White Amerikkkaners
This dispatch weaves together reflections on the dispatches that I’ve published over the past year along with some polemics originally written to my employer, the Office of Global Affairs at the University of Washington, regarding their inability to seriously grapple with what it would mean for a US institution of higher learning to sincerely facilitate "ethical [anti-colonial & anti-racist] global engagement". If you would like a copy of the letter to my employer, a document which differs in good measure from the text below, please contact me and I will share it with you.
Conversing and corresponding with readers of my earlier works, especially readers of my Triptych and Other Related Matters, I have noticed many of them de-contextualizing and de-historicizing my work, willfully ignoring the apocalyptic events that have shaped our world and, in turn, informed my work. Unsurprisingly, most of the readers who have maintained such willful ignorance to context and history have happened to be white Amerikkkaners — though it should be noted that white Europeans come a very close second in this regard.
Anyone who is surprised by white Amerikkkaners’ disregard for such context and history need only remind themself that white Amerikkkaners are, statistically speaking, the most privileged people on our planet today. Despite only forming ~3% of the human population, white Amerikkkaners form more than 30% of the richest 1% of persons on our planet, with more white Amerikkkaners belonging to the richest ~1% than to the poorest ~50%, 1 in 7 relative to 1 in 12. To put white Amerikkkaner privilege in its proper context, note that China, with ~18% of the global population, has ~10% of the richest ~1%; India, with another ~18%, has ~1% of the richest ~1%; another ~18% of the global population is on the African continent but not even a thousandth of a percent of the richest ~1% are there.
There is no making sense of white Amerikkkaner privilege, as expressed by the startling statistics above, without cataloging the apocalyptic events that gave rise to the world in which white Amerikkkaners enjoy that privilege, events that shame and disturb most white Amerikkkaners so much that few can bear to think about them. Between the sixteenth and nineteenth century, a conservative estimate is that 100 million Natives died in the process of Euro-Atlantic capitalist imperialism being established. During the same time period, the conservative estimate is that 25 million Africans were kidnapped and subjected to the social death that is slavery, with millions more of their descendants born and bred to be slaves by Euro-Atlantic capitalist empires. Meanwhile, on the African continent, tens of millions more were murdered, first to facilitate the slave trade and then to bring raw materials to world markets dominated by the Euro-Atlantic capitalist empires. Further afield, tens of millions in India, China, and elsewhere in Asia died during famines and wars as their peoples were being forcibly incorporated as subordinates into political-economic structures dominated by the Euro-Atlantic capitalist empires, including tens of millions of Indians starved to grow opium that was pushed on the peoples of China at murderous European gunpoint. This catalog of horrors is not exhaustive. For one thing, I have only dealt with the human death tolls, disregarding the outrageous tolls on non-human others and the lasting tolls on the human psyche across the generations.
Dare you say that all of the above is a catalog of ancient history, it is estimated that 16 million people have died needlessly from malnutrition since 1990, during my own lifetime, due to policies conceived of by the bankers and bureaucrats of the so-called Washington Consensus and imposed upon poorer nations. These 16 million deaths could have been prevented with simple systems to ensure universal access to nutritious food. What’s more, many of these neoliberal policies are still being pushed onto poorer, darker nations by richer, whiter nations today, despite the fact that climate catastrophes are wreaking havoc on poorer nations’ lifeways, lands, and food supplies.
Going further and digging deeper, making sense of white Amerikkkaner privilege means making sense of the significant role that the United Settler States of Amerikkka played in the production of so many horrors since its inception in 1776. Let me briefly outline this history for those who require a refresher.
The United Settler States was founded as a racial capitalist slave empire, the effective result of a counter-revolution of white nationalist slavers and genocidal murderers against blacks and Natives who had begun to win concessions from the British Empire.
A century later, following emancipation and the “closing of the frontier”, the United Settler States was transformed from a slave empire to an apartheid state, with its racial capitalist regime having come to turn on anti-Black segregation laws (i.e., Jim Crow), racist immigration laws (e.g., the Chinese Exclusion Act), and the concentration of Natives in reservations (the ideological precursors to the Nazi ghettos and concentration camps in Eastern Europe as well as the South African Bantustans).
Another century later, ignoring the persistence of the apartheid regime constituted by Native reservations, it could be said that the victories of the Civil Rights movement abolished the de jure apartheid regime only to have it replaced with the de facto apartheid regime that remains in place today. Black incomes on average are about 60 percent of white incomes, Black wealth on average is 5 to 7 percent of white wealth, many low and middle income blacks live in predominantly Black neighborhoods that lack the public amenities and public services that predominantly white and middle income neighborhoods enjoy, blacks are incarcerated in state prisons at nearly 5 times the rate of whites, one in 10 Black men are denied the right to vote for having committed a “crime,” and the list goes on. That being said, the nation’s transition from a de jure to a de facto apartheid regime has enabled a “talented tenth” of the Black population and other non-white populations — a set composed of persons who have had to over-achieve relative to their white peers and act as apologists for Amerikkkan imperialism and racism — to live as “honorary whites,” enjoying access to offices and privileges that were previously reserved for whites only. This assumption of formerly white offices and privileges by non-whites, facilitated to a degree by “affirmative action” and “diversity and inclusion” programs, has provoked the ire of white nationalists, conservative media, and others seeking to “Make Amerikkka Great Again.”
Shifting our focus from the intra-national to the inter-national arena, the United Settlers effectively used the excess wealth that they extracted from native lands and laborers of color to become the undisputed hegemon of the racial capitalist “modern world system” originally centered in Western Europe. This has been the case for nearly a century now, the United Settlers having capitalized on the decline of the British Empire over the course of the intra-imperialist World Wars (1914-1945), and the successive waves of anti-colonial struggles that followed in their wake. The list of countries targeted by the United Settler military since the nation’s inception includes the vast majority of the nations on Earth, including almost every single country in Latin America and the Caribbean, and most of the African continent.
Using the so-called “Cold War” (1947-1991) with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as its initial cover, the United Settlers organized under their sponsorship and protection a global neocolonial system of client states, often ruled by terror, and it has overseen the development of a global apartheid regime that turns on “pass laws” that effectively distinguish between whites, blacks, and coloreds, by deferring to nationality as a proxy for race.
To the incredulity and indignation of all who are aware of the basic facts of Amerikkkan history, the official line that the United Settlers have stridently maintained is that theirs is “a nation born of freedom” and “dedicated to furthering the cause of democracy and human rights throughout the world, though it has occasionally erred in the pursuit of this objective.” The gap between the facts of Amerikkkan history and the noble origins, values, and intentions claimed by the United Settlers today is a yawning chasm that ideological institutions — the media, schools, and universities — have worked tirelessly to bridge by rewriting history and trivializing memory. These ideological institutions have not entirely succeeded in winning their war of position against history and memory, but their accomplishments have been profound. Even amongst college educated white Amerikkkaners today, few know enough and fewer are brave enough to publicly and honestly speak of and to the most basic facts regarding the origins, development, and present realities of Amerikkkan imperialism and racism.
The history of Amerikkkan racism and imperialism is appalling: the horrors of the Third Reich, unspeakable as they are, pale in comparison. Admittedly, the United Settler States has had the advantage of time and staying power over the Third Reich, but that fact doesn’t let the United Settlers off the hook. The majority of white Amerikkkaner adults are aware of this appalling history on a gut level, but many (if not most) white Amerikkkaners repress their awareness of this history and cover it up with wishful and defensive fantasies. Chief amongst the wishful fantasies is the one that I was taught in elementary and middle school in the 1990s, in which the United Settlers became the leaders of the “free world” by defeating the Third Reich and the Axis powers in World War II and then combating the spread of the communist menace issuing from the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
When confronting white Amerikkkaners with the context and history that informs their extreme privilege, the greatest difficulty I find is that many white Amerikkkaners refuse to differentiate power from privilege: they willfully misinterpret me to be telling them to abstain from enjoying the fruits of their privilege (their time and money) and, instead, to donate these fruits to the underprivileged. In fact, I am telling them to do something radical (from Latin radix “root”); I am telling them to counter the powers that form the roots of their privilege. Or, in other words, against that common sense phrase that has entered conventional wisdom, I am telling them, “Bite the hand that feeds you; this same hand is murdering our planet and the greater part of her peoples.”
The devious ploys of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) championed by liberal globalists in response to being confronted with context and history are, of course, designed to avoid attacking the roots of white Amerikkkaner privilege. DEI focuses on allocating a modest portion of the fruits of white Amerikkkaner privilege to the “talented tenths” that white dominant institutions fraction off from underprivileged non-white populations. This course of action has served to generate animus between the “talented tenths” and those less fortunate white Amerikkkaners aggrieved by such fruits being allocated to non-whites instead of other whites “in need” of them. This animus is not a flaw but a feature of the DEI push. The spectacle that liberal globalists have made of the animus between “talented tenths” and reactionary white Amerikkkaners draws our attention away from efforts to counter the powers that form the roots of white privilege.
I ask the following questions to privileged white Amerikkkaners who want to “do good” in the world:
Instead of allocating the fruits of your good schooling to underprivileged non-whites whose good grades place them in the “talented tenth,” why not help us flee from schooling so that we might rebel against the school systems that degrade the larger part of the underprivileged non-white population and, in so doing, share our know-how otherwise?
Instead of allocating the fruits of your good finances to underprivileged non-whites whose good credit places them in the “talented tenth,” why not help us flee from financing so that we might rebel against the financial systems that discredit the larger part of the underprivileged non-white population and, in so doing, share our resources otherwise?
Instead of allocating the fruits of your good timing to underprivileged non-whites whose timeliness places them in the “talented tenth,” why not help us flee from calendaring and clocking so that we might rebel against the timing systems that delay the larger part of the underprivileged non-white population and, in so doing, share our time otherwise?
Instead of allocating the fruits of your high profile to underprivileged non-whites whose resumes, CVs, and other records of service place them in the “talented tenth,” why not help us flee from profiling so that we might rebel against the (racial) profiling systems that demerit the larger part of the underprivileged non-white population and, in so doing, choose to share our life stories otherwise?
Western modernity’s ideals and practices of freedom, which white Amerikkkaners have refined to a remarkable extreme, are ideals and practices of (self-)possession. When the white Amerikkkaner champions their own “freedom,” they are championing their own self-possession with their left hand and the others’ dispossession and captivity with their right hand. In other words, the white Amerikkkaner’s freedom is not freedom from captivity but, to the contrary, it is the freedom to possess oneself while others are dispossessed of themselves and held captive. The white Amerikkkaner feels most free when demonstrating their own self-possession to those who are dispossessed, as when, for instance, the white Amerikkkaner chooses to donate their share of the fruits of white Amerikkkaner privilege (free time and money) to underprivileged non-whites. By contrast, white Amerikkkaners who participate in fugitive planning projects alongside nonwhites feel as if they are being dispossessed of themselves and, thus, losing their freedom. Thankfully, some white Amerikkkaners know themselves to be winning another kind of freedom in and through participating in our flights and rebellions: freedom from whiteness and the strangling restrictions that ideals and practices of (self-)possession place on friendship, love, community, and hospitality.
It is no wonder that statistics reveal a startling number of individual white Amerikkkaners to be in possession of assets worth a million dollars or more: the more assets that they possess, the freer most white Amerikkkaners feel themselves to be. Going further and digging deeper, the purification of Western modernity’s ideals and practices of (self-)possession has been taken to such extremes by white Amerikkkaners that they now saturate most (if not all) aspects of white Amerikkkan life.
White Amerikkkaners are raised to treat their families, their friends, and their lovers like their possessions. The practical language of loving relationships amongst white Amerikkkaners is such that separated parents with joint custody over their children negotiate their parenting relationship like the ownership of a timeshare property; monogamous lovers negotiate their relationships with their romantic partners like enterprises over which one partner claims proprietor ownership or, alternatively, like joint-ventures under the dual ownership of the two partners; polyamorous lovers negotiate their multiple partnerships like diversified portfolios of shares; the person in search a romantic partner imagines themself to be “on the market”; and the breakup of a romantic relationship is negotiated in a manner akin to the liquidation of a corporation. Ay, the white Amerikkkaner who talks about “sharing” anything “equitably” is unlikely to be referring to the communal principle “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs,” and most likely to be referring to the proportional distribution of ownership stakes to individuals joined in a social relationship imagined to be a form of enterprise, with little regard (if any at all) for peoples’ differing needs and abilities.
I am the child of Black African immigrants from nations counted amongst the poorest on the planet. My parents came to the United Settler States seeking opportunities during the 1980s, around the time when white Amerikkkaners began issuing the following threat to the rest of the world: “It’s morning again in Amerikkka.” I have spent a good part of my life in the company of white Amerikkkaners and the “talented tenths” that excel at either emulating white Amerikkkaners or otherwise appealing to the white Amerikkkaner gaze. By the time I was ten years old, the imperative to become a Black man of distinction — a member of the “talented tenth” that apes, shucks, and jives for white Amerikkkaners — had been drummed into my ears, beamed into my eyes, and even beaten into my flesh. This is all to say, in other words, that everything that I have written about white Amerikkkaners here comes from learned experience, from a life thoroughly lived with what W.E.B. DuBois called a double-consciousness, “a sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of [whites], of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a [white] world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”
I offer you this personal background as a preface to an admission of bad conscience: I should have known better than to expect my white Amerikkkaner readers to recognize the context and history implicit in what I was writing. I already had every reason to believe that, if I wasn’t explicit, my white Amerikkkaner readers would pretend as if the context and history that my writings assumed didn’t exist. I knew very well that most of my white Amerikkkaner readers were unlikely to truly know any Black people who did not present to whites as aspirants to the distinction of belonging to the “talented tenth.” Given that I was asking such white Amerikkkaner readers to read and support my work, it was imperative that I explicitly articulated the context and history that my writings assumed. My choice to ignore this imperative, to leave context and history implicit, was born of the reality that, not unlike my white Amerikkkaner readers, I too was afraid to bite the hand that feeds me. It ought to be said, however, that the traumatic experiences that taught me to be afraid were of a markedly different timbre from those of my white Amerikkkaner readers, especially given that our differing experiences should not be disentangled from those of our respective ancestors. What’s more, having dropped out of the academic rat race, I could not count on the “scholastic sanctuary” accorded to radical Black scholars with proper credentials from white dominant institutions and license to contextualize and historicize while Black. Nevertheless, given that I invited white Amerikkkaner readers to the table, the imperative wasn’t mine to ignore: context and history needed to be made explicit or they simply would not be for my white Amerikkkaner readers.
In writing this book I have dispatched with the fear and heeded the imperative: I have explicitly addressed context and history, again and again. Heeding the imperative by no means assures that my white Amerikkkaner readers will embrace context and history, but it assuredly makes ignoring context and history an active choice for them. This course of action has given me a liberating sense for which of my white Amerikkkaner readers are actually worth cultivating and, more profoundly still, it has given me a liberating sense for whether, when, and to what degree it is (un)important for me to cultivate white Amerikkkaner readers at all, for there are many other readers worth seeking and cultivating.
