Dear racialized friend (of whiteness)
Dear racialized friend, I’m writing to you, I mean, in order to clarify some critical doubts that are intrinsic to the way I see things. I have no power to reach you in your tower, so I’m making use of this prose to see if you can hand me a response. Having said that, I’ll proceed with the queries, and although they may seem like decisive theories, I assure you they’re not, they are merely thoughts that need to be checked, and I’m open to you telling me what’s correct. Perfect? Done!
Dear racialized friend, you see, among some of the speeches our intransigent fighters say frequently, this one shows up constantly: “all whites are racist”; and also this one: “every white person is an agent of whiteness”. On reflection, I think this is a bit fatalistic and tinged with bitterness, a bit clumsy and rude, because it always puts the white man at the top, it gives him an enormous volume, regardless of whether his scent allures or he eats manure, or climbs up a hill or stands still, or works in the deck or goes on a trek. or limps and begs or toils like the dregs, or hustles for pay working in a café. That’s my call to action. It doesn’t matter if the guy cries in woe or reaps the cotton row, to you all whites just play one tone, and that I cannot condone, it’s a senseless plan with malice shown.
So, you say that being white means you’re racist, and through these syllogistic basics, a white anti-racist has no confidence or has lied, sipping poison for a kind of suicide (of color? Of class? Of race?), for in your view, racism’s a fatalism: born white, born racist, that’s how it begins. That’s life tainted by the original sin.
I think it’s normal to agree that racism is a social construct, so, as such, from my perspective (banal, if I may affirm) as it’s factual that being white’s not a social status but natural, however, it’s consensual, I suppose, that racism’s artificial and whiteness is artificial. So, if you’re born white, you’re just born white, since no one chooses the color of their skin (except for Michael Jackson, of course, and a few of them, but it’s rare).
I don’t want to play devil’s advocate, I know whose ass the fire incinerates, but even so, bro, I think we have to adjust the lines on text, because privilege shouldn’t be devoid of context. There are depths and depths, there are realms and realms, some are shallow, others overwhelm, but in all cases, they’re all pits, so many pits. Some have so much, some have only bits, and there are many whites who roll in feces more often than black Guineans. When we pay attention, there’s always a sliver of difference that we usually don’t mention.
Dear racialized friend, I insist that being born white is not being born a racist, no matter if that view persists. If all whites are racist then what’s the point of the anti-racist fight? To be a sort of genocidal plight? If all whites are racist, then ending racism is ending whites, since there’s no education possible to end color or change history (other than memory), so anti-racism seems like an inglorious reverie. Besides, my boy, whiteness goes beyond color. I’ll explain myself, don’t you holler.
It’s that racism is systemic, but racism is not the system, the system is racist, but whites are not the system. There are white people who, despite being privileged by their white hue, have a better attitude and sense of virtue by being less racist, causing less problems, carrying less blame, than some black folks who wear the cause like a name. Some whites use their privilege in the struggle with care, more precise than some brothas and sistas out there. In fact, how many do we know in the fight, who wave the flag just to bask in the light, to profit from our plight earning only their share? They act like they’re open-minded, but in discussions they end up more colonialist than those they criticize. How many blacks don’t we know in our Africas who are more agents of whiteness than many whites? For example, do you think Isabel dos Santos will be able to use the tears and fears of a black woman to whom the world everything denies, without being noted and chastised? Do you think she can use the “privilege” discourse just because of her being African and having black skin?
work by Tchalé Figueira
Going back, not all whites are racist, and being black doesn’t mean not being racist, because anyone who reproduces this, no matter what color their skin is, is a clumsy agent of this rotten business. Whiteness and racism can sometimes be confused, sometimes even fused, but they’re distinct and each has its own cues.
When we contextualize the fight only in white Europe, I agree and agree and agree with you, with no hope: privilege is white, and the beneficiary of whiteness is mostly white. But Africa is not outside the shackles of whiteness, because whiteness is more than the color of the skin, whiteness isn’t just the hue they didn’t choose to be born in, but about the system that operates on the basis of a hateful rule that blinds and denies affection for the black rise. Yet, paradoxically, there are black people who benefit from this. Whiteness uses racism to operate and segregate; and racism, although white (if we’re only talking about Europe, because, dear racialized friend, we have China next door racializing us too), operates on another level, controlling people and economies, but focusing more on color.
Whiteness is a practice that surpasses skin tone, whiteness instills a false virtue, sown through privilege and classism (also mirrors of racism), or by so-called education or the way of life of European nations, sold to light the dusk and yet it’s thrown in a way so brusque in order to educate the plebes and shove between their legs the so-called… sustainable(?) development. Even Fanon, who’s so quoted it irks, points this out and is stirred when he critiques the white works.
These silly quotes may be nothing to gloat over, but I believe:
1. When we repeat the ways and teach the plays that reinforce the Western capitalist power, we’re propagating the message and aggravating whiteness.
2. When we host galas in grand wide halls to set up scales to judge black souls, to compare their mettle and shower them with medals given by said battles won in an are created by a white “elite,” also creating our black premiums, we’re doing nothing more than playing at whiteness.
3. When, for example, in Africa practices are altered and sustained that are basically tactics to create dynamics to keep classes static, but all based on Western scales, it reinforces whiteness. (Keep in mind, however, that it wasn’t whiteness who invented castes, and castes are even more dynamic in white Europe and many other Western cultures than in other African and so-called “ancestral” cultures).
4. When a black guy is duped in the name of education and welfare, or of economy and other fanfares, when he creates unfair barriers to channel through hollow NGOs the hegemonic and economic stance of Europe and the West to apply to his own people, at best, he’s reinforcing whiteness.
5. As long as Europe’s grip holds tight on trade, and every step we take by them is made, and we’re forced to dance to their advance, with people from our own homes imposing these taxes, modern day sepoys called bankers and governments, we won’t escape whiteness.
6. As long as our economic practices are subverted so that we can appear on GDP lists, with strange codices and unclear indices and other indicatives and palliatives established by the IMF and the World Bank, and we cheerfully change economic practices in exchange for money and advantage forgetting that our people are managed on the basis of a different economy, we become agents of whiteness.
7. As long as the university is controlled by the West, where African thought is called “local,” while the Western is called “global,” and we don’t create and cultivate parallel systems, but instead keep talking about UNIversity, instead of PLURIversities, MULTIversities or TRANSversities, we will continue to be on the hook of whiteness.
8. As long as our diplomas are more valid the more the Western universities issuing them are valid, and as long as we don’t stop selfishly showing off all the pride in our achievements to our fellow countrymen who didn’t have them, as if we were the chosen few, more worthy, superior and true, we are agents of whiteness.
9. As long as our religions are centered on a white god, no matter the syncretisms and appropriations, they will continue to be immitations of white religions, and we will always be in the lower layers.
10. As long as you and I fight to improve our economic condition and situation here in Europe, even though we know that the wealth we demand better distribution of is channeled through the exploitation of our Africas, we’re being just as hypocritical.
Dear racialized friend, just to make it clear what I think in this missive: to be born white is not to be born racist; a black guy can also be agent of whiteness, with vanity or platitude, aware of the attitude or just an innocent who deludes himself. That’s why I think that fatalist epithets don’t serve the anti-racist movement, because it wasn’t blacks, nor was it whites, who’ve been working so hard all this time to shine a light and solve this problem created by whites (here we agree), because both blacks and whites were and are resigned to the state of the scenario. However, it was people, human souls (also bad and also good), but conscious and irate, courageous and separated, from both and more sides who stood beside each other as allies. What I said to my Guinean friend also applies here: “The conflict for the liberation of Guinea wasn’t only fought by blacks, but in the revolution, there were also whites among the sacrificed; and fighting to maintain colonization, confirms the affirmation, there were also blacks and there are still blacks, of that you can be sure.”
Dear racialized friend, we both feel the weight, so let me end here as it’s getting late, when we talk about racism, whiteness and privilege, don’t ever forget to create contexts, don’t repeat the same claims as if they were refrains, don’t talk about the system as if it operated and oppressed in the same way everywhere, with no aims or changes or such affairs, or as if the context of blacks in the USA was the same as that of blacks in Portugal, and of blacks in Brazil, and from there to blacks in Guinea.
I’ll stop here, but as I still want to talk to you about this said “place of speech,” this isn’t the end of this reasoning exercise.
