For this post, I will deviate from my normal spiritual-cultural focus and outline something that is purely cultural-political. Though I feel it is eating the soul of everyone, the problem and solutions are not really God-centered.
A child born in the 1980’s and raised the 1990’s, I had a philosophy burned deep into my psyche, that lasted well into my 30’s. This philosophy was that of colorblindness. An update on Martin Luther King, I was convinced that there should be no division of races. There were no differences, besides literal skin tone and that I should operate as if I didn’t even see that.
This approach seemed to work, at least from my perspective. By the time I graduated from high school, I was fully convinced that there wasn’t a racist bone in my body. Any kind of tribal thinking, that had even a hint of racial taint to it, I immediately drove from my mind. I believed that the only racist people on earth were white Americans and that was because they were extraordinarily stupid.
Growing up in the 90’s subjected suburban white kids to a myriad of black celebrities, and most parents had no problem with it whatsoever. The white, middle class was a mostly “colorblind” group of people and I truly believe that.
But then something happened. It didn’t turn white people back into a race-conscious demographic, but it cracked the door open. What happened was the OJ Simpson trial.
The OJ Simpson case was the point of no return for race relations in the United States. Things were slowly trending positively into the 90’s. We almost lost it with Rodney King, but OJ was the final nail in the coffin. Let me explain:
There was a peak of sorts in the 80’s and 90’s as white America became more accepting of black culture and famous blacks were willing to temper things to draw in white fans and audience. Eddie Murphy, Wesley Snipes, Michael Jordan, etc. White kids listened to rap music and had Jordan posters. White conservatives were laughing hysterically at black comedians, who did a lot of race comparison comedy.
Rodney King and the riots was a major speed bump, but things were still salvageable. Then came OJ. For the zoomers reading this, you need to understand that the OJ Simpson trial dominated American news and conversation for over a year. Pre-internet and social media. Every paper, news channel and morning radio show talked OJ. They televised it and it would be on at the airport. People had watch parties. Imagine the Johnny Depp trial times 10,000. It was a living being.
Children were not shielded from any of it. Understand this was a particularly gruesome double murder. I was 10 years old and I was following the trial daily. Add in the fact that OJ tried to flee and there was a nationally broadcast police chase. I can’t find the words to convey how captivated the nation was. The thing is, everyone knew he did it. People would argue, but basically it was commonly known that he was guilty. So the real game was whether or not the best lawyers in LA could get him off.
The black community knew it too, but a lot of them became kind of like the churchgoers that don’t *really* believe in God, but go through the motions. They would say he’s innocent, but their heart wasn’t in it. Then, and I’m convinced this was the breaking point, he was found innocent. This is when white America saw what they could not forget. All over national news we saw videos of groups of black people cheering and celebrating
It was virtually universal. Black America was cheering the acquittal of a bad person who brutally murdered the mother of his children. Even the most lefty of white women were absolutely horrified by the black response.
I can assume most black Americans saw this as simply payback for hundreds of years of oppression. But the optics were absolutely horrible, because the reaction was, indeed, horrible.
White America internalized these images. The colorblind mantra that most had really come to believe in, started to crumble. They saw that black Americans saw them as the enemy, that circumstance made no difference. We see it today. Much of black America still sees white people as the enemy. Just as Nicole Brown Simpson’s murder meant nothing in the face of black revenge, neither does any white life. On a normal basis, I doubt your average black American would want any white person to be murdered, but when the chips are down and a side must be picked, white Americans learned that colorblindness was a joke.
I’ve come to believe that the corporatized, re-painted version of colorblindness we are currently served, is indeed, a joke. The only class of people who are supposed to adhere to colorblindness are white people. I don’t need to give a large host of examples of the racial hypocrisy we see on a daily basis. Anyone reading this is smart enough to see it.
The current dogma goes as follows. Because white people dominated the world for about 500 years, they are in a position of privilege. They gained that privilege through means that oppressed other races, therefore these races are right to group up by racial identity and white people, as a recompense for being descendants of people who did bad things along racial lines, are to refrain from group racial identity and play the game with one hand tied behind their backs, until an undefined level of fairness and restitution has been achieved.
The liberally minded whites of this current generation, now freed to acknowledge race, channel it into fealty and obsession with venerating every race besides their own. Gone are the days of fascination and some level of respect for other cultures. Now is the time to proclaim other cultures and races as superior and something to strive for. They believe that by virtue of their European ancestry (even if that ancestry is 3rd generation Scandinavian), they are to be ashamed. Ashamed because their skin color is a match for the skin color of some agreed upon bad and powerful people that they share no other heritage with.
The big question here is that of sustainability. As mentioned, the reckoning for 500 years of dominance has no defined end. Will it be when there is a perfect representation of wealth, occupation, education and criminality between all races? The answer is an obvious, no.
Racial politics are the most powerful of them all and there is one simple test that proves it.
There is a magic word. I can’t type this word into Substack, twitter, facebook or any other social platform. If I say this word, publicly, I will lose my job, social status, and maybe be asked to leave my church. But it’s not just me. The richest man in the world might lose his whole fortune if he says the word. Currently, there is no amount of worldly power that can overcome the power of the magic word.
I have no problem with taboo. If the culture has deemed certain words as very bad, then so be it. Usually it’s for a good enough reason. Even if the word wasn’t so magical, I wouldn’t say it, given that the majority of black people have a strong negative emotional reaction to it. I make this point to illustrate the current balance of things. I sincerely attempt to stay away from pointing out the rampant hypocrisy of the current political moment, but this time it serves it point. You can say basically anything you want, disparaging the white race and suffer almost no consequences for it.
This and several other factors feed into the phenomenon of colorblindness only being practiced by a single color. Whites are now so colorblind that they will, themselves, promulgate openly discriminatory policies against themselves. They are participating in actively undermining their own well-being. Going beyond making opportunity fair and open, they will go beyond playing with one hand tied behind their back. They will lock themselves out of the game completely.
Don’t believe it? While most people would thin off NASCAR as a white race stronghold, they are sorely mistaken. This particular organization is currently embroiled in a lawsuit for posting an internship in which they explicitly state they will not consider white people.
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2023/08/nascars-diversity-internship-excludes-white-people/
Universities and corporations alike are now going so far to outright say that white applicants will not be considered for certain roles.
So what should white people do? Should they care? Should they just focus on God and family and let the increasingly legalized racial reckoning be thrust upon them? Let the chips fall where they may? Sadly, this seems to be the largest class of the white American population.
Some half-baked online attempts have been made to combat this. “It’s ok to be white” is one that is seen from time to time. Personally, this falls flat. It’s too tongue in cheek and achieves nothing besides being a catchphrase that is hard to combat. Whites really can’t get away with forming any kind of actual group or coalition to attack this problem in any meaningful way. That would be racist and being called racist is arguably worse than being called a child molester.
I believe there are a few solutions. Contrary to some thinkers who dare to stumble into this prickly realm, I do not believe that counter-racism is the ticket. I don’t believe in “preserving the white race at all costs” or any other classically and explicitly race-based approach. If a solution like that was workable (much less moral), the ship to implement it sailed long ago.
It’s a very precarious position. Never before has a ruling caste of people voluntarily abandoned their shared identity so completely and on purpose out of guilt. There is no real precedent for it. But I believe there is a way out of it that’s a little difficult and will take some force of will to pull off. The solution does not involve being “racist” or any violence. It doesn’t rest on identity politics or parallel racial societies. It’s not a mass deportation of any race. It may even be acceptable to left and right alike. But I need some time to put it into the right words, which I will do in part 2.