The Whiteness Problem

The backhanded boycott of the historic UN anti-racism conference in Geneva by mostly-white diplomats from Western nations, whose fortunes just happen to stand upon centuries of white supremacist colonialism, slavery, and imperialism, is farcical on its face. The story being peddled is that the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the Czech Republic are sitting out Durban II because of the sheer scandalousness posed by the singular figure of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivering another one of his branded ahistorical anti-Zionist tirades. I don't buy that story; in my world, simply swallowing the line that's being peddled by political hacks and fake news outlets is called being a sucker.

Without question, Ahmadinejad's twisted vision of omnipresent Jewish imperialism is unsound and indeed dangerous. But does it really make sense to pretend that one politician of dubious power, among thousands of conference attendees and hundreds of nations, is some dark overlord whose words carry the weight of the world? Of course not. This is not a tenable diplomatic position: Well, we were thinking about working with y'all to stop genocide but this asshole Ahmadinejad is gonna be there so we'll pass. In fact, if one wanted to denounce anti-Semitism, you know what would be a really good place to do that? How about a global anti-racism conference? Norway’s foreign minister Jonas Gahr Støre said in his speech before the assembly: "We who have made a point of defending freedom of expression cannot opt for non-attendance as a strategy, leaving the floor to precisely those who hold opposite views. We will not surrender the floor of the United Nations to the extremists. The President of Iran has just exercised that human right. He did so, I believe, in a way that threatens the very focus of this conference." See? It's called firing back from the same podium. You're allowed to do that at UN gatherings. You can crush flimsy arguments with strong substantial ones. That's how debate and dialogue work.

I think it's pretty clear that certain countries were looking for an excuse not to participate and ended up thanking their lucky stars that Mahmoud came along to provide a useful caricature in their diplomatic charade. Why would white-majority countries such as the US, Germany, and Australia want to avoid an international conference aimed at ending racism? Hmm, let's think this one through, shall we? Okay I'm done, how'd you do? Here we go: People who benefit from racism generally do not want to talk about racism. That's like asking bankers to talk about ponzi schemes and money laundering. It's like asking a drug warlord to talk about processing facilities and smuggling routes. It's like asking a system administrator for the superuser password and hidden directory structure. It's not gonna happen.

What about Obama? you ask. How can you accuse a black president of not wanting to end racism? Easily: Obama may personally, deep in his own liberal Kansas-Kenyan heart, want to end racism, but he no longer acts as Barack the individual; he acts as president of a country that has neither vanquished, nor even seriously grappled with, its genocidal racist foundations. Obama's election as the first African American president does not indicate a "post racial" US politics any more than Benazir Bhutto's election in 1988 indicated that sexism had been defeated in Pakistan. No serious person would make such a contention. Obama's decision to boycott Durban II is right in line with the overall political style which got him elected in the first place. He's very cautious with white America and goes out of his way to avoid getting pegged as an Angry Black Man. He must always speak with calm Socratic eloquence, must always keep his hair tightly trimmed, and must never exhibit excessive physical passion by, say, swinging his hips while dancing. And who can blame him? The Oval Office isn't exactly ready for natty dreads, and he's a politician. His job isn't to smash the constraints of mainstream US politics but rather to work within them. I suspect he would actually agree with this statement.

My job, however, is to smash. I'm a sledgehammer polemicist, not a politician. I don't craft cautious soundbites which ride fine demographic slivers into feel-good crescendos. I'd rather bluntly point out that mainstream racial discourse in the US is violently truncated to the point of purposeful meaninglessness. Fake news bobbleheads and self-congratulatory liberals reduce racism to a matter of personal virtue on the one hand and unhinged hate on the other. Which isn't what I'm talking about when I talk about racism. Certainly right-wing hate groups are a real and urgent problem in this country, but for me at least, the chances of having a physical run-in with such groups on any given day are relatively low compared with the certainty of dealing with the less-visible racism built into liberal assumptions and socio-economic institutions. When I talk about racism, I'm talking about the shape of power and inequality embedded in the structures of the world; embedded in culture, geopolitics, language, worldview; embedded in liberal imperialism and the aid-industrial-complex; embedded in corporatist neo-colonialism — one of racism's crowning achievements for the sheer audacity of its dizzying mansion of derivative mirrors — whose systemic maldistribution and aggressive exploitation funnels wealth out of brown countries, into an elite class of white-dominated supra-national entities, resulting in mass deprivation and destruction in countless communities of color.

What's notable to me about Durban II is that many nations populated overwhelmingly by people of color appear to be increasingly assertive and effective in organizing on the world stage to defend their human rights against a litany of systemic onslaughts; yet a handful of powerful holdouts remain fixated on discrediting and sabotaging such efforts in favor of status quo inequality. To my mind, the boycott provides a handy illustration that the great problem of the 21st century is the whiteness problem. Obviously I'm perilously paraphrasing the well-worn centennial declaration by the iconic anti-racist W.E.B. DuBois, and I've tweaked the saying to suit my purpose of the moment, which is to shift the focus from a battle line to a warring state. Because when we talk about the color line, when we talk about racism, the fundamental causal problem we're really talking about is whiteness.

Needless to say, whiteness is not genetic; it's socialized, not inherited; though ironically, whiteness deploys a pseudo-genetic basis in its contempt for The Other. Whiteness is a socio-political construct and a fluid strategic ideology of power which has only existed for the past 5 centuries or so, during the era of racist globalization and colonialism. When I talk about the whiteness problem, I'm not necessarily talking about white people, I'm talking about whiteness. I'm saying that whiteness is a disturbingly unifying thread you can find running through many of the great problems of our time: environmental destruction, the war racket, famine, human migrations, curable yet untreated disease. Attempts to address any of these issues are severely hindered by whiteness; that is, by the existential drive of a global elite, profoundly informed by whiteness, to live in dominion over, rather than harmony with, humanity and nature. Indeed, lately I've begun to see whiteness as a cognitive trauma which shuts down sections of a child's perceptual body, enabling an entire slew of normative dehumanizing maneuvers to occur without self-awareness. All of us who have been socialized in racist society have to some extent absorbed the trauma of whiteness; though obviously, quite a few people come to realize that it's in their liberatory self-interest to interrogate and extract such socialization from their psyches.

Coming back to the conference in Geneva, nothing could be more representative of whiteness than to impose political preconditions and speech rules on brown folks before even agreeing to engage in anti-racist dialogue. Then boycotting or stomping out in a huff when those conditions aren't properly satisfied. That's pretty much how most conversations about race go with white folks, am I right? We all know the drill. All this tiresome talk about racism and social justice and all that annoying claptrap is seen by some as an intrusive affront.

Okay I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to wriggle my way out of this post without addressing the thorniest issue of them all. You know what I'm talking about: Israel-Palestine. The hottest flashpoint at the epicenter of a fiery cauldron of violence, and the ostensible cause of the Durban II boycott. Countless volumes have been written on the subject and countless more will and should be. Of course I believe in Israel's right to exist; just as I believe in Palestine's. But anyone who thinks the current situation is in any way sustainable or just or leading toward anything remotely resembling a happy ending for any of the parties involved is suffering from cognitive trauma. I don't want to delve too deeply into socio-cultural, historical, or geopolitical analysis right now, but I will say that those who equate criticism of US-Israeli policy with anti-Semitism are arguing in bad faith and abusing anti-racist language in order to silence dissent. At the same time, those who take legitimate criticism of US-Israeli policy and in any way conflate it with or blame it on Jewishness are indeed engaging in mushy-minded racist drivel. The profound problems with US-Israeli policy have nothing to do with Jewishness; they have to do with empire. And for the past 5 centuries, if it's about empire, it's about whiteness. The formula is easily discerned. A fortress wall is erected between the empire's Shining White Knights and the Dirty Brown Others who must be either controlled or eliminated. This is the moral framework which has been adopted by US-Israeli policy and propaganda, not because Israel is a Jewish state in a Muslim region, but because somewhere along the line, Israel became a white stronghold in a brown region. It's seldom stated this plainly, but it is certainly plain to see.

How did this happen? How did the Jewish nationalist movement, which arose at the end of the 19th century in response to the anti-Semitic racism of European Christians, lead to the current state of affairs? It's a long and winding story, and it's sometimes said that long and winding stories are bad for the soul. But the key juncture I will point to is the rise of US imperialism in the aftermath of World War II, punctuated in 1948 by two nearly-simultaneous events: the establishment of the state of Israel, and the publication of a US State Department report describing Middle Eastern oil as "the greatest strategic prize in history". I believe in the legitimacy of Jewish nationalist aspirations, but somewhere along the line, those aspirations appear to have gotten played.

This is not a conversation US diplomats want to have. Frankly, it's not really a conversation that I want to have. It is extremely uncomfortable terrain and I know how hot passions run when so much identity, history, and suffering is at stake. But anti-racism requires fearlessness. If a UN-sponsored global anti-racism conference isn't the right place for such a conversation, then what is?

Organizers and participants at Durban II deserve credit for undertaking the difficult, treacherous project of an international anti-racist initiative. Personally I don't really believe that the US is a nation of cowards; I know plenty of people who are perfectly willing to engage in frank analysis of racism and how to dismantle it. But clearly there are parties who don't want this conversation and these ideas to go forward. If that's where they want to stand, so be it. The lesson of Durban II is that neither Mahmoud Ahmadinejad nor entrenched powers will derail this progressive work aimed at addressing one, if not many, of the great problems of the 21st century.

Comments

[Carmen D.]

Wow. A helluva post. Thank you.

[terese]

Hi, really liked this post. I love how you have exposed the behaviour of the boycotting states down to its bare bones, which is simply that they are refusing to engage in anti-racist dialogue unless it is on their (whiteness defined) terms. that is such a classic privilege/power clutching & defensive position. textbook.

[nezua]

Great piece.

The profound problems with US-Israeli policy have nothing to do with Jewishness; they have to do with empire. And for the past 5 centuries, if it's about empire, it's about whiteness. The formula is easily discerned. A fortress wall is erected between the empire's Shining White Knights and the Dirty Brown Others who must be either controlled or eliminated. This is the moral framework which has been adopted by US-Israeli policy and propaganda, not because Israel is a Jewish state in a Muslim region, but because somewhere along the line, Israel became a white stronghold in a brown region.

What's notable to me about Durban II is that many nations populated overwhelmingly by people of color appear to be increasingly assertive and effective in organizing on the world stage to defend their human rights against a litany of systemic onslaughts; yet a handful of powerful holdouts remain fixated on discrediting and sabotaging such efforts in favor of status quo inequality.

I like this post because it feels like what comes next. And a lot more comes after this...but this is a good step toward there. Yeah. Battle lines need to be drawn, even if so only people can look down to their feet and see where they are in the struggle.

Oh yeah and I had to laugh at the huffing and puffing and stamping of feet.

[macon d]

Thanks for the fearlessness. US interests in Israeli hegemony certainly don't get enough attention in the US (and maybe not in Israel either).

I'm surprised you didn't include Lula's observations about the current global malaise and its blue-eyed perpetrators.

(By the by, wasn't it Du Bois who said that about the 21st Century and the color-line, not Douglass?)

[Maegan la Mala]

Excellent post as usual Kai.

[Kai]

Carmen D, thank you, and you're most welcome.

terese, yep it's textbook privilege alright. It's a problem. Thanks for dropping in.

Nez, agreed, part of the point of a piece like this is to draw a line and name a fight. I get so tired of all the careful posturing that goes on in political writing. I'm just like, Let's do this already! Hehe. I think you know what I mean. Thanks for the good word.

Macon D, actually you're right, both Douglass and DuBois use the expression "the color line" but I think it's actually DuBois who said the thing about the problem of the 20th century (not the 21st!). Stuff white people do: correct POC anti-racists on nitpicky shit! Hehe, kidding. I'll correct it.

Maegan, thanks, amiga! Another round of margaritas! ;-)

[Theriomorph]

Great essay, Kai, thanks for writing it.

I was also struck by "The profound problems with US-Israeli policy have nothing to do with Jewishness; they have to do with empire.... somewhere along the line, Israel became a white stronghold in a brown region."

This gets right at the uncomfortable and fraught heart of so much of half my own family history and all of my Judaic & Holocaust Studies; assimilation and the transformation of Jewish culture from Middle Eastern (brown) to European (white) in direct response to persecution over the course of 2 thousand years: internalized oppression, re-enactment coming into play in very direct ways ranging from the British Colonial role in early Zionism to modern right wing Israeli language about Palestinians - and what all this means now in Israel and Palestine, complicated by profound psychic scars, and corruption of so many kinds having become so entangled it's hard to even hope for clear judgment.

And, just today, commenting on another thread, I was in a minority of people having an issue with the appropriateness making a direct comparison between modern Israel and Nazi Germany. Because you know, Jews are Israel, and Israel is Nazi, and, um, even Jews hate Jews so therefore Jews are Nazis and screw the ancient history ovens and the gassing it's about free speech man, I can hate if I wanna and Israel needs to be eradicated because they're Nazis and don't you dare tell me that's antisemitic. Or something like that.

"If a UN-sponsored global anti-racism conference isn't the right place for such a conversation, then what is? "

Seriously.

And oil. OIL OIL OIL.

You did an amazing (fearless) job here naming all these and many other threads; another Kai post for the books. More please.

[mai'a]

love this essay kai. especially fleshing out the idea of whiteness as a childhood trauma
--cognitive trauma which shuts down sections of a child's perceptual body, enabling an entire slew of normative dehumanizing maneuvers to occur without self-awareness. All of us who have been socialized in racist society have to some extent absorbed the trauma of whiteness; though obviously, quite a few people come to realize that it's in their liberatory self-interest to interrogate and extract such socialization from their psyches.---

but umm...i have to disagree with the idea that israel has a -right- to exist. i know it is thorny...but i dont think there is a moral imperative for israel's founding. it -does- exist. and we have to deal with the current political reality...but i guess in the back of my head i am always thinking: colonialist nations dont have the -right- to exist. same with the usa. anyways...

this is a beautiful engagement with the whiteness problem...

[mm]

deep thanks, kai, from another extremely grateful reader.

[ZC]

Damn. Your job is to smash...and smash you do! Searing clarity and fearless writing using the power and beauty of the word.

"I don't craft cautious soundbites which ride fine demographic slivers into feel-good crescendos." Um, are you poking fun at Barry?

"...dizzying mansion of derivative mirrors..." and "...fluid strategic ideology of power..." Love it.

[Kai]

Theriomorph, yeah I'm not a fan of that kind of casual invocation of Nazi parallels, it's a lazy callous way of siphoning emotions from one atrocity in order to weasel out of making a fresh case against another one, and in the end tends to blur rather than clarify matters. It's a measure of how juvenile mainstream political discourse in the US is that comparisons to Hitler and slavery are widespread almost to the point of eye-rolling banality. Anyway, glad you liked the post, thanks for the good word!

[Kai]

mai'a, ah yes, I did pretty much gloss over the whole issue of a nation's right to exist, didn't I? Hehe, you're right to call that out, as the truth is I'm not prepared to lay out arguments about settler/colonialist nations and indigenous nations and what circumstances justify what rights and what obligations. I think I'm better off sticking with the second part of what you say, which is that Israel and the US and other settler nations do exist and are not about to be abolished as nation-states, so my thinking basically moves forward from that point; which is a bit of a philosophical cop-out, but what can I say, maybe after some more thinking on it I'll be ready to tackle the more existential aspect of the issue. Thanks for the comment.

[Kai]

mm, ZC, glad it worked for you, thank you! :-)

[sweetleaf]

wow...poignant; zuky the amazing beauty of your writing transcends the ugly of the topic. yes, i love/hate it = agree with your definition cognitive trauma = whiteness. a condition as creator of serious problems. your arrow hit the bullseye, why these/my nation was a no-show. this = chicken shit, plain as day. (not to put down chicken shit which at least is a good compost used right, too much or used at the wrong time can destroy). not saying, not appearing, the what not of it, = keeps the status quo.
thanks for the time, thought, effort to articulate this so flawlessly.

[sweetleaf]

oops, i meant chicken shit can be a good fertilizer...but that is another topic...

[Save the Oocytes]

from JSF

[Kai]

sweetleaf, thanks as usual, good point about chicken shit as fertilizer, will have to contemplate that matter. Deeply. ;-)

Save the Oocytes, thanks for the link, interesting stuff.

[Kathy]

You truly have a beautiful voice, reading your posts is like eating a most favorite food.Your observation about how whiteness demands dialogue and discussion on certain terms is so true. Yes, you are a smasher,(My job, however, is to smash.) I love that line. You really are the hidden gem of the internet, Kai. I also think the way you have separated white people from whiteness may be a result of the rules of whiteness. Cognitive trauma, yes your job is a smasher, and you do it very well.
p.s. I love the light and composition in your photography, too.

[Kai]

Kathy, you're far too kind but thank you. :-)

[Julie]

This analysis is spot on. I think your treatment of Israel is really good:

"The story being peddled is that the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the Czech Republic are sitting out Durban II because of the sheer scandalousness posed by the singular figure of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivering another one of his branded ahistorical anti-Zionist tirades."

Yup. And as unsavory as Ahmadinejad's speech was, I'm sick of the U.S.'s whole "we're doing it all for our very good friends, the Jews!" shtick. (See also Christian Zionists, Republicans' "we don't want another Holocaust" line, and the staggering number of congresspeople who attend AIPAC's conference.) Because it very conveniently encourages people to believe that Jews are secretly running the show. Did the British help establish a Jewish state because they just loved Jews so much? Please.

Also, I hate that Israel has become a "white stronghold in a brown region," because it completely erases the fact that a large percentage (it used to be a majority) of Israel's Jews are middle eastern (Mizrahi). But you can't mess with the narrative - white people would stop getting weepy over Israel if they couldn't equate Jews with whiteness.

Anyway, great post.

[belledame222]

in a way it's almost sort of beside the point, per that narrative: we (Jews), Ashkenazim included "became" white somewhere around, well. Certainly there was a point last century when in Europe we weren't. In the U.S.? Dunno; I expect it depended who you asked, and where, and when. -Now- "we're" white by popular consensus, but I b'leeve it has a lot more to do with the "Israel is Our Friend" schtick than actual ethnic heritage or skin tone. (Also see: "How the Irish Became White," etc). I mean, not sure where cause becomes effect, if you see what I mean. And then Hitler managed to script the whole "The Japanese are the 'Aryans of the East'" deal when it suited his needs...

but yeah, I for one am thrilled at being the Christocrats' Special Friend, at least in this particular aspect. Personally I've always thought the scenario in the Handmaid's Tale (wherein the Jews are given the option to convert or go to Israel, and a whole bunch of boats end up simply being overturned into the ocean) is pretty realistic if the Palins et al ever get their way 100%.

[Julie]

"in a way it's almost sort of beside the point, per that narrative: we (Jews), Ashkenazim included "became" white somewhere around, well."

Yes! That too.

[Kai]

Julie, belledame, thanks for chiming in, appreciate the additional perspectives. Definitely agree that the Christocrats' aggressive propping up of the Israeli right-wing has nothing to do with some pro-Jewish affinity; it's naked imperialism

[Changeseeker]

"[W]hiteness is not genetic...Whiteness is a socio-political construct and a fluid strategic ideology of power which has only existed for the past 5 centuries or so, during the era of racist globalization and colonialism...I'm not necessarily talking about white people, I'm talking about whiteness. I'm saying that whiteness is a disturbingly unifying thread you can find running through many of the great problems of our time...Attempts to address...these issues are severely hindered by whiteness; that is, by the existential drive of a global elite, profoundly informed by whiteness, to live in dominion over, rather than harmony with, humanity and nature."

A sledgehammer polemicist? I guess so!

Thank you for tackling this topic. I found Obama et al boycotting this very important, even if symbolic, forum disappointing and discouraging at best and downright disgusting at worst. This post is a truly masterful addressal of a very emotionally-laden and therefore delicate matter. I'm linking.

[Professor Zero]

Great post.

I don't know how many hits you get and so on so maybe it isn't necessary but it seems to me this & other stuff of yours should be cross posted somewhere or in the NYT, somewhere highly visible like that (yes I realize the NYT isn't right)?