Humans 101

The White That Binds

Whiteness is a fraud and a trap. Liberation is our work.

Original pen-and-ink drawing by Johnny Rocket Ibanez.

I don’t want to talk about being white. I frankly don’t even want to think about it.

I’d like to consider solutions to complex, global problems, such as can we light our cities with the gas generated by our garbage? Should we even have cities at all? What comes after capitalism?

I have avoided thinking about being white. Every white person has. The truth is: There is nothing else to think about.

If you think there are other things to think about, I believe you have gravely misunderstood your situation. Until we have solved the problem of Whiteness, we will not solve any other problem.

While America’s Black citizens lead protests in our streets, we will never divest from fossil fuels. As long as police fire tear gas cannons at grandmothers, we will never make health care a human right. As long as the school-to-prison pipeline exists, we will never put a person on Mars.

Do you know how I know this? It is the most basic logic.

If we are incapable of solving this, then we are necessarily incapable of solving any of our other problems. The problems we face require a certain caliber of people to meet them, a people we have not…