American culture coalesced in the cacophony of nationalism, capitalism, militarism, and colonization that exploded out of Western Europe in the 1500s. These systems formed in synchrony, each reinforcing the other. Nationalism structured the backbone of each new country’s self-identity, capitalism fashioned its internal economic relations, militarism characterized its interactions with other European nations, and colonization specified its relationship with territories outside of Europe. Capitalism created new class arrangements within each nation, overturning the old king-nobility-serf system of feudalism in favor of a new framework where ownership of capital determined one’s class membership. Now, someone was a member of the capitalist class if they owned the means of production or a member of the working people if they sold their labor to get by. And colonization brought Europeans into contact with people of other cultures who looked different and behaved differently than they did. These differences in appearance and action werecodified in a system that became known as “race”, a social construction that bears no coherent connection to human biology. 

The new capitalist elites were able to coopt this stew of power, identity, and association to make new connections between these various concepts. They linked race and class in a very particular way that colors our experience of those ideas to this day. They connected Blackness with poverty and illegality so that people with dark skin are automatically assumed to be poor and lawbreaking. They linked other racial groups – Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans – to poverty and illegality in different ways as well. The goal for elites is to give the mass of working people other groups to target and blame for the problems that they face. So wealthy people keep dividing up the working class into segments – by creating race, by simplifying and emphasizing gender, and by amplifying class dynamics within the working class, emphasizing the difference between those who are supposedly “middle class”, “working poor”, and “destitute” or “homeless”. 

But since the beginning, there have been those who refused to be divided in this way. Even among the working people who have been supposedly elevated above their peers, some have refused to take the bait. This has meant that there have always been some white “middle-class” people who have maintained solidarity with Black people, with Latine people, with other working people of all races. 

Antiracist whiteness is the stance taken by those people who call themselves and who are called white, yet who actively work to undermine the fundamental power structures of capitalism and racism that undergird our culture. Antiracist whiteness is a contradiction on its way to collapsing. Made up of two self-negating concepts, it is constructed in order to be destroyed. But that destruction will take years, decades, even centuries. In the meantime, we need a term to describe this state – the culture of those who call themselves white and yet also want to eliminate a society structured to allegedly benefit them but which ultimately helps only the wealthy elites. Sadly, the vast majority of white folks have rejected this stance in favor of a bargain with capitalism, but there have always been some of us who have dedicated ourselves to this cause. It is our role today to both connect with those ancestors and create antiracist whiteness anew. 

This stance is not an altruistic act of service for the needy in our community. It is the recognition that we are entwining with one another in a mutually beneficial and reinforcing community. We are our siblings’ keepers, and our siblings are ours. We are able to make sacrifices for others. But we must also recognize that we will not survive current and future crises by going it alone, by investing only in our nuclear families and trying to exclude those around us. 

Our crises of democratic governance, of constant and consistent militarism directed at other nations, of militaristic concepts and technologies directed at our own people through overpolicing and mass incarceration, of climate change and environmental degradation – trying to tackle them along will lead to stress, to burnout, and ultimately to failure. It is incumbent upon us to build community. It is incumbent on us white people to build community amongst ourselves across perceived lines of class and with people or other races across those perceived dividing lines. We must build this community, and it must be the crucible within which we forge the means to dethrone the corporations and wealthy elites from their thrones of deception and ignorance. 

We must honor the legacy of our forebears who fought for class and racial justice – not the Washingtons and Jeffersons and Hamiltons, but the Douglasses and Garrisons and Grimkes and Tubmans and Browns – by creating a new nation, dedicated not to the pursuit of solitary happiness but the quest for collective joy. It is to this fight that we must promise our lives and ourselves. We’re not getting out of this life alive. But it is the one way to live this life while we have it.

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