I saw Tim Wise on the tube passing through the airport the other day. Adrian Piper is the greatest thinker on race in America. Tim Wise is one of the most accomplished commentators on the subject of race in America. He's a bit overenthusiastic, but his basic ideas are spot on as far as I'm concerned.
Tim Wise is the kingpin of whiteness studies. Several years ago, I took whiteness studies quite seriously. The basic premise was that in order to disable the tyranny of race, the Negro had to unburden himself of the racial definitions hung on his shoulders - shed the racial skin he had inherited, and grow a new one, in the shape of a full man. He did so and so the black man was born. Not long after, the African American man was born. It is a self-directed, thoughtful, evolution away from the captivity of racial theories. Having done so, the proper African American is unburdened of a number of disabling dysfunctions.
Whiteness studies asks the fundamental question: Why can't whitefolks do the same?
I have become convinced that they cannot and will not because it's simply not important enough to them. Whitefolks, most of them I believe, find it suitable to simply not be racist and be a good American, and so are not so tied to ethnic traditions that they must undo what they are to become something else. I don't think they are fundamentally wrong in this, but I do think that attitude is insufficient to sustain an anti-racist praxis. As a race man, this is disturbing. Even though I am only a part-time contractor race man, I have lamented this default as fundamentally undermining the very basis of multiculturalism.
Let me repeat that because I think it bears repeating. Multiculturalism will never work so long as whitefolks don't undo their whiteness in a way similar to how the Negro became black. Without that component, multiculturalism is a waste of time, another species of white liberalism and subject to the same blindness and excess.
I sleep well at night because I think America works just fine with the proper elite. Most people are never confronted with significant decisions that require a great deal of good-think racially. We're getting hung out to dry over Jena and Paris DAs. These are highly educated people in a certified profession, the legal elites, and for the integrity of that elite profession, they are getting called on it. Mike Nifong is the prime example. But I also sleep well because of the fundamental presence of social capital of blackfolks themselves. I do not see these things in a precarious balance, I see Togo West and Colin Powell. I see black leadership in the US Armed Forces. It will take another civil war to undo the civil rights and social powers blacks have come to expect and Americans have come to expect of blackfolks in this nation. That is not even considered an eventuality.
But that does not invalidate the efforts of the reform-minded nor rid our society of racism. The presence of black social capital alone is insufficient, and quite frankly, lots of so-called minorities are still yearning and hungry for the American dream. The premises of equality requires vigilance and discipline. And so I think it is still reasonable to call for the end of whiteness. That is because socially, whiteness manifests itself stupidly and as a reactionary position. In otherwords, whitefolks make themselves whiter than they need to be. Blackfolks do the same, blackifying that which ought to remain neutral. These are old tire tropes and old exhausted battles that still repeat themselves, not as evidence of some global racial conspiracy, but evidence of intellectually lazy rhetoric that's easy to graft from the Civil Rights era to today. But even deeper still is a significant part of America that just doesn't get it - people for whom America itself represents a racialized history of injustice and advantage. And they are willing to play that old skin game for all they can.
I happen to be one of those folks whose take on institutional racism is complex and controversial, so I'm not going to go into that now. Suffice it to say that I don't deny for a moment that America needs improvement in the racial department. The question of priorities and strategies is a big can of worms.
With the ending of whiteness as one of those strategies, it brings into question the endgame of contemporary anti-racist politics. I think most players in the 'race relations' game as co-dependent and not going anywhere. They fundamentally see race as a static oppositional dynamic that must be managed, lest it get out of control and some cities burn. It is this precise dynamic I wish to attack and accuse of playing power games. The whites who speak for whites and the blacks who speak for blacks all expect powerful mobs at their backs, and they play proxy wars over every molehill on the racial landscape. This gets back to the theories of race in blood vs rhetoric in that molehill warriors have a vested interest in keeping the white side white and the black side black. They deliver black opinion or white votes or whatever and pat themselves on the back for keeping the peace on matters of over-hyped importance. In that, blacks are going to renew their blackness over things like Jena, rather than in the terms originating out of black history. Whites are going to re-inscribe themselves through protestations of insecurity and ignorance, rather than in terms related to real justice.
This is tedious. Will it ever end?
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