Let Me Be Anything but White

In a recent podcast with Chris Roberts, we talked about James Burnham. Burnham ripped the mask from pious rhetoric, showing the lust for power behind it. Ideology is the mask that power wears. Today, in America, people pursue status, even (perhaps especially) when they claim to be victims — except whites.

In fact, there are many things we can’t say, write, or do that people of every other race can. A piece of paper that says “IT’S OK TO BE WHITE” causes a media frenzy. Even the OK hand gesture is now supposed to be a hate symbol.

Government-approved penalties against whites in jobs and education (euphemistically called “affirmative action”) are already here. Reparations, race-based tax rates, and speech codes may be next. If you’re white, there’s no way you can opt out. “White fragility” and “critical race theory” teach that all whites are racist. You can spend a lifetime “doing the work” to be non-racist, but you’ll never succeed. No wonder so many whites want to dodge this struggle.

There’s a reason our “first black president,” Barack Obama, built his self-image around his absentee black father rather than the whites who raised him. Colin Kaepernick, a biracial man raised by whites, is now a Black Lives Matter icon (to the despair of his white biological mother). BLM activist Sean King, who has raised millions of dollars, says he’s black but even CNN doubts this.

It’s not just that these men identified as black when they had other options. We probably would never have heard of them if they did otherwise. Barack Obama would be just another forgettable Chicago politician. Americans could read their fantasies into him only because he was black.

If he were white, Colin Kaepernick would be a good quarterback, but not good enough for a long-term NFL career. He certainly wouldn’t have a sponsorship from Nike for not playing. A white Sean King would not disturb our slumber at all.

Most whites understand that their race is a liability. Some try to escape it, and don’t lose much when they are found out. Claiming to be an American Indian probably helped Elizabeth Warren make it to Harvard and then the Senate. All she has suffered is a little ridicule. Jeb Bush claimed to be “Hispanic” on a Voter ID card. That was supposedly a “mistake;” it didn’t cost him politically.

But some fraudsters pay heavily. Rachel Dolezal and Jessica Krug are famous examples, but Andrea Smith, Jennifer Benton, and C.V. Vittolo-Haddad suffered great humiliation, too. They all turned their backs on being white and built careers fighting white racism. Of course, if racism were so powerful, there would be no well-paid careers fighting it. In fact, “white racism” is such a fiction that there was an advantage in pretending to be black, Cherokee, Hispanic, Puerto-Rican, or Middle-Eastern.

Vice recently complained that “White People Keep Posing as People of Color for Clout.” It doesn’t seem to occur to Vice that they do this because “white privilege” is a joke.

Vice mentions that the rise in white students “who leave the race box unchecked” is “perhaps because some of them believe identifying as white could be disadvantageous,” but that’s not important. Instead, one of the “experts” in the article says: “[W]earing the experiences of racialized people like a costume — an act — in search of opportunities, attention, or cultural currency is in fact the height of white privilege.” Efforts to avoid being white are “the height of white privilege.”

The word “racialized” is important. It implies race is something artificially imposed and not biological. But if it’s artificially imposed, why can’t people choose their own race? Vice says an indigenous filmmaker in Canada wantsa law to fine or jail “race shifters.” If money and privileges are on the line, there should be an objective test – and yet Vice says that Elizabeth Warren was wrong to take a DNA test. Apparently, race it to be determined by the whims of ethnic activists.

An “associate professor of education and comparative studies in race and ethnicity at Stanford University” tells Vice that the problem is not just Jessica Krug, but also “Kim Kardashian” (Armenian) and Ariana Grande (Sicilian). She says, “Ariana Grande has been passing as a woman of color in the United States context. There are so many people who can’t imagine that she is someone who grew up being positioned as a young white woman.”

It’s true that Ariana Grande’s image and skin tone have changed since she was an eight-year-old girl singing the National Anthem. However, like all entertainers, she was “positioned” to meet demand. Her repositioning shows there are benefits to being a “woman of color.”

Also, are we to believe there’s something wrong with Armenians or Sicilians getting away with being considered non-white? I would say they are white, but it’s less clear cut than for Northern Europeans. For all we know, Kim Kardashian and Ariana Grande never considered themselves white. So what’s the problem? Would it be better if Ariana Grande were North African?

Another expert tells us that whites who can “code switch” and “navigate white spaces” get benefits from a false identity while avoiding the “actual trauma of racism.” In other words, the white power structure imposes a race on non-whites and this is traumatizing. It’s especially bad because some whites can operate as either white or non-white; they are “double-dipping.”

The point is, there are careers, prestige, and opportunities that are not available to whites. Being the right race is a prize. If you don’t want white “code-switchers,” you have to scrap all the advantages that come with being non-white. I suspect non-whites won’t do that.

Vice wonders why whites want to be in a “marginalized group.” They don’t. Non-whites aren’t marginalized; they’re privileged. The reason they’re angry at white interlopers is because handouts are limited. There have to be at least some “privileged” whites left to subsidize this racket. So some whites need to be tax slaves, but whites can’t have “white spaces” or even the level of self-government an American Indian tribe enjoys.

But if race isn’t biology, what makes you black? In 1994, the Los Angeles Times reported that Mayor Willie Brown had given his “frequent companion” Kamala Harris a fancy board position — “politics as usual.” In 2004, the Los Angeles Times called Kamala Harris “a privileged child of foreign graduate students whose academic pursuits led them to UC Berkeley.” Now, her hometown paper sings a different song:

• “Column: Why Kamala Harris could become an unapologetically Black vice president,” November 7, 2020
• “For Black pioneers Harris and Obama, different times mean different approaches on race,” January 24, 2021
• “Column: Kamala Harris and the fearless Black women who paved the way,” January 20, 2021

Kamala Harris can claim African and Indian heritage. This is how she became vice president. Her political rise, from the beginning, was based on being non-white, even though she didn’t share the typical experience of African-Americans descended from slaves. Her ancestors probably owned them. Tariq Nasheed is right to say she’s not “really” black. It is only because of biology that she can claim to be black. She can claim “oppression”and lead the way to a post-white America in which people like her are rulers.

Contrast the careers of Kamala Harris or Sean King with what whites face at elite institutions. Wesley Yang showed what “dismantling whiteness” really means in a recent Twitter thread. Almost 70 percent of the people admitted to the Princeton class of 2025 identify as people of color. Mr. Yang writes that they will become a new non-white elite through assortative mating (people marrying within their own class) and will dominate American educational institutions. He writes that the new political myth that will sustain the country will be the “POC nation overcoming the remaining influence of Trumpian whiteness.” President Joe Biden’s new UN ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield showed us what this will look like when she declared to the world that “white supremacy is weaved into our founding documents and principles.” If that were true, she wouldn’t be UN ambassador.

In the new climate, whites who can’t “play the new game of race and gender fluidity” will be despised, and may turn violent. That will be the rationale for cracking down. We’ve already seen this in the response to the January 6 Capitol riot. There are countless well-armed, angry whites who want to do something. However, they are politically isolated, have no clear goal, lack racial awareness, and don’t have financial and legal networks. If they do something violent and crazy — and it’s practically inevitable someone will — the System will be delighted to get the excuse it needs.

Giving whiteness a purely negative identity through things such as “whiteness studies” convinces many whites that self-annihilation is good. In 2016, Aaron Bady wrote in The New Inquiry that whiteness was “only ever about death.” He dreams about “a new world” in which his children will speak Spanish. “In a generation,” he said, “Donald Trump’s generation will all be dead, and they’ll be replaced by the least white generation in American history.” This is another example of The Great Replacement suddenly becoming an obvious truth rather than a conspiracy theory when you’re cheering it on.

Many whites think this way. Strivers who want a “normal life” within the increasingly controlled media and economic climate will choose to become post-white. They will advance white genocide not through physical extermination, but by refusing to reproduce or to identify as white. You could argue that it’s good to weed out the weak, but we can’t deny that it’s happening.

I’ve long thought that the countless new “genders” that progressives claim are attempts to escape from whiteness. Again, a white person can “do the work” against racism but can never be redeemed. However, is an antifa who identifies as “they/them” white? What about a person who says he is a different species? What about those who define themselves by mental illness?

Over 50 percent of liberal, white women under age 30 have been diagnosed with a mental health condition. Some of them may be sick, but I think some of them cultivate illness as an identity — something to be put in Twitter bios and YouTube videos. It’s a way of making yourself a victim, so you can be spared the costs of whiteness. Rather than a cry for help, it’s a way to be trendy. The Pacific Standard was probably right to identify Tumblr, the microblogging platform that was popular over the last decade, as a key force in pushing young whites to embrace (or invent) new identities, especially around race and sex.

There is a new America with new myths. It’s only right that it should have a new flag. In Philadelphia, the gay-rights flag has brown and black stripes. Another variation that includes a nod to transgenders as well as blacks and Hispanics is becomingmainstream. It’s the flag I see most often in rich downtown areas.

The rush to be “transgender” is part of this. Confusion about what sex you were used to be vanishingly rare, but now plenty of teenagers suddenly think they are the wrong sex. In 2018, Psychology Today reported on a study on children who came out as “trans.” Nearly two-thirds of the time, parents reported that their children had been deep into internet subcultures before they made the announcement. YouTube stars who “came out” led to more people suddenly discovering they were “trans” too. The result wasn’t happiness but deep hostility towards family members, normal people, and whites in general:

After the youth came out, an increase in distress, conflict with parents, and voiced antagonism toward heterosexual people and non-transgender people (known as “cis” or “cisgender”) was also frequently reported. This animosity was also described as extending to “males, white people, gay and lesbian (non-transgender) people.” The view adopted by trans youth, as summed up by one parent, seemed to be that:

“In general, cis-gendered people are considered evil and unsupportive, regardless of their actual views on the topic. To be heterosexual, comfortable with the gender you were assigned at birth, and non-minority places you in the ‘most evil’ of categories with this group of friends. Statement of opinions by the evil cis-gendered population are consider phobic and discriminatory and are generally discounted as unenlightened.”

The media have tremendous power, and I think most people do as they’re told. Our rulers know this. That’s why they love deplatforming. If propaganda is repeated enough, people act on it.

The PT article concludes by discussing “mass hysteria” — historical incidents that include sudden outbreaks of religious frenzy. One sociologist suggested a better term is “collective stress responses.” While this sounds weaker, I think it may be more accurate.

Young whites are under stress we older Americans don’t understand. Movies, television, YouTube, video games, political news — all are explicitly anti-white. We should no longer shy away from saying so when Target sells a best-selling book of prayers that includes one that starts with these words: “Dear God, Help me to hate White people.”

It’s not surprising that whites are faking being non-white or seeking to escape the costs of whiteness through newly invented “gender” or sexual identities. There are other forms of voluntary victimhood:

• Trans-Species
• Voluntary Amputation
• Fat Activism
• Renouncing “Family Privilege”
• Claiming to be autistic

All of these identities absolve someone from generic “whiteness.”

In The Ethnostate, Wilmot Robertson wrote:

Let us suppose that a college football team from the day it starts training to the last game of the season never hears a word of praise from the coach, the faculty, the student body and sports writers. Let us also suppose that the team members are attacked both as members of a group and as individuals day in and day out on the playing field, in the classroom and in the media. Let us further suppose every opposing team on the football schedule is praised just as highly as the home team is criticized. In such circumstances, it will be a very exceptional team that manages to win a single game.

Population groups need morale as much as teams do. If you are not permitted to utter or hear one good word about your own people, then no matter how great your capabilities, you will be hard put to overcome the mental and physical paralysis imposed by demoralization. It goes without saying that people will conquer adversity much more effectively if their will and spirit are fortified by group morale.

Things are far worse than in 1993, when Robertson wrote those words. It’s not surprising so many whites aren’t just losing to the other “teams;” they are trying to figure out how to join them. They may even believe they are doing the right thing. However, ultimately, they want to be on the winning team, even if it’s not their team.

Still, contradictions in the system are reasons for hope. First, the system will have to make hard decisions based on biology. Tales about family history or invented claims won’t be enough if the federal government starts pushing reparations and other new race-based programs. Biology will be back in fashion.

Second, whites who identify as non-white or who use invented identities to flee from “whiteness” will be pushed back into our arms by their own supposed allies. This is about power, and there’s never enough to go around. No white antifa, transgender, Communist, anarchist, or “ethnic studies” professor will be safe. He is biologically guilty.

Finally, even if we get an intelligent, multi-racial governing elite, it can’t hold the country together. The new ruling class will be united mainly by scorn for conservative whites. That is thin gruel compared to the genuine nationalism of real countries like Russia and China. In a fight, real nations beat fakes.

In the meantime, we can join with others of like mind and strong will to pool resources and build communities. Their power thrives on our fear and it will fade like a bad dream if enough of us defy them. We must also deny our opponents any moral legitimacy. It’s not just double standards and hypocrisy. It’s all about protecting their own interests. There’s no “virtue” in it, so don’t call it “virtue signaling.”

We will rebuild our people — a people of explorers, thinkers, and conquers. Let them wallow in victimhood; not us. We will build a nation in which it’s not just OK to be white. It will be a universal privilege and joy.

First published on American Renaissance on April 16, 2021.