Shawn Maxam wonders if there’s a difference between white and White.
The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.
-Frederick Douglass
I Hate You So Much Right Now
Often when I’m around other black people they complain about white people. There is a frustration in their voices about the basic inequity between the racial groups. A few examples include the over-representation of people of color inside the prison system and poor educational opportunities for minority groups.
When people of color are complaining, venting and discussing their anger about white people I believe they are really complaining about White People. What being white represents in this country. The years of privilege and complicit oppression built upon whiteness. They are combining the macro aspects of whiteness with the micro aspects of whiteness.
Those Chinese People
American citizens do the same thing when we talk about the Chinese surpassing America economically. We aren’t talking about the rural Chinese farmer or the Chinese factory worker. We are referring to “that group” of 1.2 Billion Chinese people. It’s a weird kind of othering that is happening in our minds. The difference is that China is literally a world away. We don’t have to confront our encounter the boogeyman Chinese person in our daily lives.
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What being white represents in this country. Years of privilege and complicit oppression. They are combining the macro aspects of whiteness with the micro aspects of whiteness.
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Black people have to confront institutionalized racism and microagressions everyday. Black people encounter remnants of this historical othering all the time. Artifacts of slavery and Jim Crow are ever present. We constantly see our sons and brothers being imprisoned, killed and other systematic injustices. When most Black people live in predominantly segregated communities how are they suppose to separate white people from White People?
The late great comedian Patrice O’Neal said every group needs a villain when they suffer oppression. He specifically cited Adolf Hitler for Jewish people and the Holocaust. Germans have a complicated relationship with that aspect of their history but they themselves and the rest of the world can point to Hiter as the ultimate bad guy and responsible party. O’Neal said Black people have no such bad guy.
Jefferson Owned Slaves Too
In America the Founding Fathers who owned slaves are revered. I’m not saying Jefferson and Hitler warrant comparison. I’m pointing out that as a nation Germany doesn’t suffer from the cognitive-dissonance that America does when it comes to ultimately attributing blame to what happened to African-Americans or Native-Americans or Japanese-Americans.
So if there isn’t a villain for Black people to focus their anger, rage, disappointment and sadness on then modern white people become the stand-in for White People. White People are the historic and institutionalized group that perpetuated the atrocious acts against my ancestors. It’s not an easy conversation to have and I don’t have any answers but it is a question I believe that is worth asking.
Please share this with friends, enemies and temporary allies alike.
Thanks for reading, sharing and commenting!
R.I.P. SKH
About S. Maxam
It kind of sounds like the White person that your friends complain about doesn’t exist, because finding that actual white person who is responsible, the American Hitler of slavery and racism, is a matter of finding a symbol: a scapegoat. When we take it out on each other, we know that we’re standing in for some larger whole, an identity group, and for history and the acts of people who are long dead. How to deal justly with one another, now?
Talking with a white friend last week, we spoke as we often do about race and what our responsibility is as white men. I say it’s to take whatever capital we’ve got and use it to change the system for greater justice. My friend was saying that his peers, when asked to talk about their racial identity and pride, don’t have an identity: all they have is shame. The white people he’s gone to school with aren’t White; they don’t have any racial identity; they don’t have ceremonies, foods, holidays, ways of addressing elders, and the like, that they associate with being White. I know what he’s talking about; so many times, a conversation about whiteness gets derailed in a denial of whiteness: my white friends will tell me they’re Jewish, they’re “beige,” anything to distinguish themselves from the alpha white male. The other half of the time, the problem is that they don’t see what’s theirs as unique; they think their culture is “everybody’s.” White people can only seem to figure out what’s uniquely White by comparing it with minority cultures, because mainstream culture is White. The differences between ourselves and that alpha model make us antsy; how are we failing at being White? It’s this nature of the difference between our relationships to that mainstream, alpha white guy that remains the difference between being White and being Black. It’s White people’s responsibility to figure out what White is, not so we can be proud of our heritage, but to get past the shame, know ourselves, and from there, finally begin the journey to compassion.
Yeah I agree Justin. They usually say white people ___________________. I think African-Americans have a loss of culture too. It is in opposition to mainstream culture IMO.
Caribbean folks like my parents usually have a stronger sense of culture because the racial dissonance doesn’t exist the same way in say Jamaica. Black American identity seems so built around being oppressed which makes perfect sense not only from a historical basis but from what happens everyday as well.
The Alpha White Male ideal is something a lot of my white male friends struggle with. If you fit the archetype of white, male and straight then you supposedly represent “the best” but if you aren’t super successful then who’s fault is it but your own? The shame part is only something I see in “progressive” or “social-aware” white men. I know I am doing a shitload of generalizing right now which is the problem when we have these conversations.
I don’t know, I don’t know.
Shawn, Justin,
Damnit guys, tough topic.
As a white male, and a self-admitted social progressive at that, I feel an obligation, to both my chagrin/pride, to befriend people outside my own “historical” (I use that word b/c it seems socially progressive) racial group.
Whether at work, school, or other communities and social groups we find ourselves inhabiting, sometimes I’ve been rebuffed because of either a clash of personality or the dreaded construct (in my mind?) of “who the hell does this white guy think he is.” Other times I know that I have met a kindred soul with whom I can commiserate, and I wont lie, I feel good about it b/c I made a “colored” friend. Please bear in mind my language carries many connotations, but we as a culture have not bothered to define new parameters for such discussions. For this I cannot apologize, though I feel a base need to do so, still.
As an Estadounidense, a term I picked up from a youth spent in New Mexico and one for which I’ve found not better alternative, a good first step might be the admittance that we are shaped by those socio-historical forces that have delivered us into the present time, rather than a simple reference to, reverence of, and reliance on said forces. Black history lacks a symbolic figure on which to shoulder blame, unlike European Jewish populations, but circumstances and those same aforementioned forces were different in those different times and to expect a similar explanation for each is reductive reasoning.
We need discussions like this gentlemen, and I’m glad to have read this post and contributed as such. I suggest that our difficulties may in large part stem from a culture (read: mainstream, dare I say WHITE?) that seeks answers in and an overabundance of analysis on “what is,” especially in a racial sense, rather than innovative thinking into what “might be,” in a cultural sense. Thoughts?
I feel like I just opened my shirt and said, “Yeah, barb me wherever.” The fact that I have that reaction may very well be the jist of the issue, I feel exposed, as we often do talking (or not) about the implications of a racially loaded past in this United States not so far removed from it as we might like to think.
Interesting article. However, Sean your comment about black Americans culture being built around white oppression is based on what. What os stronger culture, in kind of sounds like one of the many meanignless digs carribeans like to take at african americans. In addition the blanket belief that caribbeans have a stronger sense of culture is based on what? In many ways Caribbean American culture is built on being the antithesis of black culture and the quest to escape black oppression, so by your measure of strength of culture doesn’t that weaken Caribbean culture? Cant that also be applied to every immigrant group that works to distance themselves from black people. That wasn’t a very well thought out comment. It comes off even more poorly given the nature of the article .
Carl you are right. I was doing some super-generalizing like I said in my comment above.
I think I meant to say that say Jamaicans seem to exude more cultural pride because their country and identity are very aligned. Jamaican food and dialect and music. In America we tend to separate culture based on race. We say things like Urban culture or urban music when we are really referring to Black music. This may all be shitty example and I am probably muddling my point.
I just think America’s uniqueness as a country of “immigrants” is one of biggest strengths and also a great source of pain and division as well. I need to think about this a bit more so please give me the benefit of the doubt Carl. I don’t think Caribbean folk are superior and I apologize if it came off that way.
Jared I agree that is pretty tough and complicated. It feels like we are unpacking a lot of history and issues. Not enough time or words really. One of my best friends who is a white guy who I met in NY while we were both students at grad school had a similar rebuffing experience. He is from the Bay area and the subtle racial tension was a bit surprising for him but like you said we are kindred spirits despite outward differences in appearance.
I am sure we both felt pride in finding a new friend who shared enough commonalities where we could form a bond but also teach each other about differences. Even today he asked me how Black people could tolerate the Rolling Stones song Black Sugar being played on the radio.
Could you expand on the what is and might be question. I think I understand but I’m not really sure.
Glad to be having this conversation with all of you.
As a white male Australian, I can actually empathize with a lot of the issues being being discussed here – that urge to form connections with people outside of your race and class, that sense of feeling shame and guilt because of who you are and what your ancestors have done (the history of Australia’s relationship with the indigenous population isn’t pretty) – and what your contemporaries are still doing. But despite that, I can not really point to any part of my life and say, with confidence, that this is part of white culture – it is, of course, but it doesn’t FEEL like it. It’s so normalized and unquestionable that it takes outside perspectives to even begin to look at it. That sense of obligation to help improve conditions for people outside my race and class is definitely pretty strong, too.
Is this the case with all majorities? Or something unique to largely immigrant nations? Certainly, every time a white person tries to assert some kind of cultural and racial identity, it comes off as weird and juvenile (here, it’s a weird combination of beer, bbq’s, ‘taking the piss’, ‘mateship’ and ‘the fair go’), and often doesn’t seem to describe my experience of Australia much at all. I sometimes think that the only way one can form a strong individual sense of a racial or cultural identity is in opposition to something else (the othering that was described) – I really hope that isn’t the case, though.
Well, that was a bit of a ramble. Guess I just wanted to say that some aspects of this discussion are prevalent in other nations, as well.