If the task of the 19th century was to overthrow slavery,
and the task of the 20th century was to end legal segregation,
the key to solving this country's race problem in the 21st
century is to abolish the white race as a social category,
in other words, eradicate white supremacy entirely.
—Noel Ignatiev
What the New Abolitionists Believe
The white race is a historically constructed social formation.
It consists of all those who partake of the privileges of
the white skin in this society. Its most wretched members
share a status higher, in certain respects, than that of the
most exalted persons excluded from it, in return for which
they give their support to a system that degrades them.
The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish
the white race, that is, to abolish the privileges of the
white skin. Until that task is accomplished, even partial
reform will prove elusive, because white influence permeates
every issue, domestic and foreign, in U.S. society.
The existence of the white race depends on the willingness
of those assigned to it to place their racial interests above
class, gender, or any other interest they hold. The defection
of enough of its members to make it unreliable as a predictor
of behavior will lead to its collapse. Whiteness is one pole
of an unequal relationship, which can no more exist without
oppression than slavery could exist without slaves. The abolitionists
study whiteness in order to abolish it -- not to "reframe,"
or "redeem," or "deconstruct" it, but
to abolish it.
Race Traitor
An example is given in Race Traitor in a letter
to this journal. "On St. Patrick's Day, my boyfriend
David and I were driving along a street near an Irish bar
-- Scruffy O'Shea's (what a name). The traffic slowed: the
cops had set up a sobriety checkpoint. The people in the car
next to us -- two young Latino men and one Latina -- started
to freak out. Sure enough, when they approached the checkpoint,
they were waved over. Dave and I didn't even merit a second
glance. In fact, every damn person they had stopped on the
side of the road was Latino. And just two blocks down from
this checkpoint, a bunch of white middle class folks were
going mad celebrating their Irish heritage' with big pints.
It was a very graphic demonstration of how the Irish got white
and who took their place. All I could get up the courage to
do was yell racists' at the highway patrol as we pulled out
of the checkpoint and keep your head up' to the Latino kids
we had been next to in line. It was one of those moments when
your feel your whiteness . . . it's that voice in your head
shouting shut up.' There was that brief moment we could have
done something."
Europeans from different areas, who had not previously seen
themselves as kin, saw the advantage of joining the club on
top. Without always wanting to, they gave up being Italian
or Polish to be regular Americans -- white.
How the Irish Became White tells the story of a
people who fled oppression by the English to come here and
join the English as oppressors of African Americans. Irish
American history is fraught with racism, from the 1863 "draft"
riots in New York to the Boston busing riots of 1975.
In 1863 the antagonisms between Blacks and Irish competing
in the labor market exploded into the bloody Draft Riots,
when Irish mobs ravaged New York City for four days, randomly
lynching blacks, razing a Black orphanage, and driving Blacks
out of the city.
In the book Whiteness Visible, it is suggested that
whiteness can be better comprehended if thought of not solely
as a biological category of pigmentation or hair texture,
but rather as a means through which certain individuals are
granted greater degrees of social acceptance and access than
are other individuals. Only by coming to a full awareness
of the ways in which an artificially crafted identity was
constructed to maintain hierarchy and divisiveness can any
meaningful and useful dialogue on race begin. The resistance
to naming white privilege and the silence that has precluded
the analysis of this racial category is the result of whiteness
being presumed the norm.
Don't assume I'm white.
Carla Dimitrious is an artist and a new abolitionist. She
lives on the Sammanish Plateau. Last January Dimitrious had
a show at the Cornish College of Arts that challenged people
to think about whiteness. The exhibit of mixed-media pieces
was titled "White, Whiter, Whitest."
One of the pieces, "Safeway Nightmare," is a photograph
taken in a grocery store. Oil paint obscures many details,
including the facial features of shoppers who look white.
We see the back of the man closest to the camera. He is wearing
a T-shirt with the lettering that at first appears to declare,
"Don't, I'm White." Closer up, the word "assume"
is visible. "Don't Assume I'm White." New abolitionists
want light-skinned people to declare to the bankers, the police
officers, the store clerk: I'm not part of the club. Treat
me like you would treat a Latino or a Black person.
Lara Johnson from Oakland, California, in an article in The
New Abolitionist, writes the following: One can begin to understand
how this system works when one understands the rules of membership
in the white club. As Noel Ignatiev of The New Abolitionists
says, "The white race is a club. Certain people are enrolled
in it at birth, without their consent, and brought up according
to its rules. For the most part they go through life accepting
the privileges of membership, without reflecting on the costs."
With membership in the white club comes many privileges.
They include receiving more respectful treatment from the
police, enrollment in better schools, less difficulty securing
a loan for a car or home, catching a cab with ease, finding
a job, access to better food, residence in less polluted neighborhoods,
etc.
One of the most severe condemnations of whiteness as a social
and political construct comes from the pen of James Baldwin
in his article, "On Being White and Other Lies."
Baldwin's argument regarding race, the meaning of America,
and whiteness and the immigrant experience provides exceptional
insight. In the above article, "On Being White and Other
Lies," he writes:
"Because they think they are white, they do not dare
confront the ravage and the lie of their history. Because
they think they are white, they cannot allow themselves to
be tormented by the suspicion that all men are brothers. Because
they think they are white, they are looking for, or bombing
into existence, stable populations, cheerful natives and cheap
labor. Because they think they are white, they believe, as
even no child believes, in the dream of safety. Because they
think they are white, however vociferous they may be and however
multitudinous, they are as speechless as Lot's wife looking
backward, changed into a pillar of salt.
"However! White being, absolutely, a moral choice (for
there are no white people), the crisis of leadership for those
of us whose identity has been forged, or branded, as black
is nothing new. We -- who were not black before we got here
either, who were defined as black by the slave trade -- have
paid for the crisis of leadership in the white community for
a very long time, and have resoundingly, even when we face
the worst about ourselves, survived, and triumphed over it.
If we had not survived and triumphed, there would not be a
Black American alive."
—Gerald Cunningham
Retired Senior Associate for Racial/Criminal Justice
