A Crucial Message for White People
This is something the world needs you to understand before it truly is too late: you can be a white person, but there is no such thing as âwhite cultureâ.
Now understand that this is something that cannot be thought of shallowly. Thereâs nothing so dangerous as a little thinking. A poor thinker in this case might wonder âbut if thereâs no white culture then why does there get to be a Black culture?â and thatâs an issue of nuance and context that Iâm saving for another day. I want to focus on why white culture doesnât exist.
First of all, pretty much the entirety of human society relies on myths.
There is the physical world with which we tangibly interact, and then there is a massive and complex universe of ideas and concepts humans have  thought up. We use many of these ideas to create new physical objects for the physical world, but more importantly we use these ideas to create ideologies and concepts that unify a group.
A tribe of 50-100 or so humans could get along because they knew each other individual in their tribe personally, but how do you get thousands, if not millions of humans to cooperate even on a basic level?
Tell me, where in nature are the lines that mark where one country starts and another ends? Where is America? Where is Poland? Where is Italy? Where are any of these nations? There are physical landmasses underlying each one, and in some areas fences, mountains, rivers or walls, even paint lines put down, but none of those things is the actual country or the boundary of one. All we have are ideas we have all agreed on to be true. And these ideas help us cooperate. The idea of a Nation creates a stand-in for a tribe, and gives humans something to be loyal to.
Of course, a Nation is just an idea, and it can be contested. âAmericaâ exists, but the land and Native people of âAmericaâ were here before the idea of âAmericaâ was thought up, murdered for, and penned on a declaration. Even now, they understand this, and the concept of America never objectively changed their past or became an objective truth for them.
So, back to being white. Itâs identifiable, sure. Itâs more accurate to say youâre light, but letâs not split hairs. But where are you from? Are you American? Irish? Polish? Italian? A mixture? Your family lineage stems from your ancestors, and you call your ancestors Scottish, Swedish or German because thatâs where they were born- though in many cases it wasnât necessarily called that nor was the country shaped the same way at the time. Every European country is different, has a different history, culture, set of norms, stories and myths. Every European country is a separate tribe with its own defining features and beliefs. You cannot fight for âEuropean cultureâ because there is no one monolithic European culture. That phrase is a dog whistle that means âwhite heritageâ which also is a thing that doesnât exist.
However, if your European identity thatâs what makes you what you are, then you  need to realize that Nationality is a flimsy concept of lineage, too. Anyone born in that country today just like your ancestors were then is going to be that Nationality as well, which is why there are Asian Brazilians and Black Germans. âBut they arenât REAL Germans!â you say.Â
And why not? Because Germans arenât Black? They are when theyâre born there, just like your ancestors. The only reason Germans historically werenât commonly Black is because the majority of Black people were elsewhere at the time.
But things change, populations shift. And so, you see, you cannot conflate the condition of being physically white with a Nationality. Ethnicity and Nationality are two different things. âWhiteâ has no objective cultural location, only a coincidental overlap with a history of different ethnicities that have evolved to a more diverse level to day. Which makes identifying just what a Nationality means somewhat more vague.
And this is where racists start getting uncomfortable. Change. The idea that they see their heritage dying. But thatâs an issue of what identity they choose.
The only thing dying is the conflation of whiteness with ethnicity.
White is not an ethnicity. White is a social construct- and to say that doesnât mean it doesnât exist but it is rather a specific physical attribute and social context with no tangible core values other than a lack of melanin. It is a functional myth made identifiable and sustainable by the presence of a physical attribute.
Your viking ancestors werenât amazing because they were white. (Also there were black vikings)
Your Irish ancestors werenât brave because they were white.
Your Italian ancestors werenât creative because they were white.
To be white affords one no objective physical advantage across the board other than the ability to absorb vitamin D from the sun more quickly, which comes hand in hand with increased risk of sunburn and skin cancer.Â
Currently, white people tend to operate under a myth that whiteness is a âthingâ and that whiteness can grant superiority to a person. And that whiteness is a tangible cultural identity- it is not. This is the crucial misunderstanding. DO NOT CONFLATE YOUR LINEAGE WITH WHITENESS. DO NOT MISTAKE WHITENESS FOR AN ETHNICITY.
It is white peopleâs continued agreement to this myth that perpetuates white privilege and its partner: bigotry.
You may have seen people saying lately âwhiteness is not a cultureâ. I slightly disagree because it has certainly developed as an idea into a culture if ignorance, shallow thought, unsustainability, disconnectedness and hate (the way that something like say, gaming has a culture), but I digress. What they mean is that whiteness is not an ethnic culture the way any other ethnicity is. There is no place whiteness was born- whiteness was a gradual genetic mutation to allow humans to live in less sunny climates. There is no unifying white existence- a white person from Sweden today, a white American from 30 years ago, and a white person in Russia 200 years ago have pretty much 0 unifying experiences other than human ones: seeking shelter, enjoyment and food, for instance.
To attach yourself to a non-existent concept divorced from tangible reality grows more and more unsustainable the more that concept is separated from the identifiable physical world. We will probably never have a schism over what a rock is; we can have vehement debates about what âbeautyâ is, and we go to war over ideas.Â
When white people see their âhistoryâ disappearing, it is not because anyone made it disappear. It is because the continued intellectual pursuits of humanity and the tides of time have dissolved what they thought was a concrete identity of superiority and victory into a vague concept desperately trying to smooth over a history of pointless bloodshed and hate. What is âdisappearingâ only disappears as the truth appears. The unsustainability of the white fantasy- not just that Whiteness is a defensible culture but that âWhitenessâ is a concrete identity in the first place- is its own downfall.Â
You will still be here. Your family and future family will still be here. But you will be, just like everyone else, simply people. Your past may be one of pride, of lineage, of Russian, French or simply âSouthernâ identity, but whiteness is simply a descriptor for the people of your family, and not what they stood for.
You canât fight forever for something that never existed. It wonât last.
So if you identify as a âsupreme whiteâ, if you hold that idea even vaguely or do not confront it, then yes, it would look as if society is trying to remove you.
However, if you identify as a person before anything else, if you see that you have a skin color and a family heritage like everyone else, if you realize that your history is no more or less glorious than anyone elseâs, you realize that if anything is threatening you, it is the aggressive, divisive rhetoric of White Supremacy.
Back to myths? White culture is a myth. The entire âhistoricalâ narratives of independence, manifest destiny, valor and might is a selective cherry-picking of the past to string together a rallying myth of pride and supremacy. It is a myth that, by necessity, leaves out the white fear and isolation that caused such defensive, desperate actions. It is a myth that, by necessity, leaves out the beauty and complexity of the cultures it dominated so that it could make them look inferior and deserving of violence.
Whiteness and white supremacy is a myth. Itâs an idea that a group of people agree on so they can all identify with it and thus have a common thread with which to identify with other humans.
The thing about myths? Humans create them to influence and control. One human can only lead so many other humans. But a human with a good story can lead millions.
Stop believing the bedtime story. Wake up.
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