The Caucasity!
Something happened online the other day that was so incredible, I had to write about it. It made my blood boil and served as a good reminder as to why white supremacy is such a dangerous and destructive force. Our story of rage begins with a clip of Josh Mandel, a white guy who wants to be a representative from Ohio, speaking about “Critical Race Theory”:
It’s pretty clear that Josh here has no idea what he’s talking about. For starters, CRT is an advanced concept, generally only taught at the college level. So no children are being taught CRT. It’s a catchall term that supremacists, oops, I mean, conservatives, have been using to scare other white folks into thinking that people of color are going to brainwash their kids into thinking America isn’t the land of racial kumbaya they’ve deluded themselves into believing it is. CRT isn’t anything like that and if some of these people actually spent five minutes Googling it, they’d know better.
You may have noticed that Joshie-boy inaccurately invoked the words of the great Dr. King. He presents the concept that not only would MLK be AGAINST teaching kids about America’s racial history, but to do so would actually “stomp on the grave” of MLK. One second of critical thinking here should raise a few red flags with this sentiment. His comments caught the attention of Bernice King, Dr. King’s daughter. She responded thusly:
Pretty good! She followed up her response with another tweet:
Now, in a sane world, when the daughter of the person whose name you’re invoking reaches out to you to explain that you might have a few things wrong with your perception of her father, you’d think the person would be humble and contrite. Or at the very least respectful. Here’s how Josh responded:
Can you imagine the combination of gall, hubris, and proud ignorance that would lead to a response like this? “Spare me your lectures”????? He doubles down on his statement that CRT would stomp on MLK’s grave. I don’t know about you, but I think I’m going to go with the daughter of Dr. King over some random white dude when it comes to what his legacy is. This is such an ugly convergence of man-splaining and supremacist thinking that it should be preserved in ember and studied for centuries. It’s a perfect thing, horrendous and deplorable (of course), but perfect.
Ms. King responded to him thusly:
A lot of other people came to Dr. King’s defense. I’ll post a few of the replies to Josh’s nonsense below.
As bad as this exchange is, it’s not surprising. White folks have been taught a sanitized, white-approved, version of who Dr. King was and what he stood for. In school, we’re taught quotes from his speeches, like “I Have A Dream” and the like. Here’s a snippet that’s probably the best-known part of his speech.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
You’ve heard that one, right? Pretty good. But white people have taken that one line and perverted the message. Dr. King was not speaking about a colorblind society. He knew better than anyone that to pretend our society could or would ever be colorblind without understanding and correcting centuries of injustice was a folly. Instead, I would ask white folks to pay attention to the whole speech, or at least these key parts.
“In a sense, we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.”
“There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, when will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.”
These words ring as true today as they did 60 years ago.
Keep in mind that Bernice King had to grow up WITHOUT her father because he was assassinated by white supremacists! That’s how dangerous the ideas he was preaching at the time of his death were to white folks. Over the years, his message has been co-opted and corrupted by white supremacy. We’re told that non-violence is the only solution. Pretty convenient opinion coming from the folks who beat civil rights protestors, sprayed them with firehoses, and attacked them with dogs. The Civil Rights movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s is largely portrayed this way. That only through non-violence can we achieve goals. And yet there is rarely more than a passing mention that it was the white government and white citizens who were the ones engaging in violence.
Boy, I tell you what, I’d sure want the people I was oppressing to think that non-violence was the only solution as I kicked their teeth in. This is how white supremacy has distorted the messages of that era. It wasn’t simply about equal rights and ending segregation. It was also about creating equity and righting the many, many wrongs of the past. I’ll let the good Reverend explain it himself:
“We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power… this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism are all tied together… you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order.”- Report to SCLC Staff, May 1967.
“The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism.” – Speech to SCLC Board, March 30, 1967.
“I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective – the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed matter: the guaranteed income… The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.” – Where do We Go from Here?, 1967.
“You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism.” – Speech to his staff, 1966.
These are the thoughts that were dangerous to white folks at the time. These are the ideas he was murdered over. Yes, civil rights, but also the creation of an equitable society.
The general consensus nowadays seems to be that “things are better” than they used to be. In poll after poll, that’s certainly what white folks think. But that is another dangerous perversion of white supremacy. There is a reason that the only ones who think things are equal for minorities in this country are white people. For centuries, Black folks have been told to be patient, to wait for things to change, and to respond to supremacist violence with humility, grace, and turning the other cheek. But as the incredible writer James Baldwin put it, “how much time do you want for your progress?”
Dr. King saw the danger in this kind of thinking as well:
So the question becomes: white folks, how long are we going to take to address our nation’s racist history and rectify them? This is on US. We are the ones who need to fix things. And the only way to understand how to make things equitable is to understand our shared past. Teaching children the true history of this nation is something we cannot run away from because it makes us uncomfortable or refutes the lies of supremacy we’ve been taught. Josh Mandel is confident in his opinion of Dr. King not because he isn’t aware of who MLK was. It’s because supremacy has told him for his entire life that white people, and therefore their opinions and understandings of the world are superior to everyone else’s. Follow that train of thought to its logical conclusion. It leads a white man to disrespect and condescend to the daughter of a hero about his own legacy. This is the poisonous thinking of supremacy.
One of the most disturbing trends that polling has revealed is that white people think they are now the ones facing racism and discrimination. This is another lie supremacy has taught them and it is the fruit of the same tree that leads Mandel to speak so foolishly, the tree of a colorblind society. One tactic (and there are many) to address and rectify our long history of oppression and discrimination is to prioritize the upward mobility of people of color. This means creating opportunities for education, employment, political power, and wealth creation.
On its face, prioritizing one race over another would give the appearance of so-called “reverse racism”. But take it a step further. For 400 years, white men were given this exclusive domain. They were the only ones who could own land, vote, and create wealth. Imagine a race where your competitors are given a 400-year headstart? What chance would you have to win, or even catch up? This is where anti-racism thinking comes in to address the inequity.
The myth that we should (or do) live in a colorblind society is as dangerous as it is false. In the future, would it be fabulous to live in a country where people of all colors and creeds can sit at a table together and race never comes up? Of course. That’s why Dr. King called it a dream. Because it is not reality. We cannot simply get there by snapping our fingers and announcing that racism is over.
I love watching old clips from The Dick Cavett Show. It was way ahead of its time. He looked to tackle tough issues and have honest conversations with people. It’s basically a podcast from the 1960s. Have a look at this exchange between NFL legend Jim Brown and the incredibly racist governor of Georgia, Lester Maddox.
Note how concerned he is every time Jim Brown talks about uplifting Black communities. Maddox demands that we also consider the white man. It is convenient for white people to say “oh racism ended years ago” and then want everything to be equal while never addressing the massive disparity between whites and people of color. It’s as if white people shouted over their shoulder “ok, everything is equal now” as they kept the lead they already had in society. How is this justice?
As I said, this is not a solution that Black folks need to implement. It is white people who have to fix the mess their ancestors made. Is this unfair in a vacuum? Perhaps. But we do not live in a vacuum. Society and culture is a river flowing down the side of the mountain. It changes course and speed as the terrain warrants. And white folks are the ones with the shovels. We must not merely be “not racist”, which is a passive approach and worthless at best, but we must be actively anti-racist. Again, you need to look no further than Dr. King for this.
“First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
Simply put, white people need to do better. A lot better. And a good place to start would be avoiding talking down to the daughter of the man whose words you twist for ill-ends. Check your privilege.
Oh, the Caucasity of it all.