renouncing whiteness

[James Heartfield]

In message <3a1cdc753a45f5a2 at magnolia.wanadoo.fr>, Christopher B. Hajib-
Niles <cniles at wanadoo.fr> writes
>what is to be done? for starters, i would be very, very happy if, say, many 
>white anti-globalization  kids in the u.s. would start publically attacking the 
>white race as the most profoundly destructive historical and social force over 
>the last 400-plus years and as the the most effective 'binding agent' for the 
>capitalist system during that time. i would also be very happy if those young 
>white kids acknowledged that they themselves reproduce the white race daily and 
>made an explicit and strategically detailed committment to liberate themselves--
>as an essential part of their anti-authoritarian struggles--from the prison of 
>the white race so that they might work in deeeper solidarity with other people 
>as members of the human race.

White guilt - who needs it? It isn't the white race that is destructive
but the capitalist class. The myth of white solidarity was that the
working class in the West had a community of interests with the ruling
class. Getting people to apologise for their being white only
perpetuates the myth (except now re-cast in guilty self-identification
rather than proud self assertion).

What could better encapsulate the morbid outlook of today's petit
bourgeois intelligentsia than their going around saying how bad being
white is? Guilt, as Freud explained, is mostly about narcissism.

And what could better fit the need of the ruling elite to downgrade
working class social power than telling them all off for being
'privileged'!

I don't feel any desire to renounce my 'whiteness', as indeed I never
felt any desire to embrace it.
-- 
James Heartfield