The Four Fears Under Trump's Second Administration
A little over nine months into this second Trump Administration, I am starting to question, “Does it matter?”
By “it,” I mean, entertaining arguments from those who remain capable of achieving white racial innocence. What good is achieved crafting cogent counterarguments when the person I am communicating with cannot receive the ideas I am sharing?
If it does matter, how much impact am I making? Are those who are choosing to pay attention positively impacted? By impacted, I mean based on the display of my courage, are they inspired enough to increase their capacity to act?
Forgive me for my cynicism - or choose not to. As someone who has attempted to spark an anti-racism movement with a small collection of brave European Americans, I have developed an appreciation for the inner resistance millions of European Americans exhibit when asked to reflect upon their complicity in creating racial outcomes. This complicity may be against their individual will and generate conflicting emotions, however the inner tension does not rise to the point of inspiring acts of courage or changed behavior.
I, and other anti-racism/pro-humanity educators, are asking European Americans to willingly enter an identity crisis. Because examining how you, in your white body, choose to hide in whiteness while racial outcomes swirl around you, is an act of self-sabotage.
I imagine the first fear an European American must face on their healing journey out of white supremacy is the fact that they occupy the oppressor caste. As someone who has never been in the oppressor caste, I do not know how this feels, nor can I know how it feels to be seen as human by white supremacists. Nor do I want to be seen as human by the Trump Administration.
The second fear is: white supremacy does not permit common ground. If you live in a white body, I cannot join you in whiteness by giving up my humanity. Nor can you share in Black trauma without making yourself vulnerable to white racial violence, which is a difficult thing to ask you to do.
The third fear is: facing the fact that as an individual you lack the inner courage to do what must be done to address racial outcomes. Racists are seen as incorrigible psychopaths. They want to murder people wholesale.
The fourth fear is: As a white-bodied person, you sincerely do not believe a solution exists. They only thing you know how to do is hide in whiteness and “survive” white supremacy with the least amount of cognitive dissonance.
Stating these four fears leads me to the “conclusion” arrived at by the comment captured by this screenshot.
1) The commenter identifies as a part of a marginalized identity within European America. The commenter is so terrified of reprisal from other European Americans that they remain anonymous on a video based app to protect themselves.
2) The commenter perceives Black people as more courageous than themselves.
3) The only solution the commenter can generate is to “demand” I, a Black man, save them, and other “white people” from “racism.” If I, as a part of the oppressed caste, refuse to “save” this commenter, then, they have no choice but to let white racial violence consume me, and others, until, we, the oppressed, choose to rise up and eliminate all of the bad white people. If I, a Black man, refuse to be inspired by that threat and choose, instead, to distance myself from European Americans in general, I am perceived as abdicating my role in the racial caste system, which is to serve white people at all times.
So, what do you do if you live in a white body, truly feel impotent, and, now, rejected by Black, Brown and Indigenous communities, because our absence means they have to do the work on confronting each other? Which appears to be the greatest fear within European American communities.
Why? Because, it flirts with the idea of civil war. The belief that millions of European Americans are beyond repair is the greatest barrier to meaningful change within the United States.
Why? Because, by adopting that belief the individual European Americans includes themselves as being beyond repair.
What is the solution? Choose to go on your healing journey and take the hand of another European American with you.
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