White, or America?

The obvious. If these odious murderous Trumpian Whites were Black, there would have been a massacre in the United States Capitol today. If wild armed Black men donning Black Lives Matter and fist flags had scaled the outer walls and stormed the inner sanctum of the United States Capitol while congress was in session, just close your eyes and quietly imagine that scene. It warrants a trigger warning – extreme violence.

The killing would have been immediate and brutal. The dead bodies of Black people would have decorated the floor of the temple of the American republic as a symbol of the value of our lives and the attitude toward our cause. But alas, they were White. They were sent home, bid adieu with peace and love from the President of the United States.

But that is obvious.

I read Caste recently, Isabel Wilkerson’s masterpiece assessment of the American challenge of racial hierarchy. The subtitle is, The Origins of our Discontents. In it (p.70), she lays out the following:

Caste is the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt, and human kindness to someone on the basis of their perceived rank or standing in the hierarchy. Caste pushes back against an African-American woman who, without humor or apology, takes a seat at the head of the table speaking Russian. It prefers an Asian-American man to put his technological expertise at the service of the company but not aspire to CEO. Yet it sees as logical a sixteen-year-old white teenager serving as store manager over employees from the subordinate caste three times his age. Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred, it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things.

In the American order of things, Black people are the subordinate caste – endowed by this republic with certain unalienable expectations that among these are subordination to White people, acceptance of that low station, and submission to forced peace as a pre-requisite for illusive justice.

That premise only makes sense if the other end of the hierarchy is equally part of the American expectation. As such, White people are the ruling caste – endowed by this republic with certain unalienable expectations that among these are dominion over Black people, entitlement to that station, and rigid adherence to the hierarchy at all cost.

In my mind, these Trumpian Whites are defending the hierarchy. In that, either consciously or not, they are defending the value of being White they perceive as endowed to them by birthright as Americans. The flags they donned today, as they stormed the capitol of the United States, included those of the Confederacy, the Nazis, and Trump, all ideologies rooted in White supremacy.  What is it that the Proud Boys are proud of, if not being White?

They’re scared of a life of simply being citizens, and not being White and are raging as a result. The focus on the election is merely a convenient ruse for this more existential issue.

All they would have in that reordering of the world is their humanity, their morality and their contributions as citizens on equal footing with the rest of us. I have no sympathy for either their fear or the difficulty they will surely face when stripped of their unearned station. I do understand it, however. If being Black were a superhero suit of high caste protection, as opposed to a pre-existing mortality risk, I would fight to defend my suit too.

But Black people didn’t invade the U.S. Capitol today. Rayshard Brooks was shot and killed by agents of the state for taking a nap in his car in a Wendy’s parking lot. Breonna Taylor was shot and killed by agents of the state in her sleep. Botham Jean was shot and killed by agents of the state watching tv in his own apartment. Eric Garner was choked to death by agents of the state for selling loose cigarettes. Tamir Rice was shot and killed by agents of the state for playing with a toy gun.

We know that if Black people stormed inside the U.S. Capitol with guns drawn and threatened the lives of members of congress – that American sentence completes itself.

What we’re facing is a dismantling of the American caste structure and the Trumpian Whites’ violent defense of it. Fortunately, the fall of the hierarchy is inevitable.

….Reverend Warnock, Stacey Abrams, Timnit Gebru, Kamala Harris….

The question is how will White people handle it? Republicans who cheered and stood by while the President led the nation down this dark and hateful path cannot be allowed to pull honor out of their dishonor now, by wrapping themselves in patriotic platitudes. Their willingness to sacrifice the rest of us and democracy to protect being White is already noted.

Ultimately, White people will have to look at themselves and decide which is more valuable, being White or America?

kamau (@kamaubobb)