The Power Of Whiteness
Tags: Ignorance, Whiteness, Culture, Ta Nehisi Coates, Politics

The Power Of Whiteness

Revealed And Compelled

Ta-Nehesi Coates is one helluva writer, and his piece for The Atlantic titled “The First White President” is a culminating composition of how the United States compromisingly arrived at a Trump presidency. But, this is not about Mr. Coates’s essay drawn from his new book pending release in October 2017, this piece was simply inspired by it. I view most of Mr. Coates statements as substantiating several observations that I have made in a number of articles published here on Medium. While the Trump administration is long on benefit of the doubt and short on decency, it is nonetheless deemed necessary to the reification of whiteness. What the dubious rise and electoral college vote of Donald Trump symbolizes more than anything else is a need to reassert false identities to sustain a menacing privilege under a fraudulent social construct that became increasingly hypervigilant under an Obama presidency.

In the aftermath of an improbable eight years with a Black man as president, an indefatigable strain of identity politics overwhelmed our cognitive abilities to rationalize our purpose and fortitude as a multicultural nation of immigrants. What we bear witness today is a symptom of hope, the side effect of audacity and a dependency on Dr. King’s dream unfulfilled.

Coates never fails to highlight the naivete of Barack Obama and his underestimations during his presidency— of an obstructionist Republican party that saw him as an illegitimate president; of the rise of Trumpism; and thus the power of whiteness. While this is true, the entire human population have all underestimated the existential threat or perceived role of whiteness in society to our own detriment, but not without resolve towards the truth of human interdependence. Our underestimation is due to our need to overcome its corrupt notions and undervalue its significance for the greater good. The resistance is predicated on it and would seem to warrant underestimating the power of whiteness.

“And so the most powerful country in the world has handed over all its affairs — the prosperity of its entire economy; the security of its 300 million citizens; the purity of its water, the viability of its air, the safety of its food; the future of its vast system of education; the soundness of its national highways, airways, and railways; the apocalyptic potential of its nuclear arsenal — to a carnival barker who introduced the phrase grab ’em by the pussy into the national lexicon. It is as if the white tribe united in demonstration to say, “If a black man can be president, then any white man — no matter how fallen — can be president.” And in that perverse way, the democratic dreams of Jefferson and Jackson were fulfilled. ” — Ta-Nehesi Coates

The oftentimes noncommittal political media complex incites our ire on topics of inequality while providing elusive and discursive false narratives that get passed off as democratic journalism, Why? Because the power of whiteness compels them.

CEOs of major industries and conglomerates provide a comforting trope that color-blindly embraces an inclusive labor and consumer driven pool because it would only be bad for business to properly address the inadequacies of diversity when in fact the lobbying they espouse harms and subjugates those very bases, Why? Because the power of whiteness compels them.

The alarming patriarchy seen with pay disparity, abortion, representation in government and commercial enterprises, seems to just be whitewashed away by boys just being boys “grabbing them by the pussys”, Why? Because the power of whiteness compels them.

The demonstrative building of a wall to keep out rapists coming in from Mexico, as well as those drug dealing gangs who narcotize and infest our communities suggests a tough on crime approach on the incoming terror without while dismissing the terror from within stemming from longstanding murderous hate groups that go unaddressed. Why? Because the power of whiteness compels them.

Such power to compel would leave us in greater despair than one could imagine, a type of despair comparable to the advent of slavery. The fact that this power is evil is lost on this political entity. It is oftentimes sanitized and contrasted with an incorrigible blackness for greater effect. Its deceptive and questionable logic is therefore plausibly underestimated and resistantly countered by the idiomatic drive of “good always triumphs over evil”.

This of course is all relative to the one doing the judging. Some will deem what I have written here as evil, disruptive to the status quo, and to the order and way of things. They might even think I’m racist.😳 Which is quite absurd😕. The incentives embedded in that logic would seemingly provide all the proof they need. A rationale motivated by ignorance verifiably by neglect and selfishness. And you know why.