The Glitches:

A Diary Entry on Whiteness and Complicity

The following is written by a human being and not artificial intelligence.

I raise my hand to be counted by this Second Trump Administration as one of its enemies. I abhor the current events of injustice and would love the opportunity to conduct an “What Does It Mean to be an American” survey through all 50 states.

In the meantime, as a historian, I implore all of us to start a diary. Our descendants will have endless questions about our intentions and inner psychology, individually and collectively, during these current events just like we do today about events from previous generations. The more information we leave them in the form of diaries and editorials, the better their understanding of our humanity will be.

Let me submit this entry as my first in the practice that I suggest:

Contrary to the thousands of combative social media exchanges I have experienced over the past 15 years, I do not enjoy being a trigger for racial stress within white bodies nor do I hate white people.

Because of the taboo within white communities/spaces about discussing race and racism, millions of European Americans are socialized to believe that because it is not being discussed, race is not happening. The force behind “race” is not personal. The individual white bodied person can be poor, disabled, marginalized by sexual preference and still be able to weaponize themselves in the minds of “other” white bodies and become a threat to any Black, Brown or Indigenous person encountered.

White racial violence is pervasive. Yet, millions of European Americans walk around as if they have to become a threat, not are already a threat. It is a necessary illusion to maintain.

When I first began anti-racism work, during that memorable “Interrupting Whiteness” weekend, in 2020, I did not fully appreciate the attachment the average white bodied personality has to whiteness. Peggy MacIntosh should be mandatory reading. Millions of European Americans seriously do not associate any personal achievement, nor positive relationship with national organizations, to their race. They experience society through the lens of personality alone.

The concept that what they are experiencing is the “White racial experience” and not universal to humanity is the first glitch I observe. It is what those who seriously go on their healing journeys out of white supremacy stumble against.

Photo by Alexey Demidov

“How is that possible?”

How is what possible? How is it possible to be human in a way that white bodied people can not share in? Easy. The entire multiculturalism experiment was based on the idea that cultural immersion would teach white children that there was more than one way to be human.

It is not the cultural immersion that was the problem. It was the realization within the European American that they were the focus of the experiment. They imagined, innocently, that everyone was participating in the same activity and having a shared experience. The idea that many of the non-white students around them knew themselves to be in white space and were integrating it with their presence and cultural disciplines, as decentering whiteness generates psychological stress.

Being associated with the behavior of other white bodied people is a devastating blow to the white personality, a fundamental loss of control. Nothing they can say or do, in the presence of the Black, Brown or Indigenous person changes the conditions that Black, Brown or Indigenous people face when non-white people encounter a more racist European American, which is going to happen. Indirectly, racism gives white people power in ways they do not want, yet, ironically, need, in order to survive inside of a racial caste system.

As disgusting as it is, the average European American is dependent upon white supremacists viewing them as a human being. Stephen Miller can see you - if you live in a white body. Until you physically demonstrate that you disagree with him and will prevent the completion of his evil orders, you are safe from him. You have the choice to hide in whiteness. The Trump supporters around you never have to know how you really feel.

It is with a level of anxiety that perplexes the rest of the world that white bodied persons come to Black, Brown and Indigenous persons and ask to be educated about the racial caste system - for free!

It’s almost as if European Americans do not believe that Black, Brown or Indigenous people are oppressed!

Their ignorance is legitimate. Millions have deluded themselves into believing that racism is a form of extreme bullying. In their mind, this definition provides common ground. This belief is steeped in the individualism and right-to-comfort characteristics of white supremacy culture. It allows a white person to think: "Since the personality living in this white body, the one now pleading for connection, has a story about being mistreated by other white people, common ground must exist between us." When this logic is refuted, the white body feels abandoned. Projecting onto the oppressed before them, they claim there is no safe space for them because they reject white supremacy, yet cannot find community among the oppressed. Where is the place for them?

Thousands of videos on previous iterations of TikTok and years of Instagram have taught me that the only solution millions of European Americans reached to deal with the racists in their families was to go no contact.

Yes, this is good.

Now, think with me, “What do we do with your more racist family members?”

This generates the second glitch. “I don’t know. I have done everything I can think of and nothing worked.” Yes, that is the problem.

“I believe you, which means nothing, because I do not live in a white body. I have no effective power to harm your white body without risking grave harm to my Black body,” I say.

When Black, Brown and Indigenous people pointed out that such a strategy was selfish, because the threat posed by your family members is not neutralized by your absence, the common response was to feign the capacity to address them. None of them wish to detach from whiteness. Few want to even discuss it.

The only thing the individual white bodied person can do is not be racist themselves, which they don’t know how to do because everything they did think was going to work did not work on their own family members, so, where is the proof that said methods worked on themselves?!

My concern 397 days into this second Trump Administration is not Pam Bondi and other staffers. The news reports their behavior 24 hours a day. It is the behavior of my white bodied neighbors that concerns me. How many are walking around like nothing malicious is happening? How is the capacity to compartmentalize the cost of “normal life” away from the immediate consequences of white racial violence not evidence of an individual’s attachment to white supremacy?

Why is it imagined that only violence can solve the problem of white supremacy culture?

Why do so many white bodied people believe other white bodied people are evil?

This is the third glitch which occurs. The white bodied person I am working with enters the epiphany, “I am being treated like a white person. Not because the Black, Brown and Indigenous people want to treat me differently, but because the white people around me treat me like a white person. In order to free myself of whiteness, I have to free them of whiteness!”

Yes, and that process begins with you believing such a thing is possible.