Reading 2

“whiteness”

How is “whiteness” central to “white” racist identity?

“Whiteness characterizes the activity of deranged individuals intrigued by their own image of themselves, and thus unable to see that they are what is wrong with the world.”

— James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation

“Whiteness” can only exist if people believe that a “white race” exists. “Whiteness” festers in the minds of people who believe that the “white race” is a biological reality instead of a socially constructed political and economic reality, whose existence depends upon the continuous oppression, domination and exploitation of all non-“white” peoples. “Whiteness” was necessarily birthed in degradation and will forever remain debased.

A “white” person is any man or woman who believes that there are immutable cultural or biological differences among ethnic groups. “White” people believe that skin “color,” hair type, and other phenotypic characteristics define, and consequently designate, the various “races” of humanity. While all “white” people believe in the false reality of human “races,” they may not all necessarily believe that the “white” race is superior to the “Black race” or any other “race.”

Nevertheless, the vast majority of “white” people are undoubtedly racists who believe that the “white race” is superior to all others “races.” This shameful belief is linked to the centrality of their identification as “white” people. For most “white” people, and certainly all “white “racists,” the loss of their identity as “white” would be cataclysmic because “whiteness” informs their truth, reality, and very sense of self. It is just as “impossible” to prove to “white” racists that they are not superior to “Black” people as it is to convince the Republicans who stormed the Capitol in D.C. that the 2020 Presidential election wasn’t “stolen.” “White” racists will believe what they must (or need to) believe in order to maintain their deluded reality.

“White” racists have placed all of humanity within a dichotomous racial hierarchy in which “white” is superior and “Black” is inferior. “White” racists have dictated what is right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, wise and ignorant, civilized and primitive, strong and weak, progressive and regressive. “White” racists have successfully situated themselves socially, economically, politically, institutionally, culturally, spiritually, and religiously at the polar opposite of the continuum from “Black” people – with “yellow,” “red,” and “brown” people positioned in-between. Their hierarchy dictates their superiority over all peoples. Their hegemony bends facts and truth to “white” whims.

When we live in a world of their warped standards, we always see ourselves as less than. We see “white” as something to aspire to or to mimic. Consequently, we desire and covet their cars, their homes, their luxury goods, their food, their political and economic systems, their education, their neighborhoods, their “white” Jesus, their clothing, their culture, their philosophy, and their beauty aesthetic.