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“Why do I have to have a negative identity?” Brittany texted me.
She had come to the ethnicity section of the 2010 census. The box she had to check was Non-Hispanic White. Like millions of others, she couldn’t just pick white. Her identity had to be based on what it isn't rather than what it is.
Blacks don’t have to choose Non-Caucasian Black. Hispanics don’t have to choose Non-Asian Hispanic. Only whites have to make such a choice: either a negative identity or none at all.
“This is the start of her racial conscious!” my buddy enthused.
He was one of the proudly white friends I was visiting in DC. Our own racial consciousness had started years before and an ongoing discussion was how to show others the light. I agonized over how to reveal it to Brittany. I was head over heels for her and scaring her away over race terrified me. A double standard had thankfully begun illuminating it for me. Many others will start coming out of darkness the same way.
This goes beyond a census though.
We can only see ourselves as monsters. Every type of pride, from Latino to lesbian, can be celebrated. But not white pride. It can only be condemned. A proud black man loves who he is, but a proud white man hates everyone else. Only white pride is an expression of wanting to murder millions.
But that’s only if we exist. Whites are constantly told we aren’t even real. Only whiteness is deconstructed. “What do you mean by white?” is constantly asked while “What do you mean by black?” never is. It seems everyone knows what a black man or Asian man is. But a white man? That’s up for debate.
White Guilt highlights this double standard perfectly. Somehow whites are a uniquely evil race while not being a race at all. We terrorize everyone without physically existing, like a phantom. We can’t feel proud about anything because we’re not an actual group, but we feel guilty about everything because we’re an evil group.
All of our achievements belong to mankind as a whole. But all of our crimes belong exclusively to us. Every people throughout history have committed slavery, genocide, imperialism, etc. Yet only whites have to feel sorry about and thus be punished for them. The Japanese don’t have to open their borders to the world because they had a massive empire. The Mongols don’t have to tear down statues of Genghis Khan because he wiped out whole tribes. The Turks don’t have to be displaced in their country because they took it from another group. And Arabs don’t have to be shamed 24/7 for their massive slave trade. But whites have to suffer all these punishments for all these crimes. It’s like you being the only one expelled from school because you cut class with everyone else.
These double standards go beyond historical actions. Whites can’t win in society today. Nothing we do in relation to non-whites is right. If we move away from them, it’s White Flight. If we move near them, it’s Gentrification. If we see race, we’re being racist. If we don’t see race, we’re ignoring racism. If we celebrate their cultures, we’re committing Cultural Appropriation. If we don’t celebrate their cultures, we’re committing Eurocentrism. If we hold them to white standards, we’re being culturally biased. If we don’t hold them to white standards, we’re giving in to the bigotry of soft expectations. If we give them welfare, we’re keeping them on the poverty plantation. If we don’t give them welfare, we’re greedily keeping them in poverty. If we support Affirmative Action, we’re only giving them a chance because of their race. If we don’t support Affirmative Action, we’re only denying them a chance because of their race. If we make them assimilate, we’re robbing them of their heritage. If we don’t make them assimilate, we’re condemning them as alienated outcasts. If we go over and interfere in their countries, we’re being evil imperialists. If we don’t go over and interfere in their countries, we’re leaving them to suffer in squalid hellholes. This paragraph could go on and on and on until it's its own chapter.
Brittany was shocked and confused by this. She couldn’t understand why she was being given such a choice. What was the point of asking her race? Hadn't we reached a post-racial society? Hadn't we left race in the past? Some of you reading this book might have asked yourselves these questions.
The truth is we can't. Race is real. Race is the electric surge that sparks culture. This is not the Matrix, you are not Neo, and there is a spoon. Attempting to construct a Lala Land where it doesn't exist has trapped us in this labyrinth where every corridor leads to our loss.
Identity has replaced ideology as the source of conflict in society. Who you are is more important than what you believe. Most whites try to navigate around this by contorting themselves into mental gymnastics worthy of Olympic gold. When all the twisting and turning fails they offendedly retreat back to Lala Land as if identity politics is below them.
It's a hang up we must desperately get over. We will lose everything if we don't. Avoiding identity in our current society is like bringing a knife to a gun fight. Those who won't engage in it will be decimated like armored knights refusing to pick up a musket.
How did we reach this point? By importing different tribes, faiths, races, and ethnicities into the West; ideology died when millions who have nothing in common with us were allowed to flood our borders. Only in a society where people aren’t fighting over faith and tribe can they debate economic and political systems. You can't argue about how to run a society if you’re fighting over its very nature. The Founding Father of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, hit the bullseye when he said, “In multicultural societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.”
A major reason so many can't wrap their minds around this is because of our shorter historical memory. Whites ruled the world for the past 500 years. Our homelands seemed to become more secure and our people safer the further we expended and solidified our domination. Thus whites can only be envisioned as on top. The 1,000 years before that have been forgotten because of this.
Whites were on the defensive for the millennium before Columbus sailed. First the Huns assailed and temporarily ruled part of the weakening Roman Empire. Muslims then burst out of the Arabian Desert like a tidal wave of conquest over what remained of it all the way to central France. The Turks followed them to conquer much of Eastern Europe up to Vienna which they besieged twice. Mongols conquered Russia and ruled it for centuries as the Golden Horde. Over a million whites are estimated to have been taken in slave raids by Barbary pirates as we started exploring the seas.
Politics at that time was viewed as tribal, us vs them. It was a matter of different groups fighting for their interests, not different individuals coming together for an idea. We were in a constant struggle against outsiders thirsting to conquer our homelands. It wasn't until Columbus discovered The New World that we were able to go on the offensive.
None of this registers because we were so successful for so long so recently. We can only remember when all the power seemed to be ours. Non-whites having the advantage seems like a fantasy. But it’s becoming reality.
Ideology became our main divider during this long period of domination. Republicanism vs monarchy, Capitalism vs Socialism, Democracy vs Fascism; we could duke it out over how to run our civilization only when outsiders didn't threaten it. All those past threats seemed under control in faraway lands. We could argue about the rules of the house since possible burglars were under police watch in distant cells.
It's no surprise that where we were in contact with non-whites most, where white supremacy was most precarious, ideology took a backseat to identity. Places like British India, South Africa, and the American South didn't have the luxury to indulge in abstractions the way Europe or New England could. It was safe to be triggered over Apartheid or Segregation in London or Boston. Those days are gone. The burglars are free and inside the house.
And they have longer memories than us. They haven't forgotten that it's about us vs them. How could they when we were masters of their universe? Their homelands were being ruled by outsiders while ours seemed safe and sound. That half a millennium of security we knew was unknown to them; both from fighting with us, and each other (Shia vs. Sunni, Hindu vs. Muslim, Bantu vs. Pygmy, etc.) before and after we arrived.
All of this mixed into an explosive compound after WWII. Whites took the idea of individuals coming together for an idea to the suicidal heights of colorblindness during the Civil Rights Movement. We were literally individuals with no larger group identity. So it didn't matter who came into our countries since we were all a bunch of individuals exactly alike.
But only white people were. Decolonization was happening at the same time with whites giving up their mastery over the non-white world. Those former subjects were having their identities pumped up as they reasserted who they were after being ruled by foreigners for so long. Non-whites were strengthening their identities exactly when whites were abandoning theirs. One side was building up an arsenal in this changing world as the other was disarming.
The results have continued ever since. They are somebody and we are nobody. This schizophrenic mindset of not being an actual people while also being a people eternally guilty has put us in grave danger. The massacre of every white man, woman, and child during the Haitian Revolution in a war of racial extermination, and the millions of Boers suffering in South African squatter camps demonstrates that the genocide of Tasmanian Aboriginals and displacement of American Indians can happen to us. We are not immune from the blood and iron laws of group conflict.
We cannot choose a negative identity.
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