When will White people declare war on their own?
As a Black woman, descendent of enslaved Africans, I must say, the White people of the Civil War era got something right: they knew when they had to declare war against their own. They knew that their Confederate brethren would stop at no cost to disrupt the Union. They predicted the ruin that would befall America if the south ceded and slavery continued.
Fast forward to today, well meaning White people have all but forgotten the lengths to which White people will go to oppress and uphold White Supremacy. They make the fatal mistake of not identifying nor articulating white terrorism when it counts. In the wake of the shooting deaths of 8 women of Asian descent in Georgia, law enforcement agencies, the media, and your favorite lay white liberal takes Robert Aaron Long, a man who “battles with sexual addiction”, at his word. When asked if Long’s crime was racially motivated, he denied it. When asked if this was part of a larger orchestrated plan, he responds “no.” But the facts would suggest otherwise. Long, a man who was apprehended just as he was leaving Georgia, heading towards Florida, to continue his conquest to rid society of “temptations”. A man who was known to be armed and dangerous and is still alive. A White male American terrorist who “had a bad day.”
I find it eerie that Long’s humanity is affirmed moreso than that of the Asian women who died in their own blood. Long was adorned with expansive grace when officers apprehended him, and even when they recounted the chronological events that took place. White people’s unabashed and unrelenting commitment to Whiteness is critical to maintain the caste system that Isabel Wilkerson brings to light in Caste: The Origins of our Discontent. That no matter what, there will be an invisible “underlying infrastructure” that promulgates the inequities that permeate our society, whereas the humanity of a terrorist is more affirmed than the humanity of victims of hate crimes.
The steady drum beat of war is getting louder and louder, and yet, well meaning White folks refuse to acknowledge it, let alone prepare for it. They allow their brethren to execute a well orchestrated United States Capitol insurrection, without calling it treason, and will consider anything but hate and racism when an act of White terrorism occurs.
This is meant to sound grim, because it is just that bad. The blood shed from America’s demise will be on the hands of White people who refuse to acknowledge that those who share their Whiteness need to be stopped. White people must separate their identities from and explore their personhood beyond Whiteness. If not, we are not far off from where Octavia Butler said we would be by 2025. We have already elected a zealot president and still deal with the ramifications of his time in office.
Dear White people, this is your fight. It always has been. Racism was never about someone’s hips being too wide, or the language they spoke. It was about maintaining a system that demonized otherness and upheld Whiteness. If you love America, it is time to gather your own and include you and yours.
