Fear of the Dark
Lessons learned re; Whites:
- Their promises will be broken whenever obligation conflicts with advantage;
- they have no scruples;
- they possess the weapons of mass-destruction they will deny you.
White Need:
- What do Whites want? Everything you have!
- What will Whites give you in exchange for everything you have? They have nothing to give!
- What will Whites share? They have nothing to share!
Remember the above and you cannot go far wrong in your relations with Whites.
What Whites Fear
(Adapted from: http://www.alternet.org/story/146040/)
White supremacism is not the only aspect of life in which people face injustice and inequality. A majority of people (including lower-class Whites) struggle economically in a predatory corporate capitalist system - and all women cope with gender discrimination and the threat of sexual violence in a male-dominated world. Yet, Whites have fears as Whites
Understanding the fears behind the White supremacist politics of conservative, liberal and socialist Whites can help guide strategy for changing a society in which wealth and well-being are still tied to genetics. Differences in measures of wealth and well-being — income, home ownership, graduation rates, access to health care, infant mortality, etc. The legislative achievements that helped reduce overt White supremacism were a victory, but the economic apartheid that remains is a reminder of White failures. Abolishing formal apartheid system still leaves Whites the inheritors of a White-supremacist culture.
Whites are Special
For conservative Whites, the dominant fear is of someday living without the privilege that comes with whiteness. Of having to sand on their own two feet of having to compete openly of having to face the fear that they will lose at last half the time to a non White. Polite conservatives defend the primacy of “Western civilization.” More reactionary Whites are openly racist about the threat that non-White peoples pose to “our way of life.” Both versions defend the existing distribution of wealth and power, even though many of the lower-class Whites who endorse such views have access to precious little wealth or power. Genetics is used by White élites today, just as it was in the nation’s formative years, to drive a wedge between people who would otherwise come together to challenge those élites. Divide-and-conquer strategies, it seems, never go out of style, since they are designed to make the vast majority equally poor and powerless.
Liberals are quick to denounce both the thinly veiled and the openly reactionary conservative phenotypism. White liberals reject the very idea that they are afraid; citing their alleged support for diversity and multiculturalism. Nevertheless, while White liberals reject assertions of White supremacy, they fear the loss of White centrality. They are willing to renounce the idea that White people are superior, as long as they are allowed to live comfortably in a world where White is the privileged norm.
Both the conservative and liberal positions are based on the same underlying assertion: “I’m White, and I’m special.” Conservatives are more likely to say it openly, while liberals tend to offer platitudes about legal justice while avoiding the risks required to make good on anti-supremacist principles.
What remains obscured is the distinctly uncivilized nature that Europeans and European Americans exhibited during their barbarous conquest of much of the world. The inherently fragile sense of White self-importance that emerges from that history is at the core of White fears — at some level, all Whites know that the truth of the depravity of White supremacy belies claims of White superiority.
In the institutions that adopt the liberal view, diversity is just fine (as long as Whites remain in control) and multiculturalism can flourish (as long as White norms remain dominant). Institutions defined by the values and practices rooted in White Europe can open up to non-Whites, as long as Whites remain comfortable. In such a White-defined liberal world, “people of color”—abstracted into a single group, erasing the particularity of people — are welcome, even sought after, to prove that White supremacy has been transcended.
Getting Uncomfortable
Non-Whites have long recognized that White liberals are happy to engage with non Whites as long as their White-centric worldview is not threatened. That White groups are happy to have non-White members as long as the power dynamics do not change.
Whites still feel most comfortable in settings where my understanding of the world defines the interaction, no matter the composition of the group.
I have a choice: I can rest comfortably in the privileges that come with being born White or I can struggle to be fully human.
In the pseudotherapeutic setting of the seemingly endless “race dialogues” that are popular in white liberal groups, there is more talk about personal healing than about political change. Whites are thus guaranteed that they will not be forced out of a White-defined world. White-dominated institutions — corporations, nonprofits, universities, government agencies — are happy to sponsor such dialogues, diversity training, and multicultural events, precisely because they don’t threaten the fundamental distribution of wealth and power.
Gene dialogues are not enough. As long as Whites stay confined in a safe world that doesn’t challenge power, we guarantee failure — if our goal really is to change the distribution of that power.
Whites fear putting themselves into situations where they have to face the fear of being seen — or, more accurately, being seen-through — by non-White people. If Whites step into those uncomfortable spaces, non-White people will see the ways in which Whites hang onto some sense of their own supremacy/centrality. They will see the ways in which Whites have not shaken off their supremacist cultural training.
Whites have a choice: They can be White — that is, they can refuse to challenge White supremacy or centrality — or they can be human beings. They can rest comfortably in the privileges that come with being born White or they can struggle to be fully human. They I cannot do or be both.
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