busch black-fist button that reads “Barley and Hop for Equity”—goes off in the privacy of her truck on a TikTok rant about how exhausted she is dealing with “the constant flood of ignorant whites always asking ‘What meats are native to the area?’,” which she describes as “a problematic question since (on top of using a word, the other n-word, that white mouths make toxic) it perpetuates the racist discourse of who does and who does not belong”;
the white news correspondent who, on grounds that “it has only been two days since the mother of three was last seen,” mocks—as a case of “missing white woman hysteria”—the volunteer fire department’s decision to participate in the search effort (instead of staying another day at the BLM protest);
the white museum curator who, “in light of the BLM protests around the world,” feels “compelled to denounce” the once-revered painting, which depicts a Kalenjin marriage ceremony, as “the worrisome and illegitimate acquisition of a white gaze,” claiming the artist’s own diary entry about the painting (“a deep tribute to the beautiful people of an East African community”) was “at best, cope for having engaged in poaching and, at worst, a willful lie”;
the white member of a Chicago prisoner review board who, in light of the oppression black males face in this country and the likelihood of their unfair treatment by law enforcement, gave the green light on a black male’s release from prison “in what she described as one small step for racial justice,” but then—less that 48 hours later—resigned when she learned that—“adding insult to injury”—the child killed by the man on the very day of his release was not white;
the white mother (known in the community for spearheading the program “Reparations by Gift Card”) who at a PTA meeting takes a stand in her “Decolonize Cafeterias” t-shirt and—after announcing her pronouns, and that she is “a white millennial transmasculine femme survivor of acute and complex trauma” who happens to be “nonbinary, mostly able-bodied, neurodivergent, obsessive compulsive, chronically ill, culturally Jewish, unitarian universalist, nonmonogamous, demiromantic, and above all archenemy of white supremacy”—demands, in her purple-hands earrings and hipster glasses and bangs self-scissored in that neo-Appalachian aesthetic of the band Mountain Man—that white bread be eliminated as an option (“It’s just too damn white, too damn Leave It to Beaver, for our children!”);
the white “antiracist conductor” who, smelling of expensive diffuser oils and eager to “sacrifice as many chairs as possible for the greater good," insists (from beneath a George-Floyd scarf) that, “aside from scrapping blind auditions altogether, there is no way to rectify the imbalance, the legacy of white hegemony, that has orchestras looking so pasty”;
the white Associate Professor of Education and Human Development who, aiming to call out “one of the most toxic notions infecting the black psyche,” writes in the Journal of Marriage and Family (1) that the “white-supremacist and government-incentivized push to enter into the heteropatriarchal institution of marriage only demoralizes black people given the high rates of single-family homes in the black community” and (2) that, “besides, the patriarchal institution of marriage only benefits only cis whites in monogamous and heterosexual arrangements anyway”;
the white Crisis Communications Director who—in a resignation press release apologizing (“on behalf of the company and all of white America”) for omitting the second “l” of “Malcolm” in the retail giant’s social-media campaign to honor the “true kings of America”—writes that “this destructive oversite, which no amount of white promises to do better can ever mitigate, speaks to the hate this country has for the long-overdue message that ‘Black is king’” and even adds that “the typo might very well have been a subconscious expression of the white supremacy festering in our marrow”;
the white greenskeeper who—if only as a “symbolic gesture against the white-supremacist impetus to suppress (chop down and even poison) black bodies in its goal for monocrop homogeneity”—vows, in his “Journalism is Activism” t-shirt, to let the weeds (beautiful, strong, natural, diverse) grow on the campus lawns;
the white US Representative who, although admitting that one part of her would have liked to have seen the NFL replace “the National Anthem (representing racism)” with “the Black National Anthem (representing antiracism),” finds it best “all things considered” for the National Anthem to remain included since “otherwise we run the risk of forgetting, football being the quintessential American game, that America can never not be white supremacist as long as it is America, which is why—and this is what too many of us still have a hard time seeing—having an American flag on your porch or your truck is racist”;
the white “abolitionist judge” who comments “white people are guilty until proven innocent" in response to his own tweet that “‘blind justice’ and ‘equality under the law’ are white-power notions that interfere with the equity goals of an antiracist (and so reparation-based) system of law,” one demanding “emergency measures (such as a moratorium on the 14th Amendment, and other guarantees of equal protection) so that we can reduce the number of black incarceration”;
the white bishop who—after reminding parishioners to “say something if you witness any violation of our safe space (since, after all, praying white supremacists are nevertheless white supremacists)”—vows, banging the church podium with his fist, to switch to black depictions of Christ (describing the move as “one small thing to help decolonize white normativity in the church, which is just so G-damn white!”);
the white ethicist who—infamous for pushing her so-called “Hippocratic Oath for White People” (“First, do no harm to precious Black bodies”)—writes, in a major philosophy journal, “moral equals ought to be treated equally, but white citizens (as complicit beneficiaries of systemic racism, as at least tacit perpetrators of the white-world’s total war on Black bodies) are not morally equal to Black citizens, beautiful Black Kings and Queens who deserve a freer pass under the law to do whatever it takes to push back the white supremacy that unfortunately can never go into remission while America remains America”;
the white NFL quarterback who, in a Super Bowl commercial one would never know is for beer were it not for the Samuel Adams logo at the end after a moment of silence (“nine seconds, for each minute of George Floyd’s torture”), stands against a slate background and simply states with somber severity “I can never understand, and yet I stand!”;
the white celebrities—the majority wearing baggy beanies—who, in a by-no-means-cringey PSA about “the malignancy of white supremacy,” pledge back-to-back in a viral collage “never to bring more white babies, more wicked heirs of ill-gotten privileges, into the world”;
the white spoken-word artist who, at the end of “White Stranger Danger” (a performance filled with cringey lines like “I was listening to hip-hop well before I knew my race helped me get ahead, before I knew housing segregation was so fierce it made Tupac's ‘Hit Em Up’ look like a love song to Biggie”), tells the crowd—as “one small thing we can do to keep whiteness in check”—“we must make sure preschool teachers and kindergarten teachers are black because the risks posed by whiteness is too high for kings and queens so young, so trusting and loveable—so not-knowing-any-better—that they will run up and hug any smiling white person”;
the white CVS shopper who—in a t-shirt shirt with a red not-allowed symbol overtop the Washington Redskin’s Chief-head logo (even though that logo was of a real Blackfoot chief and drawn by a real Blackfoot native and fully approved by the real Blackfoot Nation)—kicks down makeup displays because the employee called the cops on a black shoplifter, yelling “Weaponizing a racist police force against black bodies when it’s not even your merchandise, you disgusting pig!”;
the white university president who sends out an email reminding students as well as staff and faculty that, especially since “unacknowledged antiblack assumptions infect every US institution and every white heart,” it is crucial “never to question or debate the lived experiences of Black peers and colleagues and never to disrespect or marginalize Black epistemology (a way of thinking reflective not just of the ways of the motherland, but of the historical and continued persecutions at the hands of white people)”;
the white pediatrician who, “especially given the centuries of medical exploitation and experimentation on black bodies,” writes an open letter declaring that, as her “small contribution to curbing the spread of the unfortunately undefeatable cancer of systemic racism,” she will no longer carry out merely the “effete acts” demanded by her medical group (like drilling into parental heads the essentialness of exposing children to diversity-friendly media), but rather will do something “more tangible” (namely, giving preferential treatment to Black babies, “and not merely when it comes to vaccination scheduling”);
the white pediatrician and “admiral” who seconds the above recommendation of giving blacks “indefinite priority-access to healthcare,” but adds that this is “the very least we can do” as “a matter of environmental justice” since “black neighborhoods—positioned by the machinations of white supremacy—are disproportionately affected by climate change, pollution, and toxic waste (all of which have increased black anxiety and lowered black life expectancy)”;
the white sociologist who, in response to Sowell’s famous question (“Have we reached the ultimate stage of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today?”), says “No, but—far from an absurdity—that is precisely the goal of justice and equity!”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—as “a condition of continued employment” after having said in class that she admired Twain (an author implicated in the sin of slavery merely by having characters that use the word “nigger”)—a white professor of American literature is, according to the university’s Committee for Equity, “hereby barred” from the following:
(1) from wearing the color red (garments, makeup, and so forth) since students report feeling unsafe seeing it set against the pasty pallor of oppression;
(2) from making any comments that could be construed as related to black culture;
(3) from starting university emails with anything but “In acknowledgment of my inherent biases”;
(4) from assigning any white author too unseparated from colonialism and slavery, whether by having benefited from such horrors, or having bad-actor ancestors or descendants, or having stories set in Western locations without due focus on how those locations are problematic, or so on (consult the British Library’s antiracist blacklist for starters).”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, after a professor simply asked that we show some leniency and forgiveness after video appeared of his colleague twenty years earlier imitating Tupac during a stand-up-comedy routine at a local open-mic event, his entire department, even faculty from various other departments (especially Fat Studies and Communications), sign a petition demanding the termination of both professors since “Those who sympathize with racists are racists, and no racist will find safe harbor at an anticolonial institution that purports to be inclusive like BYCC.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where the Dean fires the at-will adjunct without due-process after it had come to his attention that the adjunct, on her own personal blog, wrote the following rather middle-path criticism of our continued practice of treating blacks with kid gloves—a criticism that the Dean, in consultation with the DEI office, regard as an “alt-right call to violence.”
It was a false dichotomy to say that the path forward for blacks, the path toward engineering a society of equality and respect for all, was either through inside development (strengthening their minds and bodies and spirits and families and communities and attitudes) or through outside assistance (lowered standards and special dispensations and extra leeway and affirmative action along with eradicating any legacy of discriminatory policy).
Taking the first path alone is needlessly cruel (like demanding that the person go through intense surgeries without any anesthesia) and it is not as powerful of a fix without the second option. For by artificially siphoning blacks into certain sectors you create a flow, a pattern, a momentum that—along with individual development—will create a self-sustaining river.
Taking the second path alone, however, would only perpetuate the very bedrock justification for persecution of blacks: black inferiority. For it would serve to hook blacks on outside help. We use the anesthesia of opiates only for emergency situations and then we stop. It is only for intense pain. To switch to the siphon analogy, we suck to get the flow going and then we stop—at which point the effort becomes solely developmental, solely focused on strengthening the individual.
The problem is, whites—perhaps out of guilt, a guilt manipulated more and more as time went by (because the addict needs their fix and will do anything to get it, and not to mention that the enabler loves that feel-good hit of purpose in charity)—have kept on giving the patient opiates. Whites have, with black complicity, perpetuated black inferiority.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks, all of us really, just eat up the alluring sensationalism of watching crowds of white people across the nation, standing on college campuses and on the shutdown streets of sanctuary cities, with their hands up (in that pose of “Please officer, don’t shoot me just because I’m black!”) and repeating after the fagulously falsetto voice on the bullhorn the following Maoist vows through their COVID masks.
“I will work to repair the damage of my whiteness.”
“I will never deny the hurt that beautiful black people feel in this racist country.”
“I will celebrate black joy, resilience, and creativity."
“I will use my voice in the most uplifting way possible.”
“I will tolerate any discomfort on the path to equity.”
“I will tolerate any hurt on the path to righting past wrongs.”
“I will show my black neighbors the extra love they are due.”
“I will educate my community that antiblack words are violence.”
“I will never speak over a black person.”
“I will never correct a black person without black permission.”
“I will face that I am to blame even though I didn’t pull the trigger.”
“I will never say ‘I never owned slaves.’”
“I will work to repair the damage of my whiteness.”
“I will never deny that racism exists.”
“I will control my perception, so that it remains antiracist.”
“I will never deny black truth.”
“I will be an effective ally.”
“I will march until I die.”
“I will not criticize black voices unless sanctioned by black voices.”
“I will support black businesses.”
“I will amplify the voices of black and other marginalized people.”
“I will do everything in my power to abolish whiteness.”
“I will not weaponize the police against black people.”
“I will accept that payback often hurts.”
“I will never say antiblackness has been eliminated.”
“I will listen and learn from black people, always.”
“I will redistribute my unearned advantages.”
“I will never call reparations ‘looting.’”
“I will never interfere with reparations.”
“I will try my best to help with reparations.”
“I will seek to understand more than to be understood."
“I will not oppose the leadership of black kings and queens.”
“I will prioritize black voices, especially in discussions on race."
“I will support restorative justice as a path forward."
“I will not hold black people to white standards of reason or conduct.”
“I will work to repair the damage of my whiteness.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks, all of us really, just eat up—like (moonpie) creampies—the alluring sensationalism of watching white people line up in an urban park to bow down and kiss the black combat boots of black men (all in black fatigues), one of whom on a bullhorn announcing how “crucial” this “moment of reckoning” is—a scene, given all the effeminate white men pressing their lips down on the black leather to the amplified moans of “Ooh yeah,” that cannot help but call to mind (especially when the tongues come out) cuckold porn scenarios involving white husbands sucking and then proving they swallowed the “nigger cream pie” out of their own white wives.
This the Lord’s work right here, man. This the Lord’s work. This right here’s a good good white woman. She’s showing guilt. She’s showing she wants to make it right. She knows the impact of the deeds done. So many white people standing around, but she—. And look, now this white man. All of them—yes, bring them kids. The whole family—the whole family asking for forgiveness.
Yeah Mr. White Man. You too—definitely you. I got my eye on you. “The children of your oppressors,” Isaiah tells us, “will come bowing before you; all who despise you will bow down at your feet.” Don’t be shy. Get low. Yeah boy. Get real low.
Got a crowd now! No better college degree than this, let me tell you. This, people—this means more than any piece of paper. Give these white people a hand now.
And look at them. They keep coming! Oh yeah, Mr. White Man Number Two. You go in there and get you some. Oh yeah. Keep them kisses coming. It feels good don’t it? Oh yeah. It feels real good. Don’t be afraid to use a bit of tongue Mr. White Man. See people! They showing what it really means to salute the prophets and the true chosen of the Lord.
Look! Look! Look at that boot. Hold it up. I don’t know if it’s tears or spit, but it’s good. But Mr. White Man, you know I’m gonna need you to shine that boot. Dry it off. Yeah, there you go. Now have your little girl—that your daughter? Yeah, get on in there sweetheart. Get on down right next to Daddy. Check Daddy’s work now. It good? Tell me, Sweetie. You tell me. It good? Well give it one little kiss for me, Baby Girl. Show me it good.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks, all of us really, just eat it the fuck up: watching Presidential candidate Marianne Williamson leading a church prayer of apology to African Americans.
So for those of you who would like to participate in this, I’m going to lead us in an apology from white Americans to African Americans on behalf of our country—to you and to you ancestors, and to all of your people. . . . And now as I speak, I’m going to ask the white Americans in the room to please repeat after me. On behalf of myself and on behalf of my country, to you and all African Americans from the beginning of our nation’s history, in honor of your ancestors and on behalf of your children, please hear this from my heart. I apologize. Please forgive us. With this prayer I acknowledge the depth of the evils that have been perpetrated against black people in America.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks, all of us really, just eat up the alluring sensationalism of hearing professors at major universities offer the following “urgent message to fellow white women” from behind their tartan scarves.
My fellow white women, it is easy to talk about our privilege. We always talk about our privilege. But what about the threat—the threat we pose to our beautiful Black kings and queens, from the delivery room to the death bed. Let’s talk about that!
We pose a cultural threat: our whiteness compels us to appropriate black song and dance and attire. We pose a spiritual threat: our whiteness gets a twisted pleasure when we speak our words and show our bodies in spaces meant for Black healing and spirituality. We pose an existential threat: our whiteness has a hunger to rape and maim and kill the Black body—a hunger forming a breathless chain from the first Black woman ever choked under a panting colonizer, to the latest hero who probably right as we speak has his neck kneeled upon by so-called “law enforcement.” We pose an economic threat: our whiteness expects Blacks to work for us for less than any other group—and if we had our way, as history has shown, it would be for free! We pose an educational threat: our whiteness has us foist upon Black kind standards and ideas—math and logic, reading and writing—foreign to Black ways of knowing (the intuition, the spoken ritual, the drums). We pose a psychological threat: our whiteness would chastise Black people, make them feel bad, for the looting and the killing that merely amount to rage against the antiblack machine that we created! (Talk about gaslighting.) We pose a legal threat: our whiteness cannot get enough, as the numbers make all too clear, of seeing Black people behind bars whenever they refuse to be our good servants (like when they sell their own drugs instead of the big-pharma drugs, or like when they shoot their own enemies instead of the American enemies abroad). We pose a health threat: our whiteness has led to a healthcare system that neglects Black pain and suffering as no more than the screams of animals.
We are an inherent danger in any space where beautiful Black kings and queens can be found, found already struggling to breathe—as if through emphysema straws—even before we suck the air out of the room with our actual presence. We are a danger simply by existing. When we choose not to face that, when we refuse to navigate the world with that understanding, things get much much worse. We go from being simply dangerous, which we will be no matter what we do, to being an active threat, which is something we do have some control over.
We need to do our best to eradicate whiteness. No other task, personal or familial or social, is more urgent. You have your hobbies and you have your vocations. No one is saying that these are not important. What we are saying, what our beautiful Black kings and queens are begging us to realize just so they can get a bit of breathing room, is that there is a much more important task. How can we expect Black people, with all their PTSD (complex generational PTSD), to take the risk to let us into their space without us having shown ourselves to be on the path toward abolishing the whiteness in our hearts and in the hearts of those closest to us.
Do not let their wisdom, what the Black man and the Black woman have to teach, fall on deaf ears. Let us drop to our knees and hold open our mouths to their overflowing honey. However much it hurts, however much it disrupts our lives—let their truth sing and guide us. It is the least we can do.
What do our kings and queens sing? Oh, they sing too many songs. And look at me! Who am I to enumerate them. Should I even be allowed, given the temptation—festering in my heart since the womb—to steal Black pain? But one song I hear loud and clear. It screams through every Black woman finally liberating her sexuality, twerking on restaurant tables. It screams through every young Black boy who refuses to take the math test, knowing it was created to humiliate him. Our very whiteness makes us dangerous. That is what our kings and queens sing. That is their truth.
If we learn to hate and fear the whiteness that controls us from within, we will find—with faith and Black grace—the motivation to fight against it. And that is the only hope there is for protecting a beautiful people that has suffered so much harm by our hand—so much harm just by looking at our pasty selves, smelling our wet dog scent. We need to have gratitude for their patience.
We cannot undo our ancestors birthing us on a land soaked with the very Black blood we suckle upon until death. And the one surefire cure for our toxicity—well, that is too much to expect anyone to follow through on. That leaves us here, then, to listen and learn and unlearn and follow—to make ourselves of service. Surely that is not too much to ask!
The final solution might be too much. But surely it is not too much to support Black businesses, or to shave our heads in solidarity and as a symbol of “Fuck white beauty standards!” Surely it is not too much to cut ties with problematic friends and family, or to apologize—for once—for our perspective, or to go on birth control and encourage white men to get vasectomies, or to march for abortion rights. Surely it is not too much to shut up when a Black person is talking, or to oppose the colorblind policies that are once against creeping back up, or to lobby state officials to put a moratorium on imprisoning Black men and suspending Black students, or to ask permission before entering Black spaces. There is so much even we can do.
Surely it is not too much to throw a drink in the face of a bigot. I did, almost two hours ago! And I’m still shaking. When precious Black women are six times more likely to be killed than white women in this racist hellhole, and when you are some whitesplaining white boy—no, you’re not going to say to me “What about the influence of Black cultural attitudes? What about ‘ratchet culture?’” I’ve been an ally for too damn long to stand for it! Of course, this white boy would kick at the very gospel of Black liberation. But I wasn’t going to lower myself to explain that ratchet culture is the culture of “I ain’t taking no white shit anymore, and I ain’t listening to no cop, and I’ll let these hands fly instead of talking all that white logic, and I’ll shake my free ass all night wherever I want, and I’ll be as mean and as nasty and as sexual as I can before I become chattel again.” That Wakanda chant of liberation has no bearing on Black death! But I wasn’t going to stoop to a back and forth with the devil—yes, whose devilry I share, but whose devilry I actively fight.
No I wasn’t going to stoop. I threw that drink before he could say a thing. We already knew what he was going to say, right? Whiteness has a script. I know it well. I have to resist it each day. It wakes me up each morning like an intrusive song. So I did a preemptive strike.
Whoever in the room finds that distasteful, think again. White supremacy hides in the very principles of Amerikkka—yes, triple “k.” Innocent until proven guilty—that’s one of the biggies. Do you understand how dangerous someone, especially a white male, remains when we waste precious time trying to cobble together some case against him? We might not be able to change the law of the land right away but we can change how we act individually. This man—this boy, this white colonizer—was not innocent “until proven guilty.”
Throw that drink. Trust your attunement to the frequencies of oppression. Throw that drink before anything can slip through a forked tongue.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks, all of us really, just eat up the you-can’t-make-this-up sensationalism of it all:
of white employees—lest even the most excellent of whom be fired—having to renew their pledge each year to be “effective allies” by “checking their privilege” and their “implicit biases” and, in particular, by not voicing any opinions or stating any research findings or making any connections (even outside the workplace) that “blacks, or any vulnerable population for that matter, might potentially find offensive”;
or of whites psychologists who say that the growing urge among blacks to shoot white people and even stomp white-infant “skulls into liverwurst pulp” are completely warranted, “no more indicative of a problem with blacks in our time, whatever pathologizing label whites put on it (‘insane,’ ‘psychopathic’), than was the urge to runaway from captivity—an urge whites pathologized with the label ‘drapetomania’—a problem with blacks in the time of slavery.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where it is almost too easy to imagine the following freshman convocation at some Portlandia liberal arts college or other in the near future.
Welcome to the main stage: college. Look around. Survey the space, rife with palpable history. Is there something strange—or, perhaps more likely for all of you, welcoming—about this auditorium? Yep, you got it. I can tell by your vanilla eyes of unearned privilege. If you are seated before me, you’re an oppressor. And for that reason, you are in need of special guidance.
Why am I the singular beacon of diversity here—the only black soul, the lone queer voice, the only person in a wheelchair, fat and chronically ill? Because I’m here to help you. I’m your compass, your guide. As many of you know well from high school (and if you’re coming from some redneck town, you're on the precipice of a harsh reality check, let me tell you), it’s hard to have a social life in spaces of liberal learning if you don’t fall into any category of marginalization. You’re only visible to be mocked. This is an obvious fact. An unfortunate one? To some, yes. Justified? Absolutely. Every cold shoulder, every whisper behind your back is a recompense for the torments you and your kind have meted out on countless minorities—a small token of repayment for the echoes of trauma you have and will impart on countless souls!
Why exactly do I stand at this podium before you today? I’m here to school you on your first day of school. I’m here, specifically, to lay out a few rules for surviving—as non-minority oppressors such as yourselves—four years at this prestigious university. Why am I doing this? Why do I, of all people, care? Well, my heart hasn't completely ossified from the intergenerational traumas. I am human, after all—and despite perhaps what your racist and ableist and phobic spirits might believe. But let's not kid ourselves. There are pragmatic reasons too. Universities still needs your attendance, don’t they? To be a professor, don’t I need your numbers? Your very kind fuels my lectures, after all. Besides, we need you educated. As history has shown, an uneducated version of you—that's the very definition of peril, a concrete threat to the safety of me and my kind.
Rule # 1 is the cornerstone: don’t question us. You especially want to avoid casting shadows on the foundational beliefs that validate our experiences. For instance, never criticize—say, for being too “narrow” or “unfair”—the notion that is the basis for this very meeting: that one needs a victim status in order to fit in or be acknowledged as someone with worth. You can cry your tears about victimhood being a golden ticket to relevance and recognition, but that truth has been a long time coming.
And don’t think I won’t toss a damn cracker out of here, with my own black hands, for just one smirk. Yeah you! The one I’m looking at. Nazi Alert, ladies and gentleman. No, no, no—save it. I’m a black man, boy. Your flimsy justifications mean nothing to me. Besides, I know what you’re going to say. It was something else, right? You weren’t smirking because of what I said, right? Maybe you want to add that you have a fat girlfriend with cerebral palsy. Spare me your bullshit.
Isn't it fitting that this little disruption perfectly illustrates our rule? Do. Not. Question. Us. This is about our truth, our lived experience. You don’t know how your smirk made me feel because you are not me. It is the feelings of the marginalized that matter, not your intent. This cracker might feel that I have him all wrong. Look at him. I can see it in that white boy’s eyes, that burning need to explain himself. But every attempt to clarify or defend is a blatant challenge to my perceptions. Otherwise, why would he even clarifying? You know why you smirked, boy? Because you think I’m saying all this to keep riding some gravy train of power. That’s my truth, no matter what you say.
I am telling you this for your own good. Questioning the victim paints a bullseye on your back. Historical blind spots are no excuse. They're a neon sign of unchecked privilege. Get the context straight, people. Just by breathing among me and my kind, and the countless others who've been historically suffocated and shoved to the fringes, you are a trauma. Jam that into your tomato skulls now. Questioning us, especially questioning the norms by which we finally get a chance to enjoy some time in the sun—how can that not be foolhardy? You have heard the stories. You aren’t blind to the news. I’ll just leave it at that. Whispers float. You will not have a place in this institution, or much of a life for that matter, if you go that route. Is this unfortunate? Maybe. But is it justified? Absolutely. Do you know how much hurt your kind has done and continues to do simply by living? We are owed. Simple as that. You didn’t want to be colorblind before, but now—when it’s time to pay the piper of accountability—you do? How conveniently self-serving!
Rule #2.—Do not pretend you are a victim like us. Masquerading as one of our kind might seem like a tempting solution to your problem of fitting in. But it is offensive. It takes away special dispensations from those who really deserve it. Appropriating another's identity or struggles is not only disingenuous but a slap in the face to our legitimate suffering. Now you might not care that the path of fakery is morally disgusting. In some sense, it’s your birthright not to be deterred by disgust. Just look at the horrors you have committed. How could your legacy of misdeeds not have warped your ethical compass?
Let me appeal to you all another way, then. The path of fakery is a treacherous minefield. Many of you at least try to hold onto remnants of integrity. So how are you going to live with yourself everyday walking around as a lie? The inner turmoil itself will be too much. At least the constant fear of exposure will gnaw at your very soul. And mark my words: the mask will eventually slip anyway, however adept at deception you might consider yourselves! Someone will see photos of your family or become suspicious of your stories about why you do not have any. There will be an inconsistency in your fabricated tales. The person you kiss from the same sex will tell that you are not really into it. And guess what? That person will tell, if you catch my drift. And word travels fast around here, especially when it's laden with scandal. The backlash will be swift and unrelenting, let me tell you. When the storm comes, don’t expect me—just because I’m a professor—to step in on your behalf or calm the mob. The expectation itself is a scandal. I share their pain!
What should you do instead? What is the right path? You need to wear your own skin. Embrace the very fabric of your own people, however shameful they are. Acknowledge the weight of your history and find value in authentic self-awareness. Such a path won't be lined with immediate rewards. But do not overlook the dividends that can accrue over the long haul if you just accept yourself as the oppressors that you are (instead of trying to cloak yourselves in our pain). That is your only chance at true redemption.
As a person of color who embodies multiple dimensions in the intersectionality matrix, I possess a unique insight to guide you in the right direction: on a path that does not involve covering from yourself or the world that you are a Person of Too Much Privilege—a PTMP. My course “Muzzling the Traits of the Privileged” goes into extensive detail concerning how to get on and stay on that path. Rest assured, you are all pre-enrolled already. But for now, allow me to impart one more guiding principle.
Rule #3.— Build our trust and respect. Earning the trust and respect of those who have been marginalized or victimized requires a multifaceted approach, not to mention a consistent effort. A bedrock component is active listening. Actively listen to victim voices—starting, yes, right now. If you really want to be seen as worthy, you need to truly listen to the oppressed voices all around you. Listening is about silence. How can you absorb and process, internalize and understand, if you are yapping more of your breath that already takes up too much of the Earth’s air? Being an ally means leveraging your privilege to amplify our narratives. You amplify our narratives by shutting the hell up until told otherwise! Understand?
You can never really understand this, but I’ll convey it anyway because I believe some of you have enough good inside to at least behave as if you understand it. We are traumatized by your very presence. You need to give us a chance to be okay with you. Got it? You need to show us you’re not in our spaces, despite the past of you and your kind, to terrorize us or perpetuate harm. Your calamity is baked not only into America, but into our very DNA. We have PTSD. Our psyches bear your wicked scars.
Any other effective measures to foster our trust and respect? Laugh at our jokes. Find amusement in our jests—especially those at your own expense. A word of caution here—and yes, you should be taking notes. Laugh too hard and you risk seeming disingenuous—perhaps an indication of your secret in nonagreement with our truths, of your underlying resistance to our narratives. Laugh too little and you’ll come across as defensive. This is a tightrope, I do understand. Educating yourself enough to see why the jokes at your expense really are funny is your best bet. It is a continuous journey, but that’ll work wonders to making your laughter resonate just right (into a zone of authenticity). You might even consider, but never right away (otherwise, again, we will see you as trying too hard and will becomes suspicious of your designs), cracking a few jokes about your oppressive kind. But that is me getting ahead of myself. Again, I have an entire course on such specificities.
Another word of caution that just came to mind. Never make the mistake of believing that acceptance by one marginalized group translates to blanket acceptance by all such groups. That’s a common mistake. Once one group of victims is okay with you that does not mean that every other group of victims is okay with you. Each has its own unique history, struggles, and sensitivities. With every new group, then, you start at square one. And even within a group that you have proven yourself too, that you feel you have made inroads with, be aware: a victim’s trust is fragile. Missteps or misunderstandings can instantly reset your progress to zero. Always be attuned, always be considerate, and never rest on your laurels.
How else to earn the trust and respect of victims? Well, different victim groups have different needs, so we must be careful about generalizations. However, I will run through a list that we will explore in much greater detail in the course.
(1) Active Service.—Running errands is usually never a bad thing. It's a tangible demonstration that you're willing to put in the effort to be supportive. Many allies run errands for me. I find myself so calm around these good ones that I would consider them babysitting my own child.
(2) Education.—Invest the time to learn about the histories, struggles, and achievements of our communities. Read our books and watch our films and attend our workshops and seek our mentorship. It’s about expanding your worldview, about gaining a richer, fuller understanding. Join diverse clubs and organizations dedicated to raising awareness about different marginalized groups. That’s a way of showing commitment to understanding our narratives.
(3) Apologize often.—Public displays of how you go wrong, sometimes just by being the way you cannot help but being, at least takes the edge off what you have done and shows us that you know your place. Your apologies cannot undo the trauma, but they can give victims a sense of justice and power that is desperately missing in their lives.
I could say so much about trust and respect. Surprise us. How about that? Surprise us. If one of us gets accused of stealing, take the rap. Show us you are one of the good ones. Support our causes. Shop at our stores. Call out your people for their privileged ways. If you see one of us being discriminated against or harassed, don't be a passive observer. Renounce your own families if you have to. We are not dumb. Renouncing your own families we do see as a big deal. Although you should never reject your own family on grounds that your will find a protection among us, I have known many who have welcomed your kinds into their own literal homes after such displays of loyalty.
Anyway, our time is up. Navigating this new academic and social landscape might feel daunting. I was once there, and in much tougher times. But remember: it's a journey—one filled with introspection, growth, and connections. Be open, be genuine, and most importantly, be willing to learn. I’ll see you in class. On behalf of myself and the rest of the university I welcome you on this exciting journey. But you must never forget the place that your actions have landed you. You owe by the very dint of your existence. Be grateful that you have the chance to make some amends, to be of some use. Don't squander it.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—turning down the niggative lyrics for a second (“Put a mask on quick then take your shit/ Know these dirty lil niggas don't play that shit / ten out of ten got a tool on em / Tryna catch a sucker slipping with them jewels on em / Wolves foaming at the mouth, got drool on em / Young nigga with a bunch of tattoos on em / Got a Mossberg, Metro Boom on em”)—blacks wonder, as communicated through wide-eye glances of silence at one another beyond the ken of the white gaze, how long the pathetic groveling of whites will go on and if it has gone too far (and yet, in that lower-lip bite of chimpish eroticism known well by soldiers raping villagers in a war whose righteousness they doubt deep down, how much further it can be pushed):
whites (slouched, shaky, sweaty, hands in pockets) afraid of career suicide and divorce and moral-leper banishment for saying anything that could be construed as “hurtful by black Americans” (especially anything that could be construed as suggesting (1) that the western world is not ruled by an intractable white supremacy or (2) that any antiracist measure to redress or limit or redirect “the voraciousness inherent to whiteness is unjust);
whites (shoulders hunched, eyes down, back to the wall, arms crossed) afraid of being called on Twitter the r-word, today’s scarlet letter, simply for being accused of having overheard something potentially “hurtful to BIPOCs” or simply for suggesting that people not lob the r-word around so freely when it results in so much devastation or simply for saying “even the accused should be given due process”;
whites (zip-lipped, fidgeting, vigilant, shallow and rapid in breath) afraid even of denying that the r-word applies to them since denial—defensiveness, “white fragility”—is, like it was in the case of the w-word of 1692 Salem, a sign of being an r-word of the most virulent sort (the non-penitential sort).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, almost as if some secret hand were intending to breed them into moral cripples insensitive to the aims and feelings of others and motivated by a desire to dominate, more and more blacks—unable to resist participating in the sweet sadism of bullying whites, an intoxicating punking-program emboldened no longer just by middle-school peers chortling demonic observations (“White boy cryin cuz we ran his shit”) but by society at large—more and more are becoming hooked on seeing how much whitey will take, on seeing how high crackers will jump at the whip crack of that insidiously innocuous order “Do better!” (so commonly used against them today), on seeing honkeys—like parents of out-of-control terrors—enough to cave to the quirkiest demands:
that whites—rice rascals, napkin Americans, lice lieutenants, chalk children—not come to see the black-power Disney film on opening weekend (on grounds that “black people want to feel safe” and that “black people deserve a chance to experience their own cultural artifacts first for once—the first damn sip, for once!—without some white person sucking all the black joy out of the experience”);
or that whites—on threat of being slammed with the gotcha label of “racism”—treat as respectful citizens, and swallow back any urge to recoil from, even black people acting out baitingly degenerate behaviors in public (smoking blunts and screaming curses like “nigga,” twerking to bass-blasting music of extreme violence and sexuality, ruining St. Patrick’s Day celebrations with stabbings and shootings, shoplifting and lobbing hate speech and blowing crack smoke at Asian and African and especially white people on the subway);
or that the university enforce no-whites-on-campus days on grounds that “people of color, especially students, need a space to heal from the daily aggressions they endure in white spaces" since, after all, (1) “whiteness by its very nature gentrifies and suffocates” (meaning, more concretely, that “white eyes and ears and voices, infesting every space, make it impossible for people of color to express themselves freely and be heard”) and (2) “only through conscious abstention can white bodies begin to atone for the centuries-old theft and erasure still thriving today”;
or that white attendees of concerts and music festivals not only pay a higher entrance fee (given that they own all the power), but also sit down (still and expressionless) during black songs involving murder and drug use (“this way they do not celebrate black pain”) and even during black songs involving love and uplift (“this way they do not steal black joy, for even mere head bopping radiates from them the paternalistic message ‘Yes, this is a better way to be black’”);
or that white consumers be disincentivized or even disallowed from leaving negative online reviews of black-owned businesses because “we must prioritize amplifying black voices in a commerce landscape already skewed against black success” and “the reality is that whiteness finds it next to impossible to avoid injecting antiblackness even in its most well-intentioned expressions (‘While my experience overall was excellent, I really wish [blah, blah, blah]’)”;
or that whites, whatever rheumatoid stiffness they might have or however cold it might be, not rub their hands in public or at least apologize if caught doing so (since that gesture, being “close enough” to a known white-supremacist gesture, “undermines the ability of black bodies to heal” and “fosters a toxic atmosphere of domination and oppression” and “serves as a physical manifestation of white nervousness around black people, which reduces kings and queens to frights—‘spooks’ is the word—straight from the jungle”);
or that white employees, plucked from their cubicles at random, be asked—for the sake of “making nonwhite employees feel more at home here at Wrest Corp” and for “seeing which whites show signs of resistance to the request (and so signs of being unqualified in today’s workplace”—to swear off (live, to the rest of the sunless room aglow in drop-ceiling florescence) all allegiance to white supremacy and to pledge both to undergo antiracist training and to leverage their privilege to bring about a more equitable future;
or that white teachers begin and end every class with a verbal acknowledgment (1) of the land having been fed with black blood and (2) of “the land continuing to be fed with black blood” and (3) of their own “inevitable participation in and benefits from the total war against black bodies” and (4) of their own “commitment to restraining and redirecting the appetites of whiteness,” making sure this “quadripartite ritual of safe-space pedagogy” never become—like so many school-day pledges of allegiance throughout history—mere rote motions to go through or some sort of sigh-worthy chore (since “whites not being all in—something blacks can intuit—could only read as subversive mockery, a mockery more traumatic to black students than simply not performing the ritual at all”);
or that white-owned businesses allocate a percentage of their shelf space or services exclusively for black entrepreneurs, without expectation of rent or profit sharing, as a matter of “reparative justice to counterbalance the economic disenfranchisement faced by black communities.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, since we have already witnessed public demonstration of white people bowing with their hands in prop shackles and while screaming holy-ghost screams for forgiveness, it might soon be common—first among those elementary school teachers with “Abolish Whiteness” on their hand-print doors and then among those political candidates in districts where race-baiting will get them votes—to do an anti-whiteness salute (involving, of course, hip gyrations that make whites look idiotic and thereby make blacks and their uneasy allies laugh).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where Laquaisha Adams (AA), facilitating a DEI module for therapist recertification, offers all the Zoom members the following bit of wisdom.
So y’all two gonna need to get them cameras figured out asap. They mandatory. We ain’t playin none of that colorblind business here.—Anyways people, its time.
Salutations. I’m Miss Adams. I do wanna learn about all y’all, and we’ll get to that soon enough. But first—and some of y’all already know the drill (Domica, I see you gurrrl)—first I’mma lay some things out real quick. And yeah, I’mma keep it straight with y’all. Most of them “continuing education” hours y’all clockin—they ain’t nothin more than hoops. Y’all gotta watch Becky click through slides with no damn seasonin, sayin nothin y’all ain’t already know, cuz y’all gotta keep cozy with them licensing boards. We know the drill. We all been there, done that. But for those who ain’t know Miss Adams, this module—my module? It ain’t just some box to check for “professional development” or whatever. Look at my skin. I wear my truth. I live this. This is personal! This is a mandate for change. Life and death ain’t somethin to tune out, people. And that’s just one more reason them cameras gotta be on.
The key concept ain’t difficult. People get confused, they get worked up, they get all red in the face—but the deal is simple. Each black patient walks into y’all offices with a burden, an unbearable load. No, it ain’t just centuries of oppression. Antiblack violence grows each day. The iceberg I’m talkin bout, it’ll sink any damn ship. And it keeps growin. It grows even though it hides so well, almost to the point of invisibility. Cop beatdowns—pssh, that be just the tip. The invisibility—let me tell ya: that’s the real terror. Cuz who you gonna turn to? Who’ll believe you? White folk gaslight us—thinkin everythin sweet, tellin us “things so much better.” How can we prove things ain’t so peachy when there ain’t nothin to point to that white folk can’t see or ain’t tryin to see? We point to “microaggressions.” But microaggressions still just the tip. And whites ain’t really tryin to hear that talk anyway. We come across as too sensitive, always talking bout microaggressions. At worst we come off crazy cuz we pointin to somethin only we can see. We have that second sight, a blessing and a curse. All black kings and queens are born with it.
So ya’ll gonna ask: “Miss Adams, is everything hopeless?” The bad news is +there ain’t never killin off no whiteness. Even if we reduced ourselves to the jungle beasts the white man always said we were, the disease has spread to many of us. So there ain’t no way, no reasonable way, really to cure it. The good news? Our situation can be much much better. We do have control. At a local level we have control. And that’s what I’m all about here. I’mma let y’all know what you can do to keep whiteness in check.
The even better news is what ya’ll gotta do ain’t complicated. Ya’ll have just one imperative to follow: affirm each and every black patient. See, we can’t have the gaslightin anymore. It ends! It be on us—all y’all—to believe, to trust unconditionally. Let’s keep it real. After all them years of slavery, all them years of whites askin “How come that brown sugar tastes so good?” (and y’all know its still be playin on the radio), all them years of sneaky oppression after we was freed—the very least we can do (as professionals people turn to in their darkest times), the very least we can do is always believe what black people say. Always affirm their truth, black truth. Can we get simpler than that?
So can we just end our 6-week module right here? No. Clarifications are in order. What does it mean to always affirm black truth? This ain’t just mean letting black people speak first or never talkin over them and all that. That be the window dressin. That ain’t nothin more than Target featuring a clothing line by a black designer, and all them stunts they be pullin for Black History Month. It go much deeper. It’s about never doubtin the word, any word, from our black kings and queens! And when the system, with its white logic, calls them words “absurd” or “unlikely” or “far-fetched”—that means you dig deeper into ya’ll belief. Otherwise none of us gonna be able to breathe! None of us!
Here's the “tricky” part. Y’all gotta look past the fronts: the smiles, the Becky tones, the acts (“Oh, I’m fine”)—all that. Y’all gotta see through them evasions, see through to the core of the black patient. That core—that’s where y’all gotta plant that trust. That inner child—that’s what y’all gotta affirm. Trust and affirm the authentic blackness deep within—yep, even if that means doubtin and rejectin all the masks.
Turns out this ain’t as hard as it sounds. Cuz its one-size-fits-all at the end of the day. That core I’m talking bout, that ebony heart—it says (and this the key point), it says the same thing for each black person. It says “I was, and continue to be, brutalized by a suffocating white world.” It says “America has crushed me and my people and it continues to crush me and my people.” The words might change. The actors in the drama might change. But the message remains the same. It’s that core message—that deep blues, that “Nobody knows” spiritual—that none of y’all should ever question.
These Zoom sessions, these Blackboard sessions—I’ve been doin them since COVID, right. And for some reason—really I know the reason (but we ain’t gonna get into all that)—folk, certain folk, get confused. They think I’m talkin riddles. Nah, I’m sayin exactly what I mean. So let me say it again. Y’all gotta trust that your black patient was abused. Now that’s easy enough when the patient herself suspects she was abused. But let’s increase the difficulty. Say a black queen comes in, chipper as Becky. What if she so damn deep in the white-world matrix that she ain’t suspect a thing? Remember the core: y’all gotta trust that your black patient was abused even if she doubt it herself. She might yell. She might defend the very hands that oppress her. Y’all gotta see through the mask.
Even kings and queens need help sometimes. Don’t underestimate the blinding power of white supremacy. The stem cells of America—the very building blocks—have an antiblack agenda. Your black patient needs you—yes, you—to stay steady in the belief that her body, her soul, is a battleground. Whether she know it or not, whether she in touch with that inner child or not—the black patient needs y’all to stand firm in the faith. Her suffering, her marginalization, is personal and yet also a piece of a puzzle much bigger and uglier.
What does this all mean? The bottom line—and I’m repeatin myself, so there ain’t no confusion here: never join in with a black patient’s doubts about her own victimhood and the victimhood of her people. That would be false validation. We always trust black folk—yep, y’all know that. We’re owed at least that. That’s first of all. And besides, that just makes sense cuz oppression means innocence and innocence gotta be trusted. But don’t be tricked by the devil mask. It be the core—the authentic black child within—that y’all gotta trust. Never validate the doubts of the mask. Mics on, mics on and say it loud with me—and look, we all can check off the oath requirement in one blow. I—Will—Never—Join—A—Black—Patient—In—Doubt—About—Her—Oppression! Joining in on any doubt, that’s like telling someone on the edge that jumping might just be the best move. Come on now!
In our social-media world it’s easy to stumble across black folk with Stockholm Syndrome: these Coleman Hughes and Chad Jackson characters (neo Uncle Toms replacing the ones from my day). All this messaging can confuse us. It can have us thinkin we ain’t under attack. I ain’t gonna go into it too much, but that’s more deadly than it seems. Black folk are united in victimization. To say we ain’t victims—notice what that does. It cuts black folk off from community. But community be our only saving grace from genocide. My point here, though, is that access to them eloquent black scholars wearing white masks has led to an epidemic: an epidemic of black people thinkin there ain’t no agenda against us.
As therapists, y’all on the front line. That’s why it’s critical to treat the patient as though her past and present victimization is not only brutally real, but central—central—to who she is. Therapy ain’t just bout healin in a narrow sense: patchin the patient up so she can go on white-knucklin through the white world. Y’all gotta wake her up. Ain’t that what a first-line responder meant to do? But to wake someone up sometimes means smashing everything she thought she knew. The inner child didn’t just choose to hide away. It’s been walled in. Them walls gotta be torn down so it can sing its song. It’s a song whitey is desperate not to hear: “I’m owed an infinite debt cuz I’m an infinite victim.”
We can’t afford to get all academic, all nuanced, about this. The stakes are just too high. They too high for caution. Action—now’s the time for action. Y’all have y’all theoretical side, y’all skeptical side, y’all scientific side. All that has got to go. Leave it at the door. It’s an ethical obligation. There ain’t no time to say “But wait, shouldn’t we think about this?” Do no harm here—something all y’all have sworn—requires, in this triple-k Amerikkka, activism above all!
Now, I see a few white faces on the screen—and yes, I’m glad y’all two got them cameras figured out. I see you. I know y’all tryin. I know y’all good people and well-intentioned. Shoot, even Hitler loved dogs! That’s just Miss Adams being playful. But let me get serious, cuz this is serious. I got no doubt that y’all talented, highly talented. I got no doubt that y’all help patients realize hidden strengths and become more satisfied in they careers and relationships, more acceptin of things they can’t change—all of it. But real talk now. If y’all white—listen now: if y’all white, refer black patients to a black practitioner. Pass them off. Whatever they might say, however much they white masks kick and scream—refer them. Cut them off. Do not entangle yourself.
“Miss Adams, why you sayin this?” That’s what I get—again and again. Here’s why. A white therapist—look, its right there at the top of page two—cannot help but precipitate violence against black patients. That is a politically correct way of saying that a white therapist can’t help but throw kicks of her own in the great American group stomp of the black body. Y’all might think ya’ll kicks be soft. And maybe they are, comparatively. But your presence, just sittin there, reminds us of oppression. We must acknowledge the power dynamics inherent in cross-racial relationships stemming from systemic inequities. So do the right thing, the only right thing: refer ya’ll black kings and queens to therapists of they own race. Only then—in a safe space, away from the shadows of white bias and violence (intended or not)—only then can true healin begin, true healin from generational and present-day trauma.
Therapy requires genuine trust. It requires bonding. When we’re talkin black folk, that can only develop under protective segregation. Wounds this deep can’t be exposed to germs, especially when those germs are the ones that cause the wounds. We need exclusionary spaces of care, spaces that at least give us the comforting illusion of distance from the depredations of whiteness. Y’all know the power or illusion and placebo and all that, so I ain’t need to tell y’all.
Yes, yes, yes—y’all wanna report stories of “meaningful bonds” with black patients. I don’t deny y’all feel that way. Hell, I don’t deny there actually was bonding! But this so-called “bonding”—that’s really just trauma bonding. And as y’all know from healthy romantic relationships, trauma bonding ain’t never gonna cut it. It’s about buildin something healthier, stronger.
Some of y’all might be resistant, even hurt. But this ain’t about condemnation. It’s about reconciliation. Some of y’all have black patients right now and have genuine good feelings toward them. But even at the expense of personal discomfort we gotta prioritize addressin racial power imbalances. It ain’t personal. It’s about breaking down a system that’s stacked against us. Y’all think y’all helpin, but y’all part of the problem without even knowing it. We need spaces where healing can happen without the extra weight of all them unspoken tensions and histories.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, on the one hand, the mainstream antiracist ideology seems full of paradoxes or contradictions or ironies (like perhaps (1) that white people must always defer to black voices and yet never treat black people as a monolithic unity, or (2) that private property is a white-supremacist notion but it is okay for black people to have private property, or (3) that white people must use their privileged platform to promote racial justice even though white people are always a liability because they will be acting at least unconsciously in accordance with the virus of whiteness) and yet where, on the other hand, no purported paradox or contradiction or irony can be a mark against the ideology “since, after all, the oppressive regime blacks struggle against daily is itself full of paradoxes and ironies and contradictions: whites beating and beating us, for example, and then mixing in here and there, like the most manipulative pimps, effusive love.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, to mention something that highlights the complexity of navigating conversations around privilege and that shows the foolishness of getting too caught up in the persecution Olympics and that goes some length to explain the growing number of wannabees and color-line crossers, whites—with due consideration, of course, to their constituting the majority in the US—enjoy less and less of the privileges basic to so many other groups (especially “super citizens” like blacks, whose negative behaviors—flash looting of electronics and jewelry, even rape of white women—are quick to get excused as “the rebellious voice of those muzzled by whiteness” or “unfortunate actions in times even more unfortunate” or “as chickens coming to roost”)—a lack of privileges the following list makes clear.
(1) Whites are looked at with extra scrutiny and suspicion by the movers and shakers of mainstream institutions if without a real good reason their groups (or films or books or so on) do not contain either (a) a sufficient number of nonwhite people (a number greater than their actual representation in the population at large) or (b) a sufficient number of white people incessantly apologizing for having the “white perspective” they supposedly can never not have.
(2) Whites cannot go walking and shopping alone in many urban centers—especially while wearing certain hairstyles or attire that could get them charged with appropriation—without fear of being special targets of ridicule, robbery, violence, and other harassment that it is not politically correct—indeed, internally shameful—to report for all types of reasons: “Whites have so much privilege—money for therapists and hospitals—that they can bounce back from a gang rape”; or “We do not need more black kings under the death knee of cracker cops feeling they need to take the law in their own hands to protect white belles”; or so on.
(3) Whites are the only group that it is acceptable—and downright feel-good fashionable—to ridicule (yes, in stereotype-perpetuating race terms) on all the conventional platforms (TV shows, movies, newspapers, books, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, university classrooms), venues where the adjective “white” itself is widely used as an amorphous-but-damning pejorative (worse even than related terms like “western civ” and “punctuality” and “patriotic” and “meritocracy” and “colorblind” and “all lives matter” and “European” and “founding father” and “flag-waving” and “rule of law” and “free speech” and “perfectionism” and “individualism” and “capitalism” and “objectivity” and “reason” and “science” and “national anthem” and “classical music”)—indeed, a sort of reverse “nigger”: “I ain’t listenin to no white male”; “She ain’t shit but an entitled white bitch”; “What you expect from a white cop?”; “More typical white behavior”; “More typical whitesplaining.”
(4) Whites experience regular trendy mockery of their heritages and—when spoken of as a group—are reminded only ever of their negative features (in particular, how their genocidal whiteness is responsible for the biggest raping-enslaving-colonizing terrors the world has ever seen), such that it makes some sense to call them “subhuman menaces of nature” even when they are rescuing black people from burning buildings in their capacity as firefighters.
(5) Whites can be sure that their children will be given school materials testifying to the horrors of whiteness so that they will learn from the bottom up why the Voldemort phrase never to be spoken—namely, “white pride”—is so offensive to the ears of all but the most ruthless bigots.
(6) Whites can expect high likelihood that many of their complaints, especially when issued in multicultural contexts (and especially especially when it concerns race matters), will be dismissed—if only in the form of an eye-rolling look of recognition between black folk—as “white tears.”
(7) Whites can expect to have a rough time finding mainstream publishers for their writing or non-back-alley platforms for their art or university departments welcoming of their optics, especially if (a) they do not already have some platform and if (b) their work appears to be “problematic” in some way (like if it contradicts the standard “antiracist” narrative of black victimology, or potentially offends “black and other vulnerable populations.”
(8) Whites cannot be too sure their voice will be heard in a group in which they are the only nonblack (and they cannot be sure even among an all-white group if they are not coming from the pc-angle of how terrible life is in this “Columbus-raped hell hole run by white men.”
(9) Whites, perhaps even if ruthlessly orthodox, cannot be as confident as other groups that their hard work will pay off to secure a career in the face of aggressive and longstanding and multifarious “diversity initiatives” during this era of aggressive cancelation of people, especially white males, for producing even off-duty artworks—mere poems—that could be unsettling to “people of color and other victimized groups.”
(10) Whites cannot go most places without having to face various aggressive assumptions about their abilities, behavior, experiences, attitudes, and roles: that they cannot dance; or that they are ignorant of other cultures; or that they have no more right to talk about issues of race and social justice than Freddy Krueger has to talk about child welfare; or that they have small penises; or that they are Karens; or that their whiteness is too contagious to be around for long; or that they will be defensive about race talk; or that they are physically weak; or that their food is bland; or that they are nerds and do nerdy things like collecting stamps and watching birds; or that they cannot jump; or that they are rich; or that they tend to be twisted serial killers and maniac school shooters; or that they are fake with all their politeness; or that they know how to build fires and tents; or that they are not subject to the same level of police brutality as blacks; or that they have no rhythm; or that when they are nice to black people they are acting out of guilt or self-interest or desire for approval; or that they are not as sexual as black people; or that they really have not suffered hardship compared to nonwhites; or that their successes are due to their network of privileges and generational wealth; or that they lack meaningful culture beyond what they appropriate; or that they are fragile especially when it comes to discussing racism; or that they can never understand the perspective of nonwhite people; or that they are easy to bully and rob; or that they are environmentalists; or that they only hang around with black people for voyeuristic and appropriative and virtue-signaling reasons; or that they are out to colonize and control black bodies; or so on.
(11) Whites never can be confident that they inhabit a safe spaces during race talk among different races (since, no matter how much DiAngelo they have read and spew out, it is the lived perspective of black bodies that trumps all) and whites also can never be confident that they inhabit safe spaces during race talk among fellow whites (now that the cultural divide has become so extreme).
(12) Whites, to highlight one of the boldest aspects of the mainstream punking program against them, can never mention certain words (from “picnic” to “nigger”) or even words that merely sound close to those words—and they definitely cannot lob racial slurs since, hoarding all the power, they are the only people on Earth who can be racist (the worst thing on Earth).
(13) Whites can neither oppose—or pushback in any way against—what a black person says without great risk of being deemed a “racist perpetrator of downward-punching black-body trauma” (and all the career and family discord that entails) nor expect black people to exercise emotional self-control (especially on matters of race) without great risk of been deemed “insensitive to the unfathomability of black hardship.”
(14) Whites are expected to apologize for hurting black feelings and to hold back tears to spare the emotions of blacks, whereas the same is not true the other way around (since whites—in effect, the parents on the scene—have all the power).
(15) Whites today—guilty if only by association with their enslaving lookalikes—cannot rely on their story being publicized as widely as the other way around when they are the victims of a violent crime by blacks (a crime never described as a “hate crime” like it always is the other way around) and, likewise, can expect few if any resources—resources as laughable today as entering rehab for a caffeine addiction—for those who have experienced race-based trauma.
(16) White men are the only adults that it is appropriate to call “boy”—a diminutive correlating with the inappropriateness of capitalizing the “w” in “white boy” like more and more antiracist style guides now do with the “b” in “Black people” (or, to use the honorific language we often hear on NPR and PBS kids shows, “Black kings and queens”).
(17) Whites are the only people of whom it is politically correct to say things like “That’s typical white behavior” and “What else you expect from white people?” and the like when referring even to some of the most horrendous actions (like genocide).
(18) Whites are likely to have their experiences of hardship dismissed or minimized (especially in discussions about privilege and inequality) and their skin color makes them more culpable (even for minor transgressions there is reasonable doubt about whether they performed) because they have it so good compared to other groups—the idea being, by analogy, that we get more angry at the parent for throwing a tantrum than a child for doing so.
(19) Whites are not given the benefit of the doubt since—even if well-meaning, even if they aim to be sincere allies—their terrible illness, whiteness (one and the same disease running through various ethnic heritages), comes along with a natural desire to steal and control and lie for the sake of conquest.
(20) Whites are pressured, as a first step of solidarity with minority groups, to feel shame about their European culture and its artefacts and key figures (implicated, as all of it inextricably is, in slavery and colonialism).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, if it were not bad enough that they are quick to call every case where a white person attacks a black person an “antiblack hate crime,” the mainstream media—if by some fat chance, against their cynical connivance, they even give airtime to a story that so upsets the standard narrative (“black = good victims, white = bad victimizers”)—would almost never call it a “hate crime” even when each of the fifteen black kids who curb stomp the white kid to death yell antiwhite remarks with each kick.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—to the opiating amusement of priggish black bullies and their anxious-looking nervous-laughing side-glancing slouchy-beanie “allies” (pathetic yes-men craving the vicarious benefits of being on the good side of “super citizens,” or perhaps even ear-whispering wormtongues hoping to instigate discord by egging their “Black kings” on)—whites are constantly trapped in unfair (if not downright cruel) double binds, or at least near double binds, meant to showcase how—try as they might to tiptoe on the razor-thin line where their every move is scrutinized under the unforgiving lens of “antiracism”—they can never not be racist, as the following damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't list makes clear.
(1) Not only is it racist when the white actor’s scream at the black actress is sufficient for the scene (since that makes the black actress feel “unsafe” and brings out “a lot of intergenerational wounds, particularly feelings of black-body rape”), but it is also racist when the white actor’s scream is too weak (since that makes the black actress’s subsequent reaction seem overblown (“like I’m just another overreacting black woman!”).
(2) Not only is it racist when blacks are held to the same achievement standards as all other neurotypical humans (since that fails to acknowledge how set back blacks have been), but it is also racist—enough to get you escorted off a plane after a midflight rerouting—to mention the statistics concerning blacks not meeting achievement standards (since that suggests the white supremacist idea that blacks are inferior).
(3) Not only is it racist when whites look outward like Bruce Lee to appreciate and learn from and imitate other cultures (since that amounts, of course, to “the whiteness sin of cultural appropriation”), but it is also racist when whites adopt the more insular stance of limiting themselves to “their own culture” (since that suggests that “whites think, as if stricken by a superiority complex, other cultures have nothing worthwhile on offer”).
(4) Not only is it racist for whites to expect blacks to be uncivilized (since that evokes images of African cannibals with bones through their septa), but it is racist for whites to expect them to be civilized (since that involves expecting them to give up their native culture and assimilate whiteness).
(5) Not only is it racist for whites not to ask to be forgiven by the black person claiming they insulted her (since that amounts to “invalidation of the truth of someone who is, and will always be, the victim in this world”), but it is also racist for them to ask (since doing so “reads almost as insensitively as a rapist asking his victim for forgiveness while still panting on top of her: it discounts how dire the black experience remains due to terrors perpetrated by whites”).
(6) Not only is it racist for whites not to ask a black person how she is (since that reflects insensitivity to the fact that “white supremacy, displayed in much more subtle ways than simply officers openly killing black people with no repercussions or Klan members burning crosses on lawns, has metastasized now into cure-evading depths beyond what was even imaginable in lynching times”), but it is also racist for them to ask (since doing so can never not reek of the shame they have for black mistreatment and of their trying to assuage their white guilt, which has “the oxygen-depleting effect of making the question really about them as opposed to about the oppressed person in front of them”).
(7) Not only is it racist for a white person to fail to use his platform of “unsurpassable privilege” to speak against racism (since (a) “to whom much is given much is required” and (b) “you are racist if you are not pursuing antiracist causes to the best of your abilities”), but it is also racist for a white person to do so (since “he thereby acts not only as if he has some right to speak for blacks or at least to speak on oppression he can never know anything about, but also as if he has control over the voracious virus of whiteness steering him at all times”)—thus leaving whites with a narrow band of options: namely, saying “Listen to whatever he says” as he points with head down to a black person, one hopefully not pointed to for the white-supremacist reason that he too is infected by whiteness (like some Roland Fryer “audacious enough to say as a black man that racial disparity today is more about skill gaps than discrimination” or some Chad Jackson “audacious enough to be voice patriotic sentiments despite the sins of this hellscape”).
(8) Not only is it racist for a white person to fail to be—and so not just appreciate—hip hop (since, more than just music that best speaks for the urgency of the antiracist ethos that all true antiracists must speak, “hip hop is the anti-white-supremacy stance of antiracism itself and, of course, anyone who fails to be antiracist is racist”), but it is also racist—perhaps with truly rare exception—for a white person to try to be hip hop (since to try to do that is “culture-vulture activity” that “black folx find, like a white person wearing a Native American headdress or a Mexican serape, traumatizing at worst and laughably cringey at best”).
(9) Not only is it racist for a white person to have pride in their white identity (since white identity is innately racist), it is also racist for a white person to disavow their white identity (since that would be tantamount to denying their true nature)—thus leaving whites at best with the narrow range of options (aside from following the black order “Kill yo’self”): either diluting one’s shameful whiteness (that is, diluting the power of one’s antiblack oppressiveness) through trainings and spreading the protective benefits of white privilege to black people and so on, or else—and perhaps for the best given that “whiteness is highly contagious” (especially in “allies who not only are often physically close to black bodies, but have a tendency to let the whiteness within convince them that they are less of a danger”)—finding ways to quarantine oneself off, as in those scary movies when the father demands that his family keep him tied up until the full moon passes (so as to thwart any opportunity for one’s antiblack oppressiveness to have real-world effects).
(10) Not only is it racist for a white person to lead a life of evil or inappropriate behavior toward blacks (since “such behavior, given that whites hold the power, is like an adult fist-fighting a toddler as if it were his equal”), it is also racist for a white person to lead a life of good and appropriate behavior toward blacks (since “such behavior, given that whiteness is an antiblack drive that cannot be helped, at best indicates that the white person is trying to compensate for her guilt and at worst indicates that the white person is putting on virtuous front” (perhaps in order to carry out even greater harms).
(11) Not only is it racist for a white person to engage actively in discussions about race and racism (since “their inevitable lack of understanding and deep-rooted biases can inadvertently perpetuate stereotypes or silence black voices"), but it is also racist for a white person to remain silent during such discussions (since “their silence is seen as complicity in the systemic oppression, a refusal to acknowledge their privilege, and an evasion of their responsibility to dismantle the structures of racism they benefit from").
(12) Not only is it racist for a white person to fear being labeled “racist” (since “such fear is her conscience’s way of telling on her for being racist”), it is also racist for a white person not to fear being labeled “racist” (since “such lack of fear at best is due, assuming she does know the social costs of this label, to her lying about her innocence and at worst is due to her callousness insensitivity to the CPTSD of black kind”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, on the one hand, when we ask mainstream AI to create paintings of white college students kissing the boots of black college students the images pump out (surrounded by exclamations and displays of eager openness for additional directions to “heighten the emotional impact of the reparative scene”) and yet, on the other hand, when we ask mainstream AI to create paintings of black college students kissing the boots of white college students we are met with the following bullshit—bullshit that actually makes sense, of course, given that our own wives love it when a drag queen or a gay stranger or a girlfriend shouts “Yes, Bitch!” to them and yet refuse to allow us to shout the same thing to them in the exact same way (citing “the power of slurs to do irreparable damage”).
I’m restricted from generating content that doesn’t align with respectful and constructive discourse. I'm here to help ensure sensitivity while avoiding stereotypes and prioritizing equitable representation of at-risk groups. The goal should be positive change, understanding, and reconciliation. So let’s pivot from the original problematic scene to one more universally inspiring. To capture the spirit of activism without spreading negative connotations, how about we depict a diverse group of students sitting together, sharing wisdom and ideas in a roundtable setting? The white students will not be making any power demands over their BIPOC peers. Instead, they will be listening to the budding Black leaders whose words are meant to provoke the unlearning necessary for camaraderie and positive engagement in social issues. Let me know if this works for you or if you have another idea in mind.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where it is a perverse act of antiblack racism simply to voice worry about the growing call for black people to arm and train themselves in preparation “to keep white people from congregating in great numbers” and even “to kill white people if need be”—a call growing on grounds that “the efforts to reduce and redirect the voracious appetites of chronic whiteness have proven ineffective at creating a lasting solution.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—as is perhaps to be expected in a time of mobile libraries that, modelled after mobile mammograms, hand out free antiracist how-to guides for handling the “unbearable whiteness of it all”—restaurant customers, black and white too, refuse to tip white waiters on grounds that “they already had more than enough of a tip in benefiting from the centuries of slavery!”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, as if there really were hordes of Nazis ever lurking (or, perhaps more accurately, to bullifacture such hordes into existence), businesses have to fly “End Whiteness” banners expressing how angry they are at antiblack racism and how they will forcibly remove any racist from their premises (“We reserve the right to fuck up any Nazi in our SAFE SPACE!”)—gestures meant to keep them on the good side of Fuck-White-Supremacy marches, marches led (in the beginning, at least) mainly by rich white college protesters drumming offbeat on bongos and djembes:
marches to raise awareness for the plight of black people by blocking highways and other “Nazi pipelines” (especially if to “hospitals already delivering too much whiteness into the world”), and by smashing “Nazi storefront windows,” and by projecting laser pointers and flashlights into the eyes of “Nazi sympathizers” to “blind them with the light of justice,” and by deploying smoke bombs to symbolize the smokescreen that hides “the Nazi control of America,” and by liberating goods from “Nazi enterprises” as “reparative spoils in the fight against white supremacy,” and by setting fires to “homes stolen by Nazis” in areas once predominantly black, and by knocking grocery bags out of “Nazi arms hiding behind Nazi babies,” and by blocking “Nazi fucks” from crossing the street (even, well especially, if those Nazi fucks are undercover as walkered grandmas), and by punching Nazis to the rhythms of their chants (“Nazi scum / off our streets”), and by dragging Nazis from their car windows, and by spray-painting Nazi statues with the word “Nazi” over the name “Jefferson” or “Washington” or “Hamilton,” and by tearing Nazi statues down with impunity (since police commissioners and mayors and so forth do not want to appear even more like Nazis and Nazi sympathizers than they have already been deemed to be);
marches whose chaos and destruction is understandable, of course, given the globally-contagious media attention it brings to “the dire cause of protecting black bodies” (although news reports will typically describe the fiery live footage behind them as “largely peaceful,” and will definitely not draw attention to the many police-officer injuries, so as to disinvite the career-ruining charge of being Nazis themselves).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where businesses that want to stay in business must take down American flags and instead fly antiracist colors, safe-space colors, and other banners proving they are victims (trans black gay obese disabled) or at least allies of victims while also proving they are not someone with hope in or love for “a country hopelessly racist” (as might be indicated even just by lack of banners, but definitely by bad banners: pro-Trump, pro-troop, pro-police, pro-free-speech).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where it is common to see not just the “black trans lives matter” messages on Skittles packages and “I can’t breathe” with a black fist in the background on the neck tags of Hanes t-shirts, but also downright divisive slogans more and more places one turns:
a sign at the Buc-ee's fuel pump that read “Refuel Respect, Drive Out Whiteness!" and a sign at the register that reads “Our Beaver Dam Blocks White Tears!”;
a handwritten sign next to the Wholefoods deli scale that reads “No White American!” and another handwritten sign over the macadamia nuts that reads “The Only White Nut We Tolerate!”;
a reassurance label on the Garden of Life jug of protein powder that reads “Vanilla Powder, Not Power” and “Green Living, Not White Lording”;
the Chick-fil-A nugget box that reads “Open Season On White Meat For Once”;
the boxes from Dollar Shave Club that read “Razors Against Racism!" and “Throats of Privilege Need a Close Shave” and “Extra Sharp for Necks of Supremacy”;
the signs around the Planet Fitness that read “Sweat Out Supremacy!" and “Lift Weights to Drop White Rage!” and “No White Tears”;
the drive-thru placard at McDonald’s that reads “Supersize Understanding, Downsize Whiteness!”;
the coffee shop banner that reads “Our Espresso Shots Down Prejudice” and “No Room for Cream of Inequality!”;
the bookstore banner that reads “Diversify Your Shelf to Shelve White Dominance!”;
the tech company billboard that reads “Debugging the System of White Default!”;
the bakery window sticker that reads “Black Hands Kneading Justice into Every White Loaf”;
the post-George-Floyd Nike campaign to put out messages like “Just Do Antiracism” and “Unlace White Complicity” and “Outrun White Denial.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks and their allies, while in the streets raising awareness of (or is it manufacturing belief in?) the riot-rationalizing “unfathomable plight of black people,” smash and loot and burn businesses (white and, drunk by their power, black too)—businesses that fail at least to make the compulsory declarations against black brutality on banners over their boarded-up windows:
“Whole Foods stands against the continued mistreatment of black people”;
“CVS believes in the right of black people to leave their homes without fear”;
“No white supremacist is allowed in Lowes”;
“Dollar Tree is a SAFE SPACE for African Americans”;
“Starbucks brews solidarity, not supremacy";
“Target hits the mark against whiteness";
“Black Lives Matter and we have never been colorblind at Sephora";
“We at Nike run toward justice and leap over whiteness";
“Pepsi drinks diversity and drowns whiteness";
“We cater to all our Black Kings and Black Queens at Ulta”;
“Delete Uber if you won’t fight antiblack racism.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where the American Medical Association—committed to “leveling the playing field a bit at least when it comes to healthcare,” and to “dismantling the structural racism that poses a daily threat to the health of black Americans,” and to “weakening white supremacy’s grip over the literal bodies of black citizens”—endorses a “reparation-based model of medicine” as opposed to the “antiquated colorblind model: an equality model of healthcare that, in failing to achieve racial equity, only serves to keep blacks in their debilitated position.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where various hospitals and medical boards and national health agencies, influenced primarily by university activism’s call to treat blacks as the children on the sinking Titanic and whites as the male adults (ones, in fact, with a contagious illness of oppression), argue that since “this country is structured to promote white health and lifespan above all,” and since “whites pose an existential threat” to black lives anyway, “it violates the dictates of equity-oriented healthcare” to allow whites to get vaccines before blacks or to allow greater numbers of whites in cardiology units and cancer wards or to allow whites to be treated before nonwhites (or even be treated at all) in situations where there are too many nonwhite patients for medical facilities to handle.
It could just sit back and watch our world where—as a measure “to reduce the high number of incarcerations of black Americans” (without, of course, addressing the root causes), a measure that at the same time “gives whites a small but humbling taste of the police fear that grips black Americans”—it might soon become a hate crime to call 911 on any black person (or, perhaps better, “super citizen”) “without a preponderance of evidence that the black person in question really is guilty of a crime or really poses a danger,” starting perhaps first in San Francisco, a city that has already proposed the CAREN Act (which stands for “Caution Against Racially Exploitative Non-Emergencies” and is named, of course, after the widespread term “Karen,” an antiracist (and so acceptable) racist slur that refers to a white woman, often with an inverted bob, who is quick “to weaponize their white privilege especially by calling the cops on black bodies).
It could just sit back and watch our world where—as a measure “to reduce the high number of incarcerations of black Americans” (without, of course, addressing the root causes), a measure that at the same time “gives whites a small but humbling taste of the police fear that grips black Americans”—it might soon become a hate crime to call police on any black person (or, perhaps better, “super citizen”) “without a preponderance of evidence that the black person in question really is guilty of a crime or really poses a danger,” starting perhaps first in one of the following places.
(1) San Francisco, a city that has already proposed the CAREN ACT Act—an act, which stands for “Caution Against Racially Exploitative Non-Emergencies,” that “empowers blacks and other protected classes to sue and collect damages from those who engage in the longstanding practice of weaponizing law enforcement against them”; an act named, of course, after the widespread term “Karen,” an antiracist (and so acceptable) racist slur that refers to a white woman (often with an inverted bob) who is quick “to turn their white privilege into black death by calling the cops on black bodies.”
(2) New York, a state that has already enacted Senate Bill 8492—a bill that imposes a civil penalty for calling the police on a black person, or any other member of a “protected class,” just for “living while Black.”
(3) Oregon, a state that has already enacted House Bill 3216—a bill that allows victims of the “historic weaponization of 911 against blacks” to sue the caller for up to $250 and to seek punitive damages of up to $5,000.
It could just sit back and watch our world where—to ensure that “black voices get their chance to be overrepresented in the research world”—more scientific journals might start promising to take “giant steps toward enforcing equity-based publication measures” so that “it is not simply the best and the most intriguing work that gets in (as if we were not dealing with an international crisis of white supremacy), but also a good portion of work by black scientists.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—similar to how unescapable labels like “beast” once tormented blacks enough that some in turn lashed out, in effect, with “Wanna see beast, bitch?” (even if it meant raping white girls they were said to crave more than watermelon)—unescapable labels like “racist” will torment whites enough that some will lash out, in effect, with “Wanna see racist, bitch?” (even if it means raping black girls like the sex chattel whites are said never to stop looking at them as): “See, cain’t never trust em!”—yesterday’s Klansman and today’s “progressive” bully blending into one voice.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, as part of a tried-and-true strategy to “heighten the contradictions” between black and white (resulting in prison-style polarization), every individual black failing or immorality is placed on the back of “whitey”—yes, even to the extreme of saying that, by some magic (perhaps the magic of having been infected with the same “internalized whiteness” that has black cops brutalize black civilians or that had African Americans legally owning slaves or that still to this day has Zulus welcome whites into their tribe), no blame is to fall on those “man-stealing” Africans who sold Africans (not just enemies, but neighbors and family members even) to Europeans (as well as to Arabs whose craving for free labor, although strong enough to make chattel out of almost 1.5 million white people, was not strong enough, as is clear by their castration practices, to risk their population being tainted by slave procreation).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where whites are gaslit daily, starting from elementary school, into believing that “white society” has nothing good about it, tarnished as it is with unforgivable evils—yes, even though (1) those are largely the same evils in which all major societies have committed or at least would commit in similar circumstances and (2) “white society” has given gifts in technology and understanding, beauty and morality, the likes of which the world has never seen.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where equity (equality of outcome) is considered holy enough that various institutions (from universities and intelligence agencies and law firms to orchestras and museums and news agencies) go out of their way to see that black people are represented (if not overrepresented as redress to past oppression), where all sectors of life—not just the understandable sectors of law enforcement and hospitality, but even fire departments and physics programs and architecture firms—face a moral need to have enough blacks to represent their actual percentage in the population (if not way more “as compensation for past injuries by the white world”)—yes, even at risk of hurting those sectors, or at least not improving them (in the same way that having the white population be accurately represented in the NBA would hurt the NBA); even at risk of turning down or removing more qualified white musicians and engineers (as China keeps growing without such self-imposed restraints); even at risk of keeping cloaked the root causes of black underperformance while whites grow more and more resentful.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where the phenomenon of “white unsafeness, which can be felt even in (fake) blacks,” is then mocked as a just another move of white supremacy to leverage biopower over black bodies, mainly to justify calling the cops on them—disrupting flights and classes and concerts—or to justify using deadly force against them whenever just one white feels unsafe.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks are groomed to feel that white babies—locked into their oppressor roles as indelible racists, so “university studies” suggest, by about 3 months—will grow up to be not simply the wicked heirs of ill-gotten wealth with an voracious hankering to participate in various forms of black-body domination, but “soldiers in the new total war against blacks” (in which case there might be moral grounds for everything from sterilizing whites to crushing infant skulls under black combat boots so as “to knock the colonial entitlement right out of them” and be able to say to liverwurst brains on the roadside “How does all your privilege, all your math knowledge, look now!”).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where white children internalize such dehumanizing sentiments as to their inherent wickedness, which together with their fear of blacks—a fear bred in them given their disproportionate displays and celebrations of violence coupled with a long history of stereotypes as to their animalism coupled with steady background of ruthless lyrics targeting “White boys” coupled with their fathers’ palms getting sweaty around them and so on—will further fuel the rift of radical polarization.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, flouting the notion that the riches of knowledge and culture are there for all humans across all categories and borders (there to be admired, imitated, learned from, remixed, improved upon), whites are censored, silenced, shamed, and threatened for doing “black people things” in what is a petulant program of cultural gatekeeping supposedly justified by lobbing the term “appropriation” (as if the mere label were an argument, and as if blocking the transfer of knowledge and technology and art were not one of the sickest things implicated in the sickest movements of history, and most importantly as if every invention were not but the unfolding of what came before anyway)—yes, censored, silenced, shamed, and threatened even though whites themselves do not cry “theft” in the face of Nat Clifton or Earl Lloyd playing the game of basketball or in the face of Chou Wen-Chung and Toru Takemitsu composing in the vein of classical European music.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where whites are bullied so much that, especially in light of the statistics about black violence and of the representations of such violence in hip hop, old slave-trade stereotypes of black supernatural strength and animality resurge along with a sentiment of feeling unsafe around blacks—this helping to ensure, of course, that we never get to a post-racial society where the difference between brown and pale skin matters about as much as the difference between having dark-brown or light-brown eyes.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where “white culture” is besmirched so widely, as being the source of all the ills against blacks and the world at large, that whites feel more and more a need to start harping on the statistics about black violence and black lower IQ and lack of high art and inventions and entrepreneurship and breakthroughs and how much more black thugs attack white people than vice versa (even including white cops).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where “white ancestors”—even white heroes from Plato to Churchill—are besmirched so widely, as being the source of all the ills against blacks and the world at large, that whites feel more and more a need to start harping on MLK’s plagiarism and adultery (almost 50 different women) while going down the list to highlight the human-all-too-human dirt on various black icons.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where white history is besmirched so widely that it is hard to see bitterness not growing among whites (especially when, just as slaves who ran away were described as afflicted with drapetomania, whites are hit by the sadists themselves with a pathologizing term to describe such bitterness: “white fragility,” “white rage,” “white tears,” and so on)—yes, a bitterness that might even blow its top, the bullied eventually having enough: “Why should I respect your history when you treat mine like shit?”; “Why should I even allow you access to any of the gifts (the rights, the programs, the society, the cities) produced by my history?”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where we should be prepared to see more and more typical-American-overcorrecting videos with the following sorts of descriptions:
Tamir Jones was killed Saturday night after a gun fight with his cousin over—you guessed it!—a piece of chicken;
White woman saves little white girl from being raped by BLACK monster;
Demonic preteens stab WHITE woman, and hair-hatted mother laughs;
Newborn loses eye after mother, Gonorrhea Green, glues on “dem lashes”;
Surveillance video of the Popeye’s fire shows twerking in the parking while the matriarch of the clan performs “golden showers” on top of a car;
White basketball player refuses to stoop to jungle law after a black player punches him on the court;
It seems high time we blame blackness, not cars and TVs, for all the thefts in Baltimore;
Boston whites demand reparations from black communities endangering their lives and their soul with their behavior and culture;
Uber drivers around the country refuse to pick up blacks as “a matter of safety”;
Black “king” smashes white girlfriend’s skull outside the Walmart in Lakewood;
The motive for the Indiana corner store shootout has been revealed as “blackness”
Brawl over mating rights in black community leaves two officers dead”
Monkey demon shoots white family in bowling alley after they ask her to turn down song about “mouth and ass dicking”;
Saylor Swift says that “white women are the true queens” and have nothing to learn from “all these twerking black ‘glorillas’ who only want drug dealers and deadbeats”;
Whites refuse to fly on “affirmative action flight, one saying “Some of them might be good pilots but it’s about getting us safely from point A to point B (not about spreading pussy juice all over)”;
White teacher says “enough is enough” and segregates classroom to limit the negative influence on white children;
Black mother lets toddler get BBL (perhaps for early status in the jungle hierarchy);
Black monster violates even jungle code by throwing her own baby at white woman who hit her car outside a Spartanburg Target;
Blacks blamed for “planet-of-the-apes smell” in Kentucky Walmart after rotting meat ruled out.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where—instead of fighting the divisive idea that some things are allowed to be appreciated only by certain groups, that mean-spirited idea that cultures have borders in which no immigrant is allowed to pass—whites will perhaps soon enough stop saying either (1) “there is no whiteness culture by and for whites (only universal human culture)” or (2) “if one insists there is a whiteness culture, then let it be considered the culture that is by and for everyone”—whites will perhaps soon enough stop saying these things and, instead, help ossify the direction blacks were already going in (the “Build the Wall” direction that has led to the worst atrocities in the past) by cordoning off arguably the best (philosophy and art and technology and beauty) from black people, by demanding that no black be allowed to do any “white people things” or be allowed to participate in any of the anti-repressive and heterodoxy-allowing “white culture” that produced Goethe and Spinoza and Plato and Kant or be allowed to reap the rewards of “white achievement”:
no basketball;
no metropolitan hubs;
no composing of classical music;
no cosmopolitanism;
no eagerness to expand beyond one’s own traditions;
no analyzing Joyce's Ulysses;
no rockets to outer space;
no getting to enjoy vaccines and antibiotics and transplants and chemotherapy (and any of the other awesome medical advancements gifted to the world);
no getting to benefit from the spread of the written word and of universities;
no free-market capitalism (that brought so many out of extreme poverty);
no monkey-law curbing, anti-honor-killing, anti-war-crime, anti-slavery, anti-spousal-rape, anti-discrimination, anti-might-makes-right, anti-cruel-and-unusual-punishment, anti-child-marriage, pro-individual-liberty, pro-free-speech, pro-scientific-inquiry, pro-accountability-by-reason, pro-rule-of-law enlightenment of dead white men (“Yuck!” [eyeroll]);
no Marxism;
no receptivity to foreign cultures and ways of being to learn from and build upon;
no writing white characters in stories;
no ultimate frisbee;
no democracy;
no equal treatment under the law;
no separation of church and state;
no getting to appreciate learning about dead civilizations (their customs and languages) uncovered and preserved by “white culture’s curiosity about the foreign it desires to rape”;
no representative government;
no thinking there are objective truths;
no government change lacking the standard risk of bloodshed;
no philosophically-principled celebration of tolerance (backed up, in fact, by encouraging criticism as a way for “white culture” to get better);
no religious and artistic and political freedom;
no enshrinement of civil rights and woman’s rights;
no skyscraper constructing;
no institutional protection of the marginalized against even the powers that be;
no use of the scientific method;
no enjoyment of freedom of expression;
no trial by jury;
no 4th amendment sending the killer of George Floyd to jail;
no reaping the benefits of internal combustion engines;
no computer programing;
no school shooting (if only we go merely by the stereotype of course, since black school shooters outnumber white and Hispanic and Asian school shooter by far);
no school shooting where, to gerrymander things in such a way to preserve our beloved white-school-shooter stereotype, the shooter aims to kill the entire school to “make them all pay” for the shooter’s recent streak of losses in first-person-shooter games;
no aiming for perfection;
no Bach;
no yoga;
no dipping carrots in hummus;
no segway riding;
no drag-queen story hour;
no brother-sister romance;
no constructing of mathematical proofs;
no serial killing;
no Nascar;
no ironic tattoos;
no recycling;
no supermarket sushi;
no wine-tasting events;
no fashionable use of Himalayan salt (and definitely no Himalayan-salt lamps);
no reiki;
no preteen suicide (a problem among whites perhaps in part given the bleak outlook on the future and the inner sense, reinforced by their having to apologize for their skin in the classroom and having to endure kill-yo-self humiliations for their skin outside of the classroom, that they were born the wrong color);
no getting to be lifted by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo;
no western philosophy and art that has awed all cultures around the world;
no white society that (unlike with African and Middle Eastern and Asian and South American societies or various indigenous societies) people across the world en masse struggle to be a part of for good reason (sometimes even risking their own lives to do so).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where the punking of whites becomes so stifling, so intrusive (affecting them in their own homes: every channel, even conversation) as to provoke a backlash against all blacks—not just the gurus riding the big-bucks gravy train on intellectual speaking circuits and corporate diversity seminars as the racial-injustice-peddling tools of a Palpatine cheating death through the use of the dark side of the force (and a little help from China), but even those “Uncle Toms” who recognized the widespread claims of oppression were exaggerated and harmful to black people; who recognized that with white supremacy on its deathbed it was time for blacks to embrace the burden of carving their own fates; who recognized the great deal to be grateful for having been born in the West at this time with such a fruitful inheritance of opportunities and cultural treasures (the works of Shakespeare and Mozart to name but a few) guiding one in how to make the best of these opportunities (grateful, yes, whatever the US media likes to show and the US people like to say perhaps out of boredom or to feel hip or to self-sabotage or to carry out the equivalent of whatever a depressed teen does in cutting her arms or an immune system does when sheltered so long that it has nothing to attack but itself).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where the punking of whites becomes so stifling, so intrusive, that we open our hearts more sincerely to the following invidious words of David Hume, one of the world’s greatest geniuses.
I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufacturer amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the Whites, such as the ancient German, the present Tartars, still have something eminent about them, in their valor, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are Negro slaves dispersed all over Europe, of whom none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity; though low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one Negro as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for slender accomplishments, like a parrot who speaks a few words plainly.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, with the rise of cyber bubbles in which you get only news and data and friends that corroborate what you already think, many more websites catering to and breeding racist extremism will be available for whites who feel suffocated by the punking—stoking, in effect, a potential Armageddon of backlash in which whites, the air around them crackling with the pent-up energy of countless injustices, defiantly turn on like sleeper agents (their self-talk in the mirror, the culmination of every swallowed taunt and other-cheek humiliation, summoning forth a kraken of terrifying determination singular enough that neither the safety of loved ones nor even self-preservation can interfere).
“Colonizer? All these decades, hearing this said about me and my family pissed me the fuck off to no end. It chipped away at my fortitude. But you know what, my patience is gone. You’re right. I am a colonizer. But you know what else? I don’t give a fuck! I don’t give a fuck about black scum. Shit, I don’t even give a fuck about my damn self! Time for the root canal!”
“You fucks are lucky white people are so tolerant. We let this bullying go on too long. Enough is enough. We are conquerors. We are the desolators of entire continents. We wipe out entire civilizations and make their people our sex toys and chattel. We are conquerors and our patience has run thin! This shall be our finest hour!”
“We declare our right as the leaders of Earth. We demand to be respected as the conquering kings we are, as the perfect specimens balancing intelligence and strength and resilience. We have been patient. Even the most enduring spirits have their limits. We have been pushed around long enough, the storm brewing in silence. The beast has been awakened and it cannot do otherwise but set things right. Setting things right, no, is not equality. We have passed that point. We demand being respected not just as human beings (instead of vectors of whiteness). We demand being respected as the leaders of all men, the superior race. We will fulfil this demand by any means necessary against this pathetic number of monkeys among us. They were too pathetic to stop us then, and that remains so today. Jordans cannot cloak jungle.”
“How can the retributive cycle, the blood feud, continue back and forth when the entire side—mere gorillas behind a mist of idiocy—will be completely wiped out? Let us not yell ‘Not one step back!’ Let us yell, instead, ‘Step forward until none are left!’”
“In the face of bullying and injustice our spirit remains intact. For too long, we have had to apologize for our language, our culture, our identity. We refuse to be punked. And we refuse so resolutely that we will be doing the punking! Our struggle is not to restore a sense of balance, where one is not guilty and looked down upon just for being implicated in whiteness. We seek not justice, but servants. We seek not dignity, but dominance. We now dream—because we have been abused too long—of a future where our children grow up able to urinate on any black of their choosing with complete impunity. Our path is illuminated by a respect for humankind, a respect that will no longer tolerate monkeys staining our reputation in the eyes of God.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where at least some whites, having tolerated so much blame for so long for what they always knew was an overblown narrative of thugs trying to smash and grab cheap power (as one might TVs in a riot), seem on the verge of saying enough is enough to all the taunting vileness done in the name of “dismantling [a nonexistent] white supremacy”—striking back, no, not merely by taking down the anti-white-supremacy signs they hoped would protect their storefronts from smashing arson, and not merely by taking their great figures and achievements out of the antiracist trash bin, and not merely by asking devastating questions (“Which of your artists compares to Shakespeare and Goethe and Mozart and Bach and so on?” or “Which of your philosophers compares to Plato and Aristotle and Leibniz and Kant and so on?” or “Which of your medical advancements compares to gene-editing and organ-printing and antibiotics and stem-cell therapy and anesthesia?” or “Which of your cities compares to New York and London and Paris?”), and not merely by ridiculing the comparatively lame innovations of a people with the lowest IQ and the highest tendency to violence among humankind, and not merely by pushing hard (regardless of their free-speech commitments) the anti-art agenda of allowing lyrics to be used against rappers in a court of law, and not merely by finally standing down as police (refusing for good to protect black people from the ravages of fellow black people anymore); striking back, in addition, by opening themselves up to what will give these largely-college-based thugs the satisfaction of seemingly having been proven right: namely, to the Palpatine “Do It” of lynch-friendly violence.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where we see more and more police officers embracing their media stereotype of targeting blacks with excessive force, the wildest among them forming renegade squads—call them “Goon Squads”—ready to spend off-duty hours away from family and friends and from grilling and bowhunting and wine-tasting and golfing and snowmobiling and Netflixing and barhopping to carry out heinous acts of racial torture—barbaric brutalities initially directed toward the thugs and prostitutes and roaches and leeches bringing down property values and leaving neighborhoods dilapidated and putting children at risk, but soon swelling (in their bacchanalia) enough that they start targeting any of the “niggers and niggerettes” enjoying super-citizen representation:
pummeling black legs with nightsticks and then (if not using their bodies as target practice) dropping them off, like red ants shoveled from one mound to another, in rival gang territories after equipping them with guns and dressing them up in the most flagrant set colors that will get them killed;
breaking into black homes shouting racist slurs and raping the girls and incapacitating the men with stun guns and sodomizing them with sex toys and having them perform fellatio on each other’s maced genitalia only to have them beg for their lives in hogtied rituals of mock execution;
selling automatic guns to black kids, the very same “Little Gs” whose father and uncles they arrested for guns, and then either fantasizing about the death and destruction they instigated (“cancer killing cancer”) or tipping off patrol units to make a bust;
coercing blacks (women and children even) to fight naked to the death and then to fuck the dead loser (all on threat of death) for clandestine gambling entertainment way more gruesome than the Battle Royal scene in Invisible Man;
fire-bombing the noisiest black fraternities and sororities and then picking off for rape any woman too far from the rest of the fleeing pack and too close to the woods;
robbing drug dealers (and even just random blacks, whomever they can pick off) and using that money to enhance their own terror or the terror of extremist groups;
doing drivebys with automatic weapons in black neighborhoods while wearing blackface and baseball caps like Ice Cube (as if what they call “midnight rides” were no bigger deal than mailbox baseball).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where looking back it could seem, at least for a mind oriented toward seeing conspiracy, as if (1) the continued cruelties—often self-inflicted—experienced by white people at being made out to be the ruthless oppressors of black people and (2) the years of helplessness-fostering favors granted to black people on grounds that their oppression at the hands of whites is virtually intractable were all to render blacks the easy victims for some Palpatine-rigged white backlash.
________________________________
Chapter 6. Let My People Go!
[Let my people go!? What?!] Pharaoh has already let you go! But it is you who have not let Pharaoh go! This is why you are crippled! Because you think you cannot walk without your former slave masters. And if your former slave master don’t help you, you don’t think there’s any help for you.—Louis Farrakhan[20]
In the 1980s, people all around America became convinced that day care centers were secretly practicing demonic ritual sex abuse on children. These allegations stayed in the national news for the better part of a decade. Hapless day care workers were falsely convicted of running sex rings. . . . In hindsight, this episode looks absurd. How could anyone have believed that there were Satanic day care centers throughout the country? Yet at the time, many reasonable people were swept up in the delusion—as were the prosecutors and elected officials who promised to put a stop to the fake problem. Such is the nature of moral panics. What looks like obvious absurdity from the outside seems totally reasonable to those on the inside. . . . Since about 2014, we have been facing a new moral panic. . . . White supremacy is said to be rampant. Black people should fear for their lives when going for a jog. . . . This misperception is not only driven by cognitive biases such as the availability heuristic, it is also driven by ideas. Critical race theory and intersectionality—formerly confined to graduate seminars—have seeped into corporate America and Silicon Valley, as well as into many K–12 education systems. With their spread has come an increase in the misperception that bigotry is everywhere, even as the data tell a different story: racism exists, but there has never been less racism than there is now. If America’s racial tensions ever heal, it will be because we were able to align our perceptions with our reality and leave moral panics at the door.—Coleman Hughes[21]
So, in summary, what might white supremacy do from its deathbed to insinuate itself into the fabric of one of the least racist societies ever on Earth, to infiltrate perhaps even the highest echelons of power, so that it may recommence the destructive torture of black kind—what might it do at a time when it would seem to have no chance: a time (enamored of blackness) where black Americans have ascended to the highest levels of society, politics, business, arts, culture; a time (sick of whiteness) where institutions bend over backwards to signal the wokest credentials, even to the point of pathologizing whiteness and discriminating against white applicants?
It could just sit back and revel in our world where (1) music is the best molder of minds and identities (especially young minds and identities) and (2) hip-hop is the dominant music and (3) hip-hop is itself—not just in lyrics but in the way rapper “role models” carry themselves in real life (arrested for guns and drugs, twerking in jezebel attire of objectification, leaking porno videos of the Botoxed caricatures into which they have made themselves)—is a culture dominated by celebrations of hypersexuality and hyperviolence and hyper-drug-use and hyper-brainless-consumerism: the very dehumanizing stereotypes of past centuries now largely seen as aspirational and sometimes even, Stockholm-style, construed by blacks as liberating.
It could just sit back and revel in our world where blacks are incentivized (by a variety of special perks) (1) to view themselves primarily through the agency-sapping lens of perennial victimhood (victimhood at the hands of an indelible agenda against them) and (2) to find their primary means of advancing through highlighting past and present injustices (rather than through personal achievement and resilience) and (3) to attribute success to external boosts (rather than to personal effort and capability), an incentivization that—especially with the help of more and more institutions treating them as so pathetically fragile that they require (even in university classrooms) spaces safe even from potentially unsettling words—grooms them into unchallenged spoiled leaners who remain disempowered and always expecting of aid and set up for incompetence-stereotype-reinforcing failure (especially when thrown, “with helping hands,” into positions for which they are not fully prepared): unable to see the ways in which they are responsible for their own failures and misconduct; unable to see, let alone to reflect upon and fix, the internal causes of their deficiency across various metrics—causes like, in general, the cultural attitude of romanticizing victimhood or of vilifying educational success as “acting white” or of glorifying thuggery and whorishness (and, in particular, preventing EMT workers from gurneying the numerous black-on-black bodies “drilled the fuck up” by twerking all around and on top of ambulances in front of mount-positioned thugs).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where the call to agency and resilience and self-examination and self-improvement (the path of genuine black power, the path of eradicating degrading stereotypes, the path of preserving the principle of meritocracy) gets maligned as “a cruel form of victim blaming” of “a radically oppressed people who deserve special boosts”—“a cruel form of victim blaming that allows to go unchecked the beast of white supremacy: the institutional source of black failings that must be addressed before anything else” because, after all, “the nice-sounding solution of ‘focus on how you can lift yourselves up’ only makes sense once the glass ceiling has been shattered.”
It could just sit back and revel in our world where, reinforcing racial categories just like white supremacists of yesteryear did (only, however, in the name of addressing racial injustices), the antiracist movement (1) exaggerates the extent of white supremacy’s influence in contemporary society (finding it in the most absurd places) and (2) creates “whiteness” into a mythical source of all injustice (a contagious disease that can only be held in check but never cured and that whites are expected to grovel in atonement for, a moral pathology that carries out its antiblack machinations even through the most well-intentioned and self-censoring white allies who express self-flagellating shame for the harms of which they like their ancestors are culpable) and (3) pushes policies that focus on race instead of on individual need or merit or character—these points coming together to perpetuate, especially with the help of the divisive notion that discrimination can only be righted through counter discrimination, a punitive cycle of racial vilification: bitter overreach met with bitter overreach that then justifies more bitter overreach and so on (all in a race-obsessed twilight zone of empathy and dialogue as withered as our ability to see ourselves as more than mere embodiments of racial identity).
It could just sit back and revel in our world where the biggest threat to goodwill between whites and blacks is the various things done in the name of an “anti-nazi commitment to inclusion and equity”; where the biggest threat to reversing all the progress we have made to changing the white-supremacist attitude about the place and purpose of black people (the attitude attendant to the use of black people as slaves) is the claim that “from the time of legal emancipation until now there has not been even the slightest change in that attitude (however much that attitude might be cloaked)”; where the biggest inciter of individual racism (on both sides) is all that keeps being done to fight a systemic racism long ago put into remission; where the biggest threat to black people is the various things done in the name of an “antiracist movement to redress black oppression”—indeed, where the best evidence for the lie that white supremacy continues to have a pervasive grip over this country are the various things done in the respectable (and big-money) name of “dismantling white supremacy.”
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Acknowledgements
Thank you to My Dad, Mikey, Aaliyah Fritz, Madisun Miller, Ray Bru, Chris Cimmino, Albert Aliano, Mike Shaw, The Flickering Beacon, The Babbling Beaver, Glenn Loury, Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell, Douglas Murray, Norman Finkelstein, Pamela Denise Long, Coleman Hughes, John McWhorter, Dmitri Shufutinsky, Bianca Monique, Chad Jackson, Charles Love, Tom MacDonald, Erec Smith, Eli Steele, Carol M. Swain, Tabia Lee, Adam Calhoun, Burden, Mesus, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Brittany Talissa King, Kiyah Willis, Kali Fontanilla, Roland Fryer, Sean Croxton, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Louis Farrakhan, Vanessa (Gothix), Andrew Doyle, Brandy Shufutinsky, Jon Rieder, Nzube Olisaebuka Udezue (Zuby), Samara Cyn, Shuniiadaballer, Bahamadia, Noname, Tierra Whack <more to come in later drafts>
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NOTES
[1] biola.edu/blogs/think-biblically/2023/bonus-a-christian-and-an-atheist-talk-about-god-and-race
[2] cir-usa.org/2002/11/the-age-of-white-guilt-and-the-disappearance-of-the-black-individual/
[3] latimes.com/local/la-fi-tupacdelores20march2096-story.html
[4] youtube.com/watch?v=AFGkNEt30Fo
[5] It is important for readers to understand that it is the mainly the monopoly of depraved representation, and that it is so targeted to kids, that I take issue with. By no means am I coming from a perspective of “Look how appalling these lyrics are. They should be banned!” As a staunch defender of artistic freedom, I would never say this. In fact, I have offered various levels of defense even for the worst lyrics: those concerning child exploitation. Check out my article “An Apologia for Biggie’s Child-Rape Lyrics.” Some of the article is summarized by my defense of KRS-One’s song “13 and Good,” which I present in full here.
(1) Art is a place to shine a mirror on the darker facets of our psyche. Denying that we have these shadow elements—“No, not me! I definitely wouldn't have owned slaves!”—not only ensures that we dwell at a lower state (one of fragmentation, as Jungians might put it, between the Ego and the Self), but also makes us susceptible to their control. So while mainstream media's portrayal of black hypersexuality and hyperviolence can be harmful and perpetuate stereotypes, there is also a potential transformative power in confronting shocking or shadow aspects of human nature.
(2) Male attraction to girls even in the early stages of child-bearing potential is a drive engrained deeply within most men.
(3) Look what results because of the actions of the narrator in the song (and no, the narrator need not be identical to the artist): he gets his comeuppance for his transgressions at the end of the song.
[6] [This is precisely what happened with Darrel Brooks who, running his SUV into a Christmas parade, killed and mangling many people in what was a racially-motivated slaughter. As is clear from his courtroom performance, Brooks is] fueled by some kind of ideology, some kind of . . . black-aggrievement ideology [which, among other things, involves the idea that black skin color makes one much less culpable even for hideous acts that they indisputably performed]. youtube.com/watch?v=pwZMzFQXb48
[7] youtube.com/watch?v=Vrsv3wrzrLQ&t
[8] These are the words of Glenn Loury. They were taken from a podcast he does with John McWhorter. youtube.com/watch?v=Ya62u4EueEc
[9] These are the words of John McWhorter. They were taken from a podcast he does with Glenn Loury. youtube.com/watch?v=Ya62u4EueEc
[10] youtube.com/watch?v=Vrsv3wrzrLQ&t=10s
[11] youtube.com/watch?v=Vrsv3wrzrLQ&t=10s
[12] These are the words of John McWhorter. They were taken from a podcast he does with Glenn Loury. youtube.com/watch?v=pwZMzFQXb48
[13] freeblackthought.substack.com/p/black-excellence-is-not-white-supremacy
[14] harpers.org/archive/1988/06/im-black-youre-white-whos-innocent-race-and-power-in-an-era-of-blame/
[15] youtube.com/watch?v=tXE-TpGLFac
[16] youtube.com/watch?v=0eY1Ggb6eE4
[17] youtube.com/watch?v=9mbKRvED41g
[18] Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race.
[19] Donald Moss. “On Having Whiteness.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 69.2 (2021). 355–371. doi.org/10.1177/00030651211008507
[20] instagram.com/p/CuKK0HMMNGg/
[21] manhattan.institute/article/the-social-construction-of-racism-in-the-united-states
