I am developing my concept of racial identity as a white person. (Nobody makes a bigger deal about their racial identity than white people, especially if they claim not to have any racial identity at all.) Everybody has a race and a racial identity of some kind. But not everybody develops it consciously. By this I mean: Not everybody struggles with the racial identity that is imposed by others, in particular by Whites under white supremacy, so as to transform it into an identity that is as much as possible self-created and self-affirming. The more your identity becomes a thing that you create rather than a thing that your past and your current culture impose upon you against your will, the freer you are. But nobody can ever become totally free until racism is overcome.
Where you come from is an important piece of your history. My kids heritage is Africa, Northern Europe and Eastern Europe. The African history has been hard to uncover as we only have the slave trader's accounting. But we have about 325 years in America. I still have the renditions of ancestral homes my daughter built. My grandfather collected almost 1,000 years of family history.
History is personal to everyone. I know that 11 out of 13 children in a tiny parish in Louisiana went to college in the 1930s. Unusual for Black people. One was grandma to my children. It matters.
Very interesting points. I guess I always saw it as people should be aware of and proud of their background (whether white, black, or a particular ethnicity within those groups, or others) but when viewing any group as superior to another is when we get into Stupid City (and this is true even if you’re a patronizing white person thinking you’re complimenting black people for how “they vote”). We can also assimilate and celebrate unity while celebrating our ethnic/cultural differences, and cultural fusion and adoption are good things, even while acknowledging the origins of what we’re borrowing. Leave racial purity and superiority to the swamp bigots that for some reason are running our government now. Liberals are better off showing a different way.
I feel like some other very powerful threads intertwine with this. For example, Black dominance in certain areas of culture and sports is often presented as "essentialist" with an implicit framing that draws from early 20th century tropes of racial determinism (see also positivism & eugenics). I feel like this sleight-of-hand very conveniently papers over the contribution of Black culture in shaping both individuals and society.
The other vital thread I see (also commonly papered over), is how Black American emerged from violence in the broadest sense, and continues to evolve against a backdrop of violence. Recent discussion of repatriations, for example, made people *reaaaal* uncomfortable, and not just conservatives. And now this discomfort has been weaponized by Trump 2.0.
I do appreciate how some activists have started calling out lack of distress tolerance on the left. And folks like Resmaa Menakem and Thomas Hübl have done a great job teaching the mechanics of intergenerational trauma. But it seems like few white Americans really appreciate either the lived experience of existing in a de facto apartheid state or how that history of experience is, in some sense, deeply "essential" to Black culture.
Thank you for this thoughtful discussion. Obviously, as a white person, there is not enough I know about Black heritage. As a southerner I know that it is not full of klan members as I spent time with like minded people who abhorred racism.
Perhaps if we offered Black history. I saw Henry Louis Gates series on the history of Africa although not enough of them. It was quite fascinating and I’m not even a great consumer of history.
At any rate. This country is a lovely quilt of all people who consider themselves American no matter their families ethnicity. Why we wanna make it an ugly white throw blanket I cannot understand.
We love all the food these people have brought through their heritage and then make disparaging remarks about the group themselves. I weep.
Cheers! This is basically where my politics are. Essentialism bad, identitarianism deeply suspect, but identity itself is something to be proud of, and really the only viable basis for undermining the concept of whiteness as understood today.
This is a lot of food for thought and a very nuanced take on that. And it does remind me about the people who like to cut off entire states or tell them to secede. There's people trapped in those places. This is exactly why I use the term "unreconstructed state-based regimes of terror" because they don't just apply in one region. They apply in any place where racist, sexist repressive laws are used in the American context to suppress a minority.
I'm just in the final stages of a cross country road trip that started in Florida where I live, west through Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona into Southern California, up the central valley into Oregon for a 2 month stay, now eastward across the Cascades and into Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Nebraska, Kansas, angling southeast through Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and home again in early June. I love road trips, because you see every little scrap of the country and not just the highlights. You interact with people with whom you would never come into contact any other way.
Each region has its own style and feel, but for me the divider is not race but class. People identify with people who they feel (and see) are like them. In Wyoming for instance, it ain't easy to find a black or Asian person, so racial stereotypes are never challenged. Oregon has tons of Asians, but outside of the main cities it has few blacks. California and Arizona are Mexico North. In the south, black people are everywhere, and while there is plenty of racism, both overt and subtle, whites and blacks rub shoulders every day. Mixed marriages are more and more common, which inevitably dilutes separation. Multi-racial children are everywhere.
The point of this is that my assessment is if we could get rid of the particular politicians who use politics to divide and demonize, this country would homogenize nicely. People want to get along, and they are going to be fine without the constant attempts to blame the "other" for the ills of the country to gain votes. If we could somehow get enough people in congress who could agree to get big money out of elections, that would be a major contribution toward unity, and make it much easier to find mutually agreeable compromises to serve all constituencies.
The real enemy of unity is big money, and that means billionaires and corporate campaign money, and the despicable moral vacancy that it generates in its mouthpieces. These classes do not care about the single mother, or the family that can barely make their payments with both parents working 2 or 3 jobs, or the college graduate who leaves school with a buttload of debt and who can't afford a house. Inherited wealth is the true divider of classes. Being born on third base and thinking you've hit a triple is a separator much more than being brown or black or white.
Certainly something to that—you can often get along just fine with people who differ with you politically and when you get into conversation you discover you don’t really differ all that much—it’s more that they see issues framed differently than you do because of how you consume news differently. They’ll still agree with you on the general principle (that people shouldn’t be discriminated against, that no one should be bullied, etc) when you press them on it. But there are those that NEED that conflict and will work to exacerbate it.
I certainly didn't mean to imply that there aren't assholes out there--no shortage of those. But on a one to one basis, most people are friendly and kind. And the source of news for regular consumption is a big factor.
Again SER, I feel seen. California girl, been to Europe, PNW, and the midwest. I would visit New Orleans if I had the chance but I'd pass on most of the deep south. I felt uncomfortable in Texas, I can't imagine Florida. For me it's the guns. Sure, there are guns everywhere but seeing people walk around in public with them is a big no for me.
If the goal of our shared civic experience was the avoidance of pain, then we’d take down that flag. But that’s of course not the goal.
Then what exactly is the goal? I'd say it IS the avoidance of pain, pain from hunger, pain from experiencing homelessness, pain from untreated medical issues. Isn't that what we all want as a goal, to help all of us? Isn't that the point of a government?
I live in Upstate SC, and have for most of my life. The only people I've seen walking around in public with guns are law enforcement. Are there people walking around with concealed weapons? Maybe, but I don't let that keep me from living here and going places. I'm not scared of them, no matter how scared they are of the rest of us.
Curious as to why you think that people are walking around with guns in the South - openly, that is, because otherwise you wouldn't see them. That just does not happen here.
I’ve seen it in Texas and Arizona. It’s absolutely jarring. True, I really don’t know about other southern states but I’ll stay away from Florida on general principle.
I’ve lived in the south most of my adult life and Florida for 25 years. You know where I saw my first Klan march? Indiana, when I was there for grad school. I have never seen anyone open-carrying in Florida besides LEO, ever. I’ve got some upsetting news for you: not only does white supremacy exist outside the South, but it exists outside red states, and there are people all around you all the time conceal-carrying weapons, even in California and the PNW. I don’t for a minute give the South a pass. We are first in all kinds of miserable metrics (infant mortality, deaths of people while incarcerated), but I really do weary of the blithe painting of the entire region with one broad brush as if no one here was anti-racist, voted for progressive causes, resisted authoritarianism, and as if there were no beauty, no culture, no joy in the entire place. I can’t count the times I’ve read in the comments here (on Substack, not specifically to SER’s posts) people wishing for the annihilation of my entire state. Let’s just say it’s an add-on stress to hurricane season. And I can’t help thinking it provides a lot of cover for a lot of people to ignore the social injustices, racism, and economic disparities right in their very own liberal havens.
Texas and Arizona are more West than South. It’s been 60 years since I’ve been to either, and was just passing through - from NC to California, so I can’t say what it was like then.
I am developing my concept of racial identity as a white person. (Nobody makes a bigger deal about their racial identity than white people, especially if they claim not to have any racial identity at all.) Everybody has a race and a racial identity of some kind. But not everybody develops it consciously. By this I mean: Not everybody struggles with the racial identity that is imposed by others, in particular by Whites under white supremacy, so as to transform it into an identity that is as much as possible self-created and self-affirming. The more your identity becomes a thing that you create rather than a thing that your past and your current culture impose upon you against your will, the freer you are. But nobody can ever become totally free until racism is overcome.
Essential reading. Thank you for this
Where you come from is an important piece of your history. My kids heritage is Africa, Northern Europe and Eastern Europe. The African history has been hard to uncover as we only have the slave trader's accounting. But we have about 325 years in America. I still have the renditions of ancestral homes my daughter built. My grandfather collected almost 1,000 years of family history.
History is personal to everyone. I know that 11 out of 13 children in a tiny parish in Louisiana went to college in the 1930s. Unusual for Black people. One was grandma to my children. It matters.
Very interesting points. I guess I always saw it as people should be aware of and proud of their background (whether white, black, or a particular ethnicity within those groups, or others) but when viewing any group as superior to another is when we get into Stupid City (and this is true even if you’re a patronizing white person thinking you’re complimenting black people for how “they vote”). We can also assimilate and celebrate unity while celebrating our ethnic/cultural differences, and cultural fusion and adoption are good things, even while acknowledging the origins of what we’re borrowing. Leave racial purity and superiority to the swamp bigots that for some reason are running our government now. Liberals are better off showing a different way.
This is such a great essay, thank you.
I feel like some other very powerful threads intertwine with this. For example, Black dominance in certain areas of culture and sports is often presented as "essentialist" with an implicit framing that draws from early 20th century tropes of racial determinism (see also positivism & eugenics). I feel like this sleight-of-hand very conveniently papers over the contribution of Black culture in shaping both individuals and society.
The other vital thread I see (also commonly papered over), is how Black American emerged from violence in the broadest sense, and continues to evolve against a backdrop of violence. Recent discussion of repatriations, for example, made people *reaaaal* uncomfortable, and not just conservatives. And now this discomfort has been weaponized by Trump 2.0.
I do appreciate how some activists have started calling out lack of distress tolerance on the left. And folks like Resmaa Menakem and Thomas Hübl have done a great job teaching the mechanics of intergenerational trauma. But it seems like few white Americans really appreciate either the lived experience of existing in a de facto apartheid state or how that history of experience is, in some sense, deeply "essential" to Black culture.
Thank you for this thoughtful discussion. Obviously, as a white person, there is not enough I know about Black heritage. As a southerner I know that it is not full of klan members as I spent time with like minded people who abhorred racism.
Perhaps if we offered Black history. I saw Henry Louis Gates series on the history of Africa although not enough of them. It was quite fascinating and I’m not even a great consumer of history.
At any rate. This country is a lovely quilt of all people who consider themselves American no matter their families ethnicity. Why we wanna make it an ugly white throw blanket I cannot understand.
We love all the food these people have brought through their heritage and then make disparaging remarks about the group themselves. I weep.
Cheers! This is basically where my politics are. Essentialism bad, identitarianism deeply suspect, but identity itself is something to be proud of, and really the only viable basis for undermining the concept of whiteness as understood today.
This is a lot of food for thought and a very nuanced take on that. And it does remind me about the people who like to cut off entire states or tell them to secede. There's people trapped in those places. This is exactly why I use the term "unreconstructed state-based regimes of terror" because they don't just apply in one region. They apply in any place where racist, sexist repressive laws are used in the American context to suppress a minority.
I'm just in the final stages of a cross country road trip that started in Florida where I live, west through Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona into Southern California, up the central valley into Oregon for a 2 month stay, now eastward across the Cascades and into Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Nebraska, Kansas, angling southeast through Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and home again in early June. I love road trips, because you see every little scrap of the country and not just the highlights. You interact with people with whom you would never come into contact any other way.
Each region has its own style and feel, but for me the divider is not race but class. People identify with people who they feel (and see) are like them. In Wyoming for instance, it ain't easy to find a black or Asian person, so racial stereotypes are never challenged. Oregon has tons of Asians, but outside of the main cities it has few blacks. California and Arizona are Mexico North. In the south, black people are everywhere, and while there is plenty of racism, both overt and subtle, whites and blacks rub shoulders every day. Mixed marriages are more and more common, which inevitably dilutes separation. Multi-racial children are everywhere.
The point of this is that my assessment is if we could get rid of the particular politicians who use politics to divide and demonize, this country would homogenize nicely. People want to get along, and they are going to be fine without the constant attempts to blame the "other" for the ills of the country to gain votes. If we could somehow get enough people in congress who could agree to get big money out of elections, that would be a major contribution toward unity, and make it much easier to find mutually agreeable compromises to serve all constituencies.
The real enemy of unity is big money, and that means billionaires and corporate campaign money, and the despicable moral vacancy that it generates in its mouthpieces. These classes do not care about the single mother, or the family that can barely make their payments with both parents working 2 or 3 jobs, or the college graduate who leaves school with a buttload of debt and who can't afford a house. Inherited wealth is the true divider of classes. Being born on third base and thinking you've hit a triple is a separator much more than being brown or black or white.
Certainly something to that—you can often get along just fine with people who differ with you politically and when you get into conversation you discover you don’t really differ all that much—it’s more that they see issues framed differently than you do because of how you consume news differently. They’ll still agree with you on the general principle (that people shouldn’t be discriminated against, that no one should be bullied, etc) when you press them on it. But there are those that NEED that conflict and will work to exacerbate it.
I certainly didn't mean to imply that there aren't assholes out there--no shortage of those. But on a one to one basis, most people are friendly and kind. And the source of news for regular consumption is a big factor.
Again SER, I feel seen. California girl, been to Europe, PNW, and the midwest. I would visit New Orleans if I had the chance but I'd pass on most of the deep south. I felt uncomfortable in Texas, I can't imagine Florida. For me it's the guns. Sure, there are guns everywhere but seeing people walk around in public with them is a big no for me.
If the goal of our shared civic experience was the avoidance of pain, then we’d take down that flag. But that’s of course not the goal.
Then what exactly is the goal? I'd say it IS the avoidance of pain, pain from hunger, pain from experiencing homelessness, pain from untreated medical issues. Isn't that what we all want as a goal, to help all of us? Isn't that the point of a government?
I live in Upstate SC, and have for most of my life. The only people I've seen walking around in public with guns are law enforcement. Are there people walking around with concealed weapons? Maybe, but I don't let that keep me from living here and going places. I'm not scared of them, no matter how scared they are of the rest of us.
Curious as to why you think that people are walking around with guns in the South - openly, that is, because otherwise you wouldn't see them. That just does not happen here.
I’ve seen it in Texas and Arizona. It’s absolutely jarring. True, I really don’t know about other southern states but I’ll stay away from Florida on general principle.
I’ve lived in the south most of my adult life and Florida for 25 years. You know where I saw my first Klan march? Indiana, when I was there for grad school. I have never seen anyone open-carrying in Florida besides LEO, ever. I’ve got some upsetting news for you: not only does white supremacy exist outside the South, but it exists outside red states, and there are people all around you all the time conceal-carrying weapons, even in California and the PNW. I don’t for a minute give the South a pass. We are first in all kinds of miserable metrics (infant mortality, deaths of people while incarcerated), but I really do weary of the blithe painting of the entire region with one broad brush as if no one here was anti-racist, voted for progressive causes, resisted authoritarianism, and as if there were no beauty, no culture, no joy in the entire place. I can’t count the times I’ve read in the comments here (on Substack, not specifically to SER’s posts) people wishing for the annihilation of my entire state. Let’s just say it’s an add-on stress to hurricane season. And I can’t help thinking it provides a lot of cover for a lot of people to ignore the social injustices, racism, and economic disparities right in their very own liberal havens.
Texas and Arizona are more West than South. It’s been 60 years since I’ve been to either, and was just passing through - from NC to California, so I can’t say what it was like then.