The Wayward Scholar

Pro-blackness is fundamentally anti-white because whiteness has been engineered to facilitate the subjugation of black people. Believing that pro-black declarations are inherently anti-white is admitting to an awareness of these oppressive establishments and the structure of power. But in our white supremacist culture it also assumes that anti-whiteness is atypical and perverse, whereas the existence of an anti-blackness is natural.

I argue claiming that pro blackness is not anti-white is taking a position to make white people feel comfortable rather than focusing on radical movements towards liberation and empowerment. This shift in rhetoric is succumbing to a degree of tone policing and respectability politics. It is expected that we first provide reassurance that brown skin is not threatening or dangerous every time we want to express independence, autonomy or power.

This is because white supremacy has always been positioned to enact surveillance and control over black bodies, nearly always using brutal force and violence. In turn white supremacy is upheld through the continuous engineering of white people and whiteness. Blackness came into existence as a consequence of the creation of whiteness. Therefore, this makes whiteness a direct foil to blackness and makes Pro-Blackness effectively fixed against all systems and institutions that are intrinsically anti-black.

So why are we wasting our time and energy on soothing delusional psyches? Why do we ourselves feel so uncomfortable when we fail to safeguard the comforts of people who do not have our best interests in mind? Those who take mortal offense to the mere ideology of black freedom are not our allies. These people aren’t fighting for us, they are not fighting with us and they will continue to let us die in the streets either way.

White people should always feel uncomfortable with their whiteness because the only way to overcome privilege is through disruption. Our pro-blackness interrupting their lives is a good thing. They should be reminded everyday that skin color is symbolic and, white skin is no exception. They need to be reminded of their whiteness with the same disruptive forces that mark us as Black.

Zora Neale Hurston said it best, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”

The reality is whiteness does cause incredible pain for black families and black communities that can range from inconveniences to fatal interactions. “Micro-aggressions” in the workplace, employment discrimination, experiencing poverty rates as high as 27 percent, mass incarceration, police brutality and police killings, discriminatory practices in housing, banking and healthcare, race-based discrimination in the criminal justice system, armed conflict and bombings both domestic and abroad. These are just examples of some of the external ways that whiteness and white supremacist structures wage war against black bodies.

So what exactly does it mean to be anti-white?

Being anti-white is completely divesting from white supremacy and dismantling white supremacist institutions. It’s providing moral, spiritual, economic and political reparations to black and brown bodies globally. It’s rebuilding communities that value and thrive on empathy and compassion. It’s abolishing a culture of domination and control by moving towards transformative and restorative practices. Advocating the idea that anti-whiteness is ‘reverse racism or reverse discrimination’ or even claiming “All Lives Matter” is a deflection to counter protest imaginary injustices.

Anti-whiteness is deliberately focusing on establishing a system that offers stable employment for black women and men, anti-whiteness is freedom from economic slavery, it is ensuring positive and diverse representations of black people in politics and in the media, encouraging black boys and black girls to love themselves fiercely and unapologetically, it’s providing security from state-sanctioned violence and manipulation, to build self-sustaining communities inclusive of all melanin shades, genders, and orientations, its allowing black people to reclaim their time and their power. This is the exact same definition and meaning of being pro-black.

Being anti-white is to be anti-racist, so the only way to be pro-black is by ultimately being anti-white.

A declaration of a fear of anti-whiteness by white people when confronted by pro-black movements or pro-black spaces is not about preserving ‘white identities’ but rather about violently tearing black identities down. When ‘Black Power’ is translated to ‘I hate all white people’, this is just a misplaced and prejudiced characterization of blackness. Although linguistically incorrect, this conclusion is conceptually accurate.

If both freedom and liberation are our ultimate goals, then there is no room for whiteness to exist. Most opponents argue that the eradication of whiteness is a cultural genocide and to that I say, so what?

I ask, how can we speed these processes along? How can we ensure that the flesh of whiteness is stripped away and the bones are ground into dust?

A ‘cultural’ genocide of whiteness is an incredibly small price to pay for the literal, tangible genocides where black and brown bodies lay in its wake and the environment is ravaged beyond the point of no return.  The cultural genocide of whiteness recreates the world where whiteness and white people do not get to dictate which cultures are valuable and deserve preservation. For whiteness has systematically eradicated cultures historically and contemporarily.

Imperialism and colonialism, militarism, fascism, misogyny, misogynoir, hetero-patriarchy, racism and unchecked globalized capitalism have no place in this world. Not for peace and not for prosperity.

As far as I am concerned, being anti-white is the next best thing, to being absolutely, positively pro-black.