White Identity Is Incompatible With Democracy
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Donald Trump is a white terrorist, who has been attempting a coup, and 57% of whites voted to reelect him. You cannot have people with the status of whiteness and have democracy.
White identity is unfit for government. This is not biological. This is not about the gene that causes light skin. This is political. This is about a political identity based on a false claim of purity and the subjugation of Black people.
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“In the South of the United States, the entire race of whites formed an aristocratic corps at the head of which stood a certain number of privileged individuals whose wealth was permanent and whose leisure was hereditary.”
— “Democracy in America” by Alexis de Tocqueville
“White people cannot, in the generality, be taken as models of how to live. Rather, the white man is himself in sore need of new standards, which will release him from his confusion and place him once again in fruitful communion with the depths of his own being.
There is absolutely no reason to suppose that white people are better equipped to frame the laws by which I am to be governed than I am.
The Tunisians were quite right in 1956 – and it was a very significant moment in Western (and African) history – when they countered the French justification for remaining in North Africa with the question ‘Are the French ready for self-government?’”
— “The Fire Next Time” by James Baldwin
“the purity concept [of whiteness] is anti-democratic…white racialized society is anti-democratic…
Insofar as whiteness is in essence anti-democratic because it relies on the purity concept, all those who call themselves white, and who identify as white, objectively form an anti-democratic group.
To be democratic, to believe in democracy, in a racialized society like the United States, one has to abandon the purity concept in all its forms and at all levels of its operation. This implies that anti-racism has also to be, at every level, anti-colonialist, but in addition opposed to all identification with whiteness, since that is, itself, an identification with the purity concept.”
— “The Machinery of Whiteness” by Steve Martinot
“the antidemocratic influence of whiteness…the wages of whiteness constrain ‘any vision of democracy from addressing the class hierarchies adverse to many who considered themselves white.’
The key to this challenge, I argue, lies in the white citizen, and the task of democratic politics is to abolish him.”
— “The Abolition of White Democracy” by Joel Olson
“the law constructed “whiteness” as an objective fact, although in reality it is
an ideological proposition imposed through subordination…Moreover, as it emerged, the concept of whiteness was premised
on white supremacy rather than mere difference…whiteness as a theoretical construct evolved for the very
purpose of racial exclusion. Thus, the concept of whiteness is built
on both exclusion and racial subjugation…At the individual level, recognizing oneself as “white” necessarily
assumes premises based on white supremacy: It assumes that Black
ancestry in any degree, extending to generations far removed, auto-
matically disqualifies claims to white identity, thereby privileging “white” as unadulterated, exclusive, and rare.Inherent in the concept of “being white” was the right to own or hold whiteness to the exclusion and subordination of Blacks. Recognizing or identifying oneself as white is thus a claim of racial purity.”
— “Whiteness as Property,” Cheryl Harris
“For many centuries now have they been on this continent; and for many years have they had entire rule and sway; yet they are today no nearer the solution of the problem, ‘are they fit for self-government’ — than they were at the commencement of their career. Discontent and disaffection have marked every footstep, and the word ‘failure’ is today written on every doorpost.”
— “What Shall We Do With the White People?” “Ethiop” (William J. Wilson)
For democracy to start, antiracist policies must expand political participation and specifically undo white identity.
