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Bask in the Crazy: Accepting Responsibility For Our Whiteness
Though I firmly believe that the bulk of a conservative’s time engaging liberal arguments should be spent debating their most pointed, nuanced positions, we should occasionally indulge ourselves by reveling in their worst arguments and fringe elements. Fringe elements like Ali Michael, who took to the pages of the Huffington Post this week to help us all cope with the, and I quote, “overwhelming oppressiveness of our whiteness”.
To call the piece’s logic tortured is to downplay its severity. The article is a war crime committed against rational thinking. At its core is the assumption that sin is transmitted from the actual perpetrators to their progeny. Whites are not merely beneficiaries of a form of privilege, but literally share partial blame for acts of injustice committed long before their birth. Social Justice is a jealous god, who visits the inequities of the (white) father onto, at minimum, the third and fourth generations.
Rachel Dolezal is a fascinating case study in White racial identity development.* She is stuck in the immersion/emersion stage, in which White people, having learned extensively about the realities of racism, and the ugly history of White supremacy in the U.S., “immerse” themselves in trying to figure out how to be White in our society, and “emerge” with a new relationship to Whiteness.
How is your relationship with your whiteness? Contentious? You are not alone.
I definitely experienced this. There was a time in my 20s when everything I learned about the history of racism made me hate myself, my Whiteness, my ancestors… and my descendants.
Mankind is magnificently diverse, and has written near endless volumes on just about any topic you can imagine. Despite this, I strongly suspect that no author in history has ever opined on their hatred for their non-existent descendants. Hatred which, we should note, is based on the assumed color of their skin. Irony, thou art a harsh mistress.
I disliked my Whiteness, but I disliked the Whiteness of other White people more. I felt like the way to really end racism was to feel guilty for it, and to make other White people feel guilty for it too.
Guilty for what precisely? A history of slavery? That is indeed a great mark of shame on the white man…and just about every culture that has ever walked the Earth. Africans, Arabs, and Asians of every variety engaged in the horror of slavery alongside, and prior to, European cultures. Even a cursory glance at the history of Africans enslaving other Africans reveals this entire narrative of the uniquely evil white man to be a fraud.
In Senegambia, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the western Sudan, including Ghana(750–1076), Mali (1235–1645), Segou (1712–1861), and Songhai (1275–1591), about a third of the population were slaves. In Sierra Leone in the 19th century about half of the population consisted of slaves. In the 19th century at least half the population was enslaved among the Duala of the Cameroon, the Igbo and other peoples of the lower Niger, the Kongo, and the Kasanje kingdom and Chokwe of Angola. Among the Ashanti and Yoruba a third of the population consisted of slaves. The population of the Kanem was about a third slave. It was perhaps 40% in Bornu (1396–1893). Between 1750 and 1900 from one- to two-thirds of the entire population of the Fulani jihad states consisted of slaves. The population of the Sokoto caliphate formed by Hausas in northern Nigeria and Cameroon was half-slave in the 19th century. It is estimated that up to 90% of the population of Arab–Swahili Zanzibar was enslaved. Roughly half the population of Madagascar was enslaved.
That white people engaged in slavery alongside all of the world’s other people only seems remarkable when we consider that whites were the first to end the practice.
Let’s not be sidetracked by historical context though. It is an irrefutable fact that the sins of our white ancestors are both worse than those of other races that committed the same crimes, and that these crimes have stained our souls. What can we do about it?
Daniel Tatum said we need to change this. We need to give White people new ways to identify as White. Because at the end of the day, we need White people to see that we are White. When we recognize and own our Whiteness, we can account for our own portion, our one 1/billionth of responsibility for what White people have done throughout history.
It is good to know that my inherited culpability for the horrors of slavery is diminishing as time goes on. Being only half-white, I bear ½ of a billionth of the responsibility for what white people have done throughout history. Presumably my unborn (and only mildly scorned) children will share ¼ of a billionth of the responsibility.
I’m not sure what happened with Rachel Dolezal. Maybe it was mental illness. Maybe it was a desire to connect to her adopted brothers. Maybe she felt safer and more loved in Black communities. Maybe it felt good to distance herself from the overwhelming oppressiveness of Whiteness — her own and that of her country and of her ancestors.
That Dolezal is a moral agent acting with free will, and has never committed any crimes against blacks, would seem a sufficient distancing from the overwhelming oppressiveness of the whiteness of her ancestors. Unless you believe that skin color transmits moral responsibility. In that case, sure, I can see why you might want to take things step farther. Also, you’re drooling on your shoes.
Rachel Dolezal’s actions are a potential pitfall for any White people on the journey towards recognizing the truth of what it means to be White and accepting responsibility for it. But we cannot not be White. And we cannot undo what Whiteness has done.
We cannot not be white. But we can cannot not judge ourselves and others by the acts of people long dead, who we were not alive to oppose and had neither our consent nor approval when they committed crimes against humanity.
Published in General
One of these days I ought to do an Adam and Eve thread just to really shake things up around here.
You’ll have to make an Adam and Steve thread too, otherwise you’ll be violating the 14th Amendment. Racist.
Actually, not the way my church interprets it. Every character in the Bible represents something inside of us: a state of consciousness, a type of thought, an emotional state, or a certain emotion. So, “Adam and Steve” might represent two thoughts in harmony, which is in many of the Bible stories already.
Of course, there was Jonathan and David, too.
You don’t mean as an example of a gay couple, do you?
We interpret things metaphysically, so not really.
However, others interpret things differently.
Wow. I guess any idea, no matter how clearly wrong it is, can get some level of acceptance if you have enough suckers buying into it.
Well, there’s also the belief by many that Lincoln may have had romps with men. And of course, Buchanan, as well. But, you know, that was Buchanan. As you say, “enough suckers.”
Ok, obviously there is some miscommunication, but I’m not sure if it is on my part or on yours. What I am saying is that you seem to be incorrect about the Christian notion of original sin. Specifically, the doctrine results in the culpability of all mankind, in all of history, for a single sin from 2 of our ancestors. This is not based on the notion of justice, but (more realistically) the idea that the first sin introduced sin into the world, and all of humanity has been afflicted with it ever since. But that is far different from saying that (for instance) a certain people would be plagued forever with the specific sin of Cain (which has been feebly argued by some but rejected by all mainline Christians), or that individuals might bear direct responsibility for the behavior of their ancestors. It applies to the entirety of mankind. Hence, the concept of original sin is in no way analogous to the idea that members of a certain race should be directly responsible (or even somewhat responsible) for the fact that their ancestors may or may not have owned slaves.
That is to say nothing of the fact that any given white person is no more likely than any given black person to be directly descended from slave owners. For instance, my own family came from Hungary and Scotland, respectively, and are far more likely to have been slaves than slave owners. A black person in the United States whose family came her post 1850 is just as likely to have descended from oppressors rather than oppressed.
Needless to say, none of that bears even the slightest resemblance to the biblical notion that mankind is necessarily imbued with a sin nature after the introduction of sin into the world. Quite the opposite, in fact. While in that case, all are equally culpable, there is no notion of repercussions owed from one set of people to another set of people, nor is anyone and more or less guilty than anyone else by virtue of his or her ancestry. Original sin is a great equality, whereas white guilt is the exact opposite, and is racism along the same vein of those who would suggest that blacks are inferior by virtue of their color.
Double wow.
I’m surprised y’all haven’t somehow wound up exposed to this before. It’s been out there since at least 1978. Maybe the crazy is not as widespread in your areas. The wackos are focusing on other things there, like “being green.”
Everyone knows that Eve was tempted by a snake into committing the original sin and that she then entrapped Adam with her feminine wiles. The evil consequences of Eve’s sin have been passed on to the distaff side of humanity ever since. This is the theological explanation for Hillary Clinton. Snakes were punished by making some of them undersized and colorless.
Hey, I resemble that remark.
My friend, when trying to understand people, all I have to go on is their words and their context. As such, I’m prone to misunderstand someone if their words don’t represent their thoughts. That’s why I’m careful to quote people’s statements verbatim and respond to them: it leads to greater clarity. I understood what you said and that’s what I’ve been responding to.
That being said, I have a guess as to your issue with my comment. Could it be the doctrine is fundamentally different from what Michaels wrote and you interpreted my comment to have been conflating the two? So far, you’ve repeatedly explained differences between her article and Original Sin without offering a word about the difference between my comment and Original Sin.
The only way that differs from my comment is that I said “the transmission of sin” rather than “culpability.” All of humankind, says Christianity, descends from Adam and Eve, so that fits “descendants.” I suspect we may have different understandings of the word “culpability.” Surely you don’t mean Christianity blames all of mankind for actions taken before they were born, do you?
P.S. Ryan, I apologize for the delayed response. I procrastinated on some things that were soon to be due, so I took some time off of Ricochet. If this is sorta closed and you don’t feel like continuing it, I understand. Thanks though