Things White People Say

About ten days ago, I sat down to write a blog post about white supremacy and this election. And then, our President-elect appointed a man who is chief architect of white supremacist propaganda news to his Cabinet, and then he chose another infamous racist, and another. And so, my strategy changed. What you see below is different than what I began with, and I have more to say on this in the days to come. I firmly believe that white supremacy is a driving force behind our recent election results, and to those who argue it was not the intended consequence, I argue that the emboldening of white supremacy is surely a consequence of it all the same.

I am not here to argue about all the myriad of things that fed into this outcome besides white people's need to be white above all else. I am an intelligent person and I understand the complexity of reality. But I believe that, even as liberals bemoan corporate interests and Wall Street, calling for a socialist revolution that they may or may not believe in themselves, a crucial truth is overlooked. All highly functioning democracies include profitable industries and a centralized system to manage money. Ours, however, has the unique attribute of being entirely founded on a platform of race-based chattel slavery and genocide. The irrational and paranoid belief in a white manifest destiny is not an artifact of who we used to be, it is at the very core of who we are. We can say the so-called "alt-right" are a fringe sector of our society, but white nationalism and white supremacy both have a long and accepted history here that relies on white people's continual denial that they exist. And so, we as a country elected a man to be our leader who has spent years viciously attacking the most internationally beloved and accomplished President in my lifetime, and he did it by saying, in essence, show me your papers, and, even, go back to Africa.

We have come such a short way.

Today I do not want to get bogged down into an intellectual debate over who is really at fault, and empathy, and understanding. I do not want to argue with progressives, or white women, or anyone, about capitalism, or misogyny, or the system. I want to bear witness to something. I am here to simply give some examples of what white people say online when they think only other like-minded white people are listening, or when they cease to care who is listening, because they have been given asylum and the assurance of freedom from consequences. On social media, with their names unhidden and pictures of their families included, white people say things about black people. I am not talking about on Breitbart, or in white supremacist pages and sites. I am talking about things that white people say, especially now, after this election, on social media pages that ostensibly have nothing at all to do with politics or race. Here is a little snapshot of what I have seen white people say, about black people in particular, and I am not even privy to anything resembling the worst of what is out there.


"Turn the hoses on them!"

"Crack babies with no conscience."

"This is a racist neighborhood because we're not stupid."

"We don't have the right to be white anymore."

"Calling them animals is actually an insult to the animal species."

"Why respect their dead? Animals!"

"They are a complete subculture and a cancer to our society."

"Something has to be done to keep them from our neighborhood."

"No more mercy, time for the old skinhead ways."

"Half-breed!"

"You're a coal-burner."

"These mooks will not destroy another neighborhood."

"It's BS these apes can come here."

"Not to be racist, but black men scare me."

"Ask the Jews how backing down worked out."

"There's no more peace, it's race war time."

"I'll fly a proud rebel flag."

"Tear gas them all."

"A bunch of chongos."

"Black people are uncivilized."

"Keep those roaches out."

"I'm sure everyone on here has used the N-word."

"Animals go home."

"These animals need to be found and hung."

I am a cancer survivor and I can say this. America has a metastatic disease. You can cut out the solid tumor by targeting the "establishment" or any other given thing, and the microscopic cells of white supremacy that have invaded the rest of our body remain. And so, if you tell me that I need to find empathy or understanding, that I need to come together with these people in a show of unity and peace, if you tell me anything about acceptance, I will say that no, love never cured a cancer, but there are tools at our disposal (social, political, legislative, and activist tools) that have, and so we should be relentless in our commitment to using them.