Thursday, July 5, 2018

How to Kill Whitey in Five Easy Steps: Step 1

Step One:  White is total BS.

Back in the 19th century, there was a "scientific discipline" called phrenology.

Folks back then had learned...correctly...that the brain was the seat of human consciousness, and that differences in brain structure could impact how you thought and processed information.  So, from that basis, they came up with a way of measuring human awareness by measuring the structures of the human skull.

Bumps and variances in skull structure were tied to personality traits and intelligence...or lack of intelligence.  There were calipers and tools.  It all seemed very real.

But phrenology was total garbage.  It was completely meaningless, and grounded in a fundamentally flawed understanding of ourselves.

At about the same time phrenology was at its peak, human beings were also taken with the idea of race as a meaningful way to describe human identity.  The two were interwoven, as phrenological practitioners made sweeping statements about the "native intelligence of the races" by measuring the bumps and protrusions on their heads.

"White" people, of course, had all the best bumps.

As our culture seethes through yet another paroxysm of anguishing over the seemingly irreconcilable dynamic of race, there's a peculiar truth that struggles to to push through the hysteria.  That truth is simple:

The modern era idea of race is complete BS.  "Whiteness," as a category, is complete BS.  Whiteness is a fabrication, not rational but a rationalization.  And like all BS'ing, it is a thing people made up to serve their own power, ego, and advantage.

Culture?  That's meaningful.  Cultures have languages and archetypal self-understandings, their own musics and rhythms and poetry.  The English have a culture, as do the Danes.  So do the Yoruba, and the Japanese.  Cultures are also fluid and dynamic, engaging and interweaving and developing in relation to one another.  That happens through communication and exchange and trade.  It happens when human beings from one culture say, hey, you're actually kind of fine, and lo and behold, they have a bebe with those from another.

But race?  Race does none of that.  Race can't handle that reality.  Race has none of the blurriness and fuzz around the edges that culture includes.  It is rigid and inflexible and utterly inorganic.

Why?  Because it is a garbage category.

In pointed particularity, it does not do that relative to the term "white," which is a completely absurd and unscientific way to describe human beings.

I am a Scots/Irish/English/Welsh/German mongrel.  My children add to that mix both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish culture.  We are "white."

But back when my Irish great-grandmother came into the United States from Canada as an illiterate immigrant farmworker, the Irish weren't considered "white."  And my wife's family, Jewish immigrants from varying places in the diaspora who settled in Queens in the 1930s?  Also not "white," not for decades.  Jews are still not "white" by the standards of white nationalists.

The categorical structure of the race-labels we still use today are inherently racist, and were designed to give primacy and precedence to "white" folk like myself.

The reason we can't resolve the issue of race is that the idea of race is and has always been a lie.  Resolving the "issue of race" is like resolving the issues with phrenology.

If your foundation is rotten to the core, no amount of work can make it better.

On to step two:  White is not your heritage.