Hitting publish is like a box o’ chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get. But after writing for well over a year, I’d foolishly begun to believe that I had a pretty good sense of the reaction an article would get.
J showed me that I still have a lot to learn.
In my article “The Unspoken Evils of “Whiteness”, I highlight the hypocrisy, racism and counter-productiveness of the term “whiteness”. And while I admit that the title is a little provocative, I presumed that the people who commented would at least read it first.
“Whiteness” appears in scare quotes precisely because I’m referring to the term itself and not white people. Though the fact that J presumed I was talking about white people, perfectly highlights the first evil I describe.
J:
Well, good job with your hate tract…
Steve QJ:
Wow, you uh...you really didn't read past the title did you? 😅
J:
Oh no, I read it. It was a bunch of disgusting, disparaging generalities about an entire race of people… “Whiteness is a virus,” or any real stereotype like that—especially if it’s negative—that’s racism, by the textbook.
All I saw in the piece was a catalogued list of what some would call “hate speech.” If it were pointed at anyone but white people, that would be the classification. To talk about somebody’s racial identity as something to be ashamed of—people who didn’t do a goddamn thing to anybody else—I’d think that black people would understand how troubling that is for their Caucasian brothers and sisters. That’s what we are anyway.
I hope people start calling this out, because those aren’t so much academics as they are viscous bigots. What I would say in this matter is that in a free society, we give people the benefit of the doubt and the assumption of innocence. That was not the case for black people in this country; but I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. The only conspiracy against black people is by black people themselves, and the Democratic Party. And this nonsense is predicated on the idea that white people, and white people alone, are responsible for slavery, genocide, murder… every ill in the world. That might be a specific dynamic between white and black people here in the States and South Africa, but it’s pretty much universal because one society eats up the others around it. The Romans wiped my people, the Gauls (Irish and Polish), off the face of the Earth exactly like the Natives were done here. Julius Caesar claimed to have killed 1 M men, women and children; and the women and children were sold into slavery, used at the Colosseum.
I only bring that up to show how ridiculous this all is, because everyone has some serious disadvantage and strife—not all white people are privileged—but we have this small group of people trying to make it seem like white people are straight-up garbage, using Trump as the straw-man to gin up the hatred for what seemed like the start of a race-war in 2020. And that’s how this stuff always happens when you let identitarian politicians lead us down the rabbit hole. The truth is that black-power groups like the NOI have spouted this kind of hateful rhetoric about aliens coming back to kill all the white people; Yakub creating the ‘white devil’ on an island some-hundreds of years ago… I’ve had these debates with people in prison, and I can tell you there are racists of all colors.
10 years from now, we’ll look back at this orgy of anti-white racism and either laugh or cry. Listen to Joy Reid and just try to empathize with who she’s speaking about.
You’ll see what I mean if you think of white people as humans… the federal government and the Democrats are blaming white people and conservatives for the shit THEY did—as in the feds… from Reconstruction to Freeway Ricky Ross, the Black Panthers, MLK, the poisoning of Harlem with Air-America heroin and all the lead in the water out in Flint—but they can just point to their political enemies and sic these vicious racists on their neighbors. You can’t blame people’s children for the shit their parents did, and that goes without saying that your average white dude from the suburbs is growing up idolizing young black millionaires in this country (NFL, NBA, rap, television, business, everywhere) just the same or more so than white people. That guy didn’t do shit to black America, and he couldn’t help if he wanted.
Now if you meant the piece as satire, I truly apologize. It just seemed like you wanted to give a compilation of the most disgusting anti-white, anti-American takes of the past two years. That’s what I thought it was; and if you had a negative view of those racist ideas, it certainly didn’t come across.
That’s my take in all this… What we have here is just Jim Crow against white people, and that will definitely not end well.
History can’t hurt you. I appreciate the response.
“You’ll see what I mean if you think of white people as humans.”
This should be hyperbole but it’s not. Some of the things I see people writing about white people as a demographic are absolutely shocking. The kind of thing that you’d be unlikely to read about black people, even 100 years ago.
I’ve seen white people described as demons, I’ve heard professors describe vivid fantasies about killing random white people, and only on rare occasions do they face any serious consequences. Anti-white rhetoric is socially acceptable in a way that should disgust anybody who truly opposes racism.
The aim of genuine anti-racism has never been to change who it was acceptable to be racist towards. Martin Luther King was crystal clear on this point 58 years ago:
“We will not seek to rise from a position of disadvantage to one of advantage thus abrading justice. By adhering to this method, all of the Negro people in the United States, all of the colored people of the world will seek democracy for everybody. They will not to seek to substitute one tyranny for another. But I am convinced that black supremacy is as dangerous as white supremacy.”
It’s so tragic that so many people have forgotten.
Steve QJ:
Oh no, I read it. It was a bunch of disgusting, disparaging generalities about an entire race of people
Dude! What the hell are you talking about?! 😅
Show me anything I wrote (as in, not the three lines I quoted from other people as a criticism of those who make disgusting, disparaging generalities about an entire race of people), that could be construed as racist or hateful. Anything at all. You can even go through my entire back catalogue of published writing if you like.
I get that there is some hateful, anti-white stuff on the internet, but if you're so triggered that you can no longer parse English sentences that are arguing against that hateful rhetoric without getting defensive, it might be time for you to take breather.
There is literally no way that you both read the article and have basic English comprehension skills, and come away with this disastrous take. Try actually reading the words. It'll just take a few minutes. I'm rooting for you. 👍
I’m treating this as a bit of a joke—because it is kind of funny—but this conversation points to a genuine, serious problem. People like J are becoming an increasingly common presence in racial discourse.
And while some people laugh them off because they’re so “triggered” and “fragile”. Reactions like this are inevitable. You can only tell somebody that they’re evil and racist, purely because of the colour of their skin, for so long, before they come to see you as the enemy. Before they don’t just stop listening, they lose the ability to listen.
J didn’t get back to me, so I have no idea if he ever actually read the article and realised that I was defending his position rather than attacking it. But if things have gotten this bad, it looks like I’ll need to put more care into my titles from now on.
"I presumed that the people who commented would at least read it first."
A mistaken assumption that you learned good and hard. Something I see quite often is people quickly decide (title and/or first paragraph) left or right (or whatever dichotomy is their thing) and then all the words that follow go through that filter. Words from Dante's Divine Comedy come to mind.
I subscribe to your substack but not to Medium and would like to read that article if possible, thank you.