So, I demanded that Kleinheider provide me the name of just one Jewish White Nationalist so that I could google said person and laugh at him.
And there really is such a dude, Michael Levin, though–imagine this!–he seems to have fallen out with some White Nationalists over their “perceived” anti-Semitism.
In poking around the internet, I learned a couple of things. One that White Nationalists make a distinction between racist–actively hating other groups–and racialist–just being concerned with racial differences. And the other is that White Nationalists consider themselves to be White Separatists, which they consider to be different than White Supremacists, because they don’t want to rule over other races, they don’t want anything to do with them.
I am white. Obviously. I am completely unconcerned about whether I live in a country that is 65% white or 5% white. I cannot wrap my brain around why I should give a shit about this. I don’t look at the accomplishments of other white people as somehow reflecting on my value as a person. I don’t feel loyalty to folks based solely on their skin color.
It’s true that almost all of my friends are white. But they’re not just white. They tend to be either working class or newly minted middle class white folks. They tend to be very interested in spirituality, religion, and/or the supernatural. They tend to be snarky and a little prickly. A lot of them come from strange family situations. Shoot, a lot of them are from the Midwest. In other words, my friends tend to be like the people I am familiar with and people I feel familiar with tend to become my friends.
That’s not to say that I’m closed off to being friends with folks who don’t share that background, but I need to feel some common ground with them–a shared smartypants attitude, similar situations, or a love of yakking on the internet. Or whatever. But something.
It’s that shared whatever that makes me feel loyal to someone. Or makes me feel the stirrings of loyalty, anyway.
I don’t feel that with white people just because they’re white.
The thing is that I don’t think that a lot of… Whitist folks (to lump the White Nationalists and the White Supremacists back together under a slightly different umbrella) feel very loyal to white people based on their race either. If they did, why are they so angry at other white people, worrying about what we’re doing and who we’re doing it with, as if whiteness is some delicate condition that must be protected, sometimes violently, or else it is lost.
Well, are we strong or are we not?
I suspect that Whitist folks don’t love white people as we are now, but are, instead, in love with the idea of what white people could be if only we… I don’t know… awoke to our cosmic destiny or cut off all contact with non-whites or set up Concerned Citizens Councils everywhere, what we could be if we felt loyal to each other based only on our skin color.
This is a big problem for Whitists, then. They have to continually “prove” that we white people are different and better than the rest of you in order to advance their agenda of getting white people to act like we’re different and should be separate from the rest of you.
I was thinking of that stupid ass Aryan who had all the tattoos on his face, and how really, the distinction between the two groups–the separatists and the supremacists–is really a matter of class. White separatists depend on these working class mostly men to do the immediate work of keeping racial and ethnic distinctions and strife front and center while separatists never get their hands dirty with policing society. They ” benefit” from the work white supremacists do, but let’s not kid ourselves, if white supremacists managed to accomplish their goals, the white separatists would never accept them as equal brothers.
I mean, it’s hard for me to imagine that Michael Levin, professor of philosophy at CUNY would be that excited about treating the men in the Aryan Nation as his fellow white people.
But let’s get back to Kleinheider, who is up in arms over Steve Cohen being denied membership in the Congressional Black Caucus, who says,
But it is not even about that, not really. I mean if the CBC wants to shut out folks that want to lend a hand, that’s fine but don’t then come to the county at large, a majority white nation, and then ask for redress of past grievance and reparations for slavery and so forth.
Because if you shut out Cohen,you are not only shutting out the 60% of black folks in Cohen’s district, you are shutting out the 80.4% of this country who share Steve Cohen’s skin hue.
Where to start?
First, the Wikipedia link he gives states that 75% of Americans self-identify as white, not 80.4%. Second, how many white folks do you think even remotely give shit whether Cohen can be in the Congressional Black Caucus? Half? A quarter? And they’re going to feel shut out? Shut out of what, exactly?
Third, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, etc. Oh, my god. You’re right. White people were just about to sit down and address black people’s concerns, all 215,333,394 of us white only identified folks were finally going to be open to hear the what was on the mind of the 34,962,569 black only identified folks, but those 43 black congressmembers just ruined it for everyone.
That’s right, black people. Forty three of you “insult” one guy who most Whitists don’t even consider white and the truth is out. It’s not that we rigged the drug laws so that your boys would go to prison for offenses our boys get probation for, it’s not that we used to regularly kill you whenever we imagined you were being inappropriate with our women and still sometimes kill you just for shits and giggles, it’s not that you have harder times getting mortgages and getting fair rates when you do, that you still can’t get fair deals on cars, that there are still cities across the country where it’s not a good idea for you to live, that you have disproportionate health problems, that the public schools your kids attend disproportionately suck, that whenever you see a black person on the screen, if he’s not a rapper, an athlete, or Oprah, chances are his name is Marcus, and he’s magic or some white person is saving him, etc. etc. etc.
No, it’s that in January of 1969, thirteen people started a club and now the forty three members of that club won’t let a white guy in and so now it’s plain as day, you are oppressing us and we’re not going to stand for it any more.
Whew. Okay, that was good for a laugh, but lets get back to the point. There are five hundred and thirty five voting members of Congress and only forty three members of the CBC. The CBC therefore has very limited power and probably the extent of the power they can count on having at any given time is controlling who’s in the CBC.
HOWEVER, let us not forget that they don’t let poor people into Congress and so this is basically a skirmish amongst millionaires that has nothing to do with the rest of our lives. Trying to turn it into some referendum on how race works, trying to get working class white people outraged at how one group of millionaires treats another, is again about motivating working class white people to see the “importance” of remaining loyal to our race instead of seeing our commonalities with other poor people.
Let us not fail to see that.
Update on Thursday, January 25, 2007 at 08:03AM
If you’re intrigued by the machinations of millionaire congress members, see Mark* for some thoughtful analysis.
*Who really should blog more.
Tiny Cat Pants 