White individuals v. Whiteness

In reading the blog of a former friend I came across something completely unexpected...he wrote:

"I remember a former friend who openly and regularly stated that she hated white people and me, by extension, or at least part of me. I understand her resentment toward white culture, but her disdain for me as an individual was at some point cruel and destructive. She couldn’t see past it. I don’t want to be like that."

So these words obviously affect me because they are about me.... they cut deep enough for me to write an entry on a blog I've neglected for the past 6 months. I knew right away these words hurt me, but it took me a while to process and to deconstruct how this somehow got past the admittedly massive walls I've used in the past to barricade my emotions. I think I understand why...

Although my first reaction to any sort of personal criticism (that is, when people come at what I understand to be my character or any essential part of myself) is to become incredibly defensive, and think of as many counter arguments as is humanly possible within a given minute to prove that I am fundamentally a good person, that is only my first reaction.

Good person or not, what bothers me about his comment is that it contains two irrefutable truths:
1) I have stated that I hate White people, or more accurately, "White folks"...even in the presence of "White" people.
2)Hatred of individuals is cruel and destructive.

Granted, both times I can remember saying these exact words, it was only after a White friend said it first in conversations surrounding race and ignorance, I'm not sure that hatred of people can be justified. Actually I am sure that it cannot be.

If I could, I would apologize for the way that I phrased what I said. I DO NOT HATE WHITE PEOPLE, because I do not hate people.

I hate Injustice, Discrimination, Subjugation, Unequal Access, Assumed Privilege...and in this sense: Whiteness, separate from, but purposefully ascribed and attached to particular humans...and removed from others. "White People" are White not because of any specific biological indicators, but rather, because society chooses to attach this signifier to people who exhibit certain phenotypic traits. What does White signify? After 4 years of intense study and research on this exact question I can reduce this signifier to one word: normal. Everything outside of White, is Black and everything outside of normal is abnormal. Complicating this analysis is the ways in which the exercise of power is policed by these articulations of normal and abnormal. Normality is given hegemonic power to define and redefine what it essentially is, and more powerfully, what it isn't.

In conversations of race and racism it is difficult to separate Whiteness in practice from White individuals. Yet, here's what I've come to know: Whiteness as a signifier is a choice; while it is socially assigned, it may be individually contested, redefined or rejected. Along the same lines non-Whites who (in line with this racial logic on which our country was founded) subconsciously view the world in this White-normal, Black (in the sense of any non-normal, or non-White individuals)-abnormal paradigm may also ascribe to Whiteness. Think Clarence Thomas...Tiger Woods....Bill Cosby...Asianess in America and the idea of the model minority...these individuals and groups claim "I'm not Black, I'm normal" all the while reinforcing Blackness as abnormal, as either something to deny, erase, or surpress.

I love my White friends. I love that they are White. I hate their Whiteness. It becomes more apparent with some friends than others. With most, it is most apparent in the White guilt that predisposes them to take any critique of socially constructed Whiteness as personal assault (as with Luke and others)...that feeling that tells them that to say Whiteness is evil means that they are fundamentally evil because they are White. Wrong. White people and colored people who have been given access to Whiteness in that they appear "normal" unlike those other Hispanics, Asians, Blacks and whatnot, may choose to be aware of the power dynamics of this country, and what it means to categorize movies with predominantly Black casts as Black and White casts as normal, or to fail to categorize these movies at all because they are so normal. Whiteness is the privilege to ignore these truths and the power to make everybody else ignore them too. This what I hate.

The truth of the matter is, in merely living life certain people have Whiteness thrusted on them. To an extent I am able to ascribe to Whiteness in merely attending Northwestern. On a resume it says, "Hey look, I may have have tan skin, but inside I'm normal... because I went to a school that indoctrinated me with normality...and I excel at the normal, just look at how "well" I write and how "articulate" I am. I'm not abnormal, not "ghetto" at all."

In hating Whiteness, I am hating the man-made standard that there is a definite set of foods, words (pronunciation and spellings), physical traits, media, and cultural practices that are normal and by default good, and that anything outside of this list is bad, abnormal, inferior, savage or dangerous. And this last point is why I will always hate Whiteness, the representation of the "abnormals" or the "other" as dangerous, criminal, threatnening, sub-human and whatnot persists in disparate education, hate crimes, prison industrial complexes, rampant preventable diseases, deadly economic policies under globalization and the like.

For so long people in the Black community have been told to assimilate, and become normal that now we look at each other and ask "Why can't you just be normal?" "If you ain't got no..."We say "Learn to speak properly...because you are reinforcing stereotypes that Blacks can't be well-spoken" It took me forever to understand that my anger even in uttering such critiques to my little cousins or friends wasn't that they weren't conforming to the standard, but rather the imposition of the standard in the first place. And now I see Whiteness as that standard, so I'm mad at Whiteness and I think it should be eradicated.

This isn't the Black Power, Black Supremacy sort of approach that tries to prove that Black is better, because after all Blackness was created from Whiteness...if you elminate Whiteness, Blackness goes along with it. Blackness as it has been appropriated by Black people is beautiful protest to ugly power. If ugly power disappears, there is no need for beautiful protest.

I am not talking about post-racial societies in the traditional sense, because often people who use this term refer only to the elimation of Blackness in a widespread assimilation attempt. I always want to ask people what language people speak in their fantasies of "post racial" societies. Bet you it's English. Rather, I imagine a society where Spanish is no longer stigmatized for it's association with "abnormality". Can't stuff just be neutral? Can't fried chicken be yummy? Can big lips and butts be beautiful? Can Spanish just be a language?...true not all Hispanic people speak Spanish and not all Black people have big lips, not all Asian people are smart and pre college Brittny wasn't the biggest fan of fried chicken, but what's with our preoccupation with fighting the pervasiveness of stereotypes? What we are really saying is "these traits are learned or even forced not inherent...but regardless, they are meaningless until we give them meaning. Stop making them mean bad stuff and we'll stop complaining about their pervasiveness."

The bottom line is, I do not hate White people but I understand how articulations of anger directed at Whiteness can be interpreted as personal assualt even when they aren't meant that way. What I want to say though, to be clear, is that Whiteness is in fact personal assault. I am more than willing to aplogize for injury caused by my poor choice of words in regards to hating White people. At the time, I didn't understand how to articualte the injury caused by White bodies attached to Whiteness. At some point it would be nice if somebody would apologize for Whiteness....

In a comedy skit, Chris Rock opens with "there's a war goin on, it's Black people and then it's Niggaz and Niggaz have got to go." I respectfully dissent: "it's White people and then it's Whiteness and Whiteness has got to go."