Sophisticated Sophos

“Do you hate white people?”

I get asked this question often. Not as often now because white people have slowly dropped out of my social circle, mostly their choice. However, for a good chunk of my college and post-college life, people have asked me this. And the wild thing is, it isn't just white folks who ask me this. Black people have even asked me this question, almost at the same tempo as white folks. 

I understand why people ask me this question. First, I have a quarrelsome habit of interrogating whiteness. Oftentimes I interrogate how it came into existence; the hypocrisy at the foundation of its existence; about why do white people think that holding on to the benefits of whiteness is worth the cancer on their souls and the separation of them from their humanity. Secondly, I am a Black man married to a white woman. I have biracial Black children. And when people see my United Colors of Bennetton family, they assume that I am the “nice” Black man. A “nice” Black man never questions white people and whiteness. A “nice” Black takes the microaggressions in stride, smiling through it all. A “nice” Black man creates an environment where white people never feel uncomfortable and have to consider the hard questions around their existence. 

It is ironic that questioning whiteness and white supremacy is often connected to the emotion of hate of people. Questioning injustice, the outcome of 500 years of colonialism, the overbearing desire to hate Blackness but need the existence of Blackness in order to pillage its humanity and claim it as their own. Why should I not question it? In some ways, whiteness is ever-present in my world. It is why my city suffers the ills it suffers. It is why white women clutch their purse when I step on an elevator. It is why people are shocked when my wife shows my photo at work. Whiteness is why I bought my house in the neighborhood I am in: I was adamant to live in a space where there were so many Black people that I wouldn’t have to worry about them calling the police on me for just breathing. 

Yet whiteness also feels so alien to me. The fragility inherent in whiteness; its unwillingness to be questioned and its willingness to use tears and violence if offended. My spirit is repulsed by the idea that “individual rights” trumps accountability to community. “Individual rights” will allow one to engage in dangerous behavior not only for the individual but also others around them and yet that is ok because of “freedom”. The freedom to fuck up others lives isn’t freedom, it is tyranny Blackness has an ethos that is perfectly encapsulated in this Hezekiah Walker song, “I Need You To Survive”. The choir makes a statement so powerful, so simple, yet it encompasses something powerful and long-abiding in the Black community: 

“I love you, I need you to survive”

This ethos doesn’t exist in the paradigm of whiteness, at all. Your survival, your success is solely built on your own actions (not true). You are alone, on a spiritual island, distanced from everyone else, Unable and unwilling to have your sense of humanity connected to a wider community because that kind of interdependence is weakness. Exploitation and pillaging is the mood du jour. The thing is though, this is deal with the devil that white people had to make. This country required this of them when they came here. Give up everything: culture, communal family values etc in order to get this raisin-ed potato salad mantle of whiteness. That “melting pot” image was not a positive one. It was never about becoming one people. The melting pot was compelling European immigrants to strip themselves of anything that made them ethnic to become “white”. Give up your entire way of life to make yourself more palatable to whiteness. 

Despite all of that, I do not hate white people. I feel no anger towards white people. White supremacy, definitely. Karen not wearing her mask at Target and acting out because whiteness taught her that; not even close to hating her. In some ways, I almost pity white people. Living an existence that requires you to separate yourself from family, community, and your own humanity in order to get a false bill of benefits is a horrifying existence. Nothing makes you feel more seen than when as a Black man another brother greets you with dap. When you step into a place and you get the “nod” from another Black person. Or you hear a gospel song and hear the deep tradition echoing in the choir.  My soul stirs not just because of that music’s its connection to God; but because that tradition connects me to Blackness which is a powerful, moving, spiritual force in and of itself.