I’m writing from a place of temporary defeat. Discouraged by discouraging headlines. Weakened by the lack of empathy from fellow believers. A sense of dejectedness has crept into my mind.
The human heart is corrupt and its capacity for empathy has been nearly if not completely exhausted as a select few people in power catapult society into an abyss of hopelessness and tribalistic conflicts.
No amount of communicating the past, pooling of knowledge, imparting of wisdom, transmitting of education, disseminating of expertise, shared learning, or practical insights about the plight of my people, namely, Black people, and other downtrodden minorities, will change the mind a society bent on wielding power over its oppressed subjects.
Black History Month, albeit important to us (the beautifully melanated societies of the world), is but the performative, state-sanctioned mannerism we’re allowed to express and perform during a grace period in which the powers that be give us a limited chance to reminisce on the woes, fears, losses, and minor successes of our ancestors in history past and present.
Once Black History Month is over we are again, restored into a system established to exploit us of our gains, denude us of our protections, deprive us of opportunities, deny us our humanity, denigrate our essence as Children of God, and erase our history as if to say, here, on this particular period, you can take a moment to celebrate your dead negroes, but break time will be over soon.
Don’t forget to clock back into White Time, or else.
White Time is Whiteness and Whiteness is active all the time.
It isn’t white people, per se, not the regular, run-of-the-mill white folk you encounter at a church Bible study, nor the person processing your groceries at a supermarket, nor the grandmother who needs help shoveling the snow off her driveway. These people, though they are beneficiaries of Whiteness, too, oblivious to it, have become victims of the same.
Whiteness is the foundation, the very vocabulary we are using, the highway of the interconnectedness of the mind wherein we have discussions about dissent and submission, freedom and liberation, about race and the absence of it, about equality and exploitation, about greed and capitalism, about consumerism and a utopian post-consumerist world.
Whiteness is the air you breathe when you wake up. It is the load you put down at the end of the day, after confronting and enduring the white gaze, white fears, white tears, white rage, white backlash, white incivility, white civil inattention, and white indifference.
Therefore, how we express, endure, emerge from, and remember the beauty of what is now known as Black Excellence, which has historically been called subterfuge, rebellion, insubordination, demonic possession, and a culture impoverished of intellect and self-determination, is all experienced, to this day, within the paradigm of Whiteness.
And until we can name this reality, that we exist, as Neo did in The Matrix, inside of a White race-centric existence, we cannot and will not dismantle White Supremacy.
Why?
Because our efforts and struggles, although noble, are futile as long as Whiteness exists.
Black people today and for the last five hundred or so years have existed in a ship filled with holes, forever sinking, and its crew, us, forever attempting to save it. The water seeps through the holes in the hull and we seal each hole respectively. The engine spurts and stalls. We maintain it back to life. The sails are ripped to shreds but we have specialist weavers who knit every inch of the sail back into perfect working condition. The structural integrity of this ship we find ourselves on is compromised but we dance on it to keep the ship from tipping over and us falling off.
Every single February we do this.
Every Black History Month.
Every Dia da Consciencia Negra (Day of Black Consciousness).
Every year we celebrate Emancipation.
Every year we celebrate Haiti’s Independence Day.
Every year we celebrate The Congo’s liberation.
Nigeria’s liberation.
Angola’s liberation.
Algeria’s Liberation.
Jamaica’s liberation.
And so forth.
We seldom stop long enough to think and ask why we are on the boat, to begin with, why we’re at sea, who gave us such a structurally unsound ship with which to navigate these troubled waters, and who plugged our vessel full of holes, to begin with.
“Why, look at how they war against each other on that ship. They complain and bicker about independence yet here they are, owners of their destiny, forever warring with one another. Just look at the condition of their vessel. Look at the tattered sails. The plugged holes on that ship. It probably reeks. It must carry a foul stench from one place to another. It must carry disease. With the amount of supplies we’ve given them over the years, I’m surprised they’re not thriving.”
That is what it is like to manage, to deal, to cope, and to exist in Whiteness as a Black person.
No matter how much effort we put into keeping our ship – our existence – afloat, we will still be part of an ecosystem created to disadvantage us; a system created to drown us.
In fact, come March 1, as is the case every March 1 since Black History Month became a thing, society proper, namely, Whiteness society will breathe a deep sigh of relief that we have once more agreed to stay on our broken and nearly sunken vessel to endure another year at sea, their White Sea.
Because when the world moves on from Black History Month we remain very much Black in a White world.
Whiteness wants nothing more than to give us a break from the standard program, the Invisible Visible Whiteness that wields unimaginable racialized imperial power in the world. Whiteness does not care that we express our Blackness for 28 days out of the year. Whiteness will bend the derelict moral superiority complex of its structure for those 28 days, but come March 1, the structure returns because Whiteness does not break.
And this is only possible because unassuming white people, completely unaware of the reality of Whiteness, allow the system to operate as it was built.
Black and colored people the world over struggle, fight, bleed, and once more, attempt to educate and re-educate the innocent and complicit whites within Whiteness with book suggestions, Podcasts, documentaries, and Bible lessons focused on a contextualized understanding of scripture, culture, history, and the men (often white men) who taught it. These efforts are made to counteract the historical inaction of white people on the issue of race and progress. They too need to understand that their sturdy ships, filled with resources (pilfered from the world over), their navigators, and the wind that pushes their sails and the current that carries their ships are all part of a singular system built to make their world the best one possible for them, to hell with all others.
This myopia is by design.
Not being able to see or having the ability to deny the existence of this reality is part of how White supremacy operates. Being relationally connected and interconnected with Black people and minorities does nothing to advance the humanity and value of these groups if Whiteness remains the God of the age.
Affording Black and colored peoples Constitutional protections, Charter rights, and Sovereign representation does nothing, in the long run, if the constitution, charter, and sovereign edicts do not challenge the White supremacy present at the inception of these documents and their peoples.
We are living in a time where right-wing political ideologues are once more vying for political power and influence, when, not too long ago, these same ideologies nearly turned the European continent into a wasteland of rubble and ash.
We are witnessing the resurgence of Nazism and Fascism in a world where there are still living survivors of the Holocaust. Holocaust denialism is increasing at the same time youths in Canada believe the death counts and suffering of the Holocaust were exaggerated for political effect.
We are reading articles, updates, and statistics that inform us that race and ethnicity-based hate crimes are on the rise, year after year.
Black men and women are killed by white civilians, white neighbors, and white police officers, still. These are modern-day lynchings.
We are once more witnessing hate speech, hate crimes, and the change in disposition about laws and legislations enacted to protect the Civil Rights and Constitutional rights of minorities. The current leader of the United States of America has expressed the desire to revoke an Amendment to the United States Constitution that affords people born in the country the right to citizenship.
With time, it is safe to say we will witness another genocide in the “free” world. (Not to forget the genocides happening in Palestine and in the Congo today.)
All of these horrors within a world where constitutions exist; where charters exist; wherein sovereign recognition of protected groups exists.
All of these horrors happen in Whiteness because Whiteness still exists.
History will not save us because many of our white friends – I am not speaking of white allies, but of white people who seldom take time to understand, learn, and become active participants in the fight to dismantle White Supremacy – have little to no understanding of history and even less of an interest in doing something about their ignorance. When they do make the effort to tackle the mythical origins of their supposed national innocence in light of a history of oppression and death, they experience three problematic sentiments as a consequence:
- Inactivity: The overwhelming and often violent nature of White history leaves the white person existentially paralyzed. Because there is so much wrong that has been done under the power of Whiteness and correcting and addressing all these wrongs seems an impossible task, the white person opts instead to become inactive in the face of evil.
- Apathy: The overwhelming and often violent nature of White history leaves the white person incapable of sympathizing with the plight of non-White people. This is a consequence of the abundance of horrors and evils committed in the name of Whiteness is available for the white person to read and learn about. The person is left emotionally and intellectually stunted, finding themselves often unable to positively engage Black people, minorities, and their respective topics because what ought to be a productive conversation devolves into White fragility, White solidarity, and White silence.
- Violence: The overwhelming and often violent nature of White history leaves the white person in a delicate state of mind. The truth about how society was formed to maintain White power is too brutal and cruel a story for many to cope with, therefore, a process of internalization takes place where the need to avoid guilt but also maintain society as it is prevails over the want to challenge the powers that be. The myth that subsists is that if White supremacy ends, Black or Brown supremacy will take hold. Therefore, the white person within this category functions to maintain Whiteness as it is, and this effort is accomplished via financial, institutional, theological, social, and yes, physical and forceful means. These are the white people who consciously support explicit and implicit White systems. Again, the violence enacted here isn’t always immediate or physical. They support political leaders and ideologies that rekindle nationalist and nativist pride. They support structures that single out and disadvantage minorities. They attend church and religious events that promote the devastation of the ideas and beliefs that do not fit into their domain of power. In fact, they do not want to share power with anyone who does look or believes as they do. And though they may not verbalize hateful rhetoric toward Black people and minorities, they internalize it, thus creating a new social dynamic which they refuse to acknowledge but one which Black people and minorities clearly feel. This group of white people is the hardest to reach because they believe a step forward for Black people and minorities comes at a cost to white people as a whole. To them, a zero-sum ideology unfolds daily, where Whiteness can only exist if it deprives all other cultures in the world of status. This is not only the most dangerous side-effect white people experience when it comes to understanding White history, it is also the most ubiquitous.
In the same way White Supremacy has instilled in minority groups a sense of self-hatred and internalized inferiority, it has instilled in White society a sense of internalized guilt, shame, and apathy which often explodes into the public square through political and legislative actions to thwart and silence the advancements of Black people and colored peoples the world over.
Abolitionists were called anti-American or anti-state disruptors of industry.
Civil Rights leaders were called Communist agitators.
Affirmative Action was called reverse racism.
Critical Race Theory was called fake Marxist science.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are destructive to the fabric of a thriving American society.
Every time the West attempts to move forward regarding race, within Whiteness, without dismantling Whiteness, it is catapulted back by white people who are either inactive, apathetic, or prone to violence to save the matrix of Whiteness.
History will not save us, my dear, beautifully melanated brothers and sisters.
Clock out of White Time. Step out of Whiteness.
Wake up. Get off the ship. Get out of the water.
Read the room.
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. – Proverbs 31:8 NLT
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