A few thoughts on those white Catholic boys from Kentucky, from a former Catholic boy (still white), to my fellow white people

            

            Perhaps the most devilish thing white supremacy does is convince us that there is such a thing as “good white people.” And by “us” I mean white people, because people of color have known this for a long time. It is very easy for us to look at the ugly smirk on the face of a MAGA hat wearing white boy and think, “That’s not me.” We might then appoint ourselves allies of the marginalized, honor the bravery of Nathan Phillips, making sure to note his service in the Vietnam war, his real patriotism for serving a nation that has never served him, and then count ourselves among the majority of good, non-Trump-voting white folks.

            While white supremacy is exposing and inducing people of color to quicker deaths, it is also convincing white people that they are good. Its most efficient mechanism is one that generates a distinction: bad whites and good whites. At one point in time, this distinction might have been between whiteness and off-whiteness. Anglo-Saxons were white, while other groups, who may very well have had white skin, like the Irish, were not. Those groups, the off-whites, were closer in political proximity to people of color than they were to Anglo-Saxon whites. However, as the story goes, off-white people eventually assimilated to whiteness, choosing to ally themselves with their bosses and employers over their fellow workers in hope that they might reap the benefits of industrial Capitalism instead of suffering under its exploitation.

            Nowadays, though it may still linger in certain instances, there isn’t much of a distinction between whiteness and off-whiteness. Though occasionally a white person may try to prove his lack of racist tendencies by evoking an historically misguided ancestry of “Irish slavery,” or something similar, the truth is that all forms of whiteness in the United States of America are built on the same thing: racism.

            White supremacy wants you to believe that racism is simply a matter of bad white people bullying people of color. When we, the “good” whites, see this happening we have a certain tendency to swoop in and make clear the distinction that serves as our unutterable identity: some white people just don’t get it. We always refuse, in the end, to see ourselves as part of a singular racial group that benefits from the oppression of other racial groups. When we point out the white bullies, we feel that our work is done, that justice is achieved.

            But racism is not just a matter of whether or not you support Donald Trump and his ilk. Racism is there when you choose to live in a neighborhood that is more than 80 percent white, or when you move into a neighborhood that used to have working-class people of color but now has way too many young white people who never say hello on the street. Racism is there when you send your kids to private schools. Racism is there when you list off your favorite musicians, movies, books. Racism is there when you vote. Racism is there when you go to a job interview and when you get the job. Racism is there when you support the police and prisons. Racism and Capitalism are, while different, inseparable. In short, racism is not just personal, it’s systemic.

            Instead of just calling out the white bullies (which we must still vehemently do), we must abolish whiteness as a whole, and that includes the whiteness we have absorbed and benefited from, even though that was a choice we never made. Because if you don’t know by now, there is no such thing as race outside of a system of power that assures resources for some while denying resources for others.

            Don’t be mistaken: I am not writing this to prove myself a superior white person (although the desire does tug and tug at me), because there is ultimately no way to truthfully recognize one’s whiteness without also recognizing one’s participation in white supremacy. In all honesty there are two things: 1. I do, indeed, feel guilt. 2. I probably would have been that ugly white kid wearing a MAGA hat if I’d been given his life. How do I know this? Because I, too, attended an almost entirely white Catholic high school, in the north, and I remember three things: a gym teacher who called all of the handful of black kids in the school his “homies”; a history teacher who insisted on referring to Native peoples as “Indians,” because, according to him, they were savages who deserved it; and a beloved English teacher who once asked that same handful of black students if they’d rather be called “niggers” or “slaves” in the context of reading Mark Twain. And that’s just what I remember. I’m certain that there’s more.

            I also know that I am no different because I would not be able to write these things without having been taught by college professors of color. No white person I knew growing up ever spoke a word to me about systemic racism and our perpetuation of it. Not once, because no one had talked to them about it either, though we’d all heard the stories of white bullies many times.

            We must do better, because we have no choice. Because racism is tied up with Capitalism, and Capitalism is tied up with the environmental degradation of this planet, we have no choice but to collectively dismantle these forms of systemic death, or that's it for all of us. 

Cover photo: Theaster Gates, "Whyte Hole" 

***most of the ideas here are gleaned or based on the works of others, and while many authors and scholars discuss similar ideas, I will refer the ones I have drawn from and thought about specifically: 
1. The idea that racism is exposure to premature death: Ruth Wilson Gilmore. 
2. The story of off-white assimilation: David Roediger, Tim Wise, and Noel Ignatiev. 
3. White people not recognizing their own whiteness: Toni Morrison. 
4. Racism and Capitalism as different but inseparable: Fred Moten.