Some Thoughts on White Anti-Racists and Angry Black People

> “We win by having these conversations, not suppressing them.”

This is the very problem! What Chait is bemoaning is that these aren’t efforts to engage in honest discourse, but to suppress any opposition to the liberal orthodoxy!

It’s not just Chait who thinks so. Many, many people think so. And the examples he provided demonstrate that. I have no doubt that those were just a small sampling of examples he can provide because I know I can provide countless more Even Freddie DeBoer admitted as much! (http://bit.ly/1zybTBT)

AB said: ‘I apologize then. I thought you’re description of “attacked white people in the movement generally,” as something inherently racist.’

Agnus: i think this is actually a moment to bring up the “can people of color be ‘racist’ against white people” debate…

So… would you say it’s just our lot in life to let people be infinitely angry at us for stuff our ancestors (and maybe select police officers) did?

Thank you for navigating this subject with such honesty and clarity. One of my essentializing labels (like it or not) is “fifty-one year old white South African male” (born in the then British colony of Northern Rhodesia, having spent my childhood in England). Lived in South Africa prety much from ’74 to the present.
Navigate is the word here: so much real shame, “anger-on-behalf-of-the-oppressed-other”, attributed guilt by association … contradictory identities… its been like swimming in a sea of powerful cross currents and undertows. A privileged white boy witnessing the dark years of Apartheid. – Guilt by association: no amount of altruism can slough off “the white man’s burden”. But that’s just it, isn’t it? My own identity IS a valid subject for “me”, but this ISN’T about “me”. It’s about justice and redress of centuries of institutionalized prejudice and cruelty towards millions of people. It’s about economic empowerment for the historically marginalized. The temptation for “whites like me” is to retreat into one of several self-defensive positions denying that we have been beneficiaries of privilege. We can cite the corrupt and kleptocratic leadership that has hijacked our young democracy, using this as a justification for our own disengagement. In my country the complexities of identity amongst whites is further complicated by differing histories between Afrikaners and English-speaking whites who were at war with each other a century ago. The divisions between these communities persist in some measure and influence perceptions of victimhood (Afrikaners as historical victims of British imperialist aggression, the concentration camps set up by the British etc). Historically white liberals not directly involved in revolutionary activities attempted to disavow the racist government of South Africa and distance themselves from it through art and literature, as if the artistic and literary space could make us appear less complicit both to ourselves and to the disenfranchised masses. But in my opinion these were often self-identity-serving strategies for us whites, an attempt to sublimate or express our own anxieties and sense of shame. Add to this the reactionary anger in many white South Africans – emerging in part from the anxiety of eroding privilege and the fear of the Black Other (we can see this in the proliferation of paranoid online rants) – it’s evident that white anti-racism can often be about sublimating our own guilt. The way out of the conundrum? Your article articulates a very convincing answer. YOU DON’T NEED TO BE LOVED OR THANKED. It’s so simple really, just get on and do what’s right and leave the rest to the gods. Motives are always mixed, or perceived to be so. But do good anyway.