Character sketch: A white radical complaining about race

"One way which as a lefty I believe I am able to distinguish my politics from a liberalism that is not very credible is, actually, on race. This is why:

Racial conflict exists. One half it, at least, is white reactions of fear and loathing towards black violence. By that I mean violent crime perpetrated by black people, and/or perpetrated with the understanding that it is about race, and race hatred.

Liberals are very dishonest about race. They actually would like to pretend it isn't there. If a black person hits or threatens a white person, the liberal observer, black, white, or something else, will turn their cheek so as to look the other way. If the white person who is literally the victim of the act (but not "ontologically" the victim, because in their ideology that role is reserved for the officially "oppressed," who are all and every members of certain (voting constitutent?) demographics). If you tell a liberal you have had racial problems, they will pretend to not believe you, and won't like you, because that isn't supposed to be possible, and therefore cannot be true.

It's easy to see what right-wingers will do about this, but what about the left? As I see it, the left is more thoughtful, does not believe that social problems are solved by right thinking, and is actually quite likely to want to take account of real problems, including how people see them.

James Baldwin says in the recent Raul Peck film about him, that white people hate black people (when they do) out of terror, and black people hate white people out of rage. The assumption, unquestioned by Baldwin or Peck, is that rage is justified and terror isn't.

Baldwin is right. Further, most white racism is fear of black violent crime, and most overt racism in America is black racism. Even liberal and moderate black leaders, who include lawyers, politicians, writers, and professors, will talk about "white people." They hate us, and they hate Jews.

I wasn't raised to solve problems with violence. Many of these people are, and they are, let's face it, usually much bigger than me, and if they hit you, it's usually like being hit by a truck. The level of extremeness of violence is something I cannot imagine outside movies about criminal gangs.

I judge people, as King said, by the content of their character. I don't like the authoritarian personality and I don't like violence. I will of course have to stand my ground in whatever way I can. Which can only really mean legally.

I recently joined the DSA. I'm a democratic socialist with a strong anarchist streak. But I'm not a liberal and don't like identity politics, not on race, not on gender, not on sexuality.

I have been violated or threatened several times by very angry and hostile security guards, always black, for some reason. I do not hold anyone's race against them. I do think that many Americans, and probably most black Americans, have very different values than I do. Among other things, the evangelical form of the Protestant Christian religion is the one that has shaped the conscience of most of them, and I don't like that conscience. It is moralistic, intolerant, irascible, and extremely authoritarian.

I can easily agree that many of them are victims. They have been sold and have bought theories of what to do about that, and it is that that I don't like.

I can be a comrade with a strange kind of solidarity. I think it is an alliance rather than a community. Of course, in political philosophy all such notions are, in fact, quite contested and not of the settled kind that can readily be made operational for a morality.

I desire solidarity networks based on alliances. You probably want things politically that I don't want, and all of my experience makes it rather clear to me that some of the things I most want, which is the anarchist in me, you probably want the opposite.

If bosses tomorrow hire you as a mercenary cop or soldier to put me down and out physically and maybe mortally, are you going to say, sure? I have generally found the enforcers to be black, and them to be of inhuman cruelty and a rage and hostility that can only be explained as hate.

Do you just want to blame me for saying this? And if so, what is the effect of just blaming all the people who feel as I do? Will it not be to shore up the police state, in all its horrifying violence and oppressiveness and cruelty, that of course actually does far more harm to far more of your people than mine.

Assuming we are essentially different kinds of people. I was raised from preschool on by Civil Rights-era liberals singing the era's folk songs to us. I don't see any reason why we have to be two different kinds of people. I think it is your people's leaders, most of them, and therefore also most of you, who want that. I don't.

But if we shared the same public worlds as part of a single community and not two different and essentially opposed ones, what happens the first time we disagree sharply about the values that should guide that community? We have different ones in some ways, and while liberals will say that cannot be true, it obviously is, starting from religion, and including the other factors in the life experiences of so many of your people which incline them to the authortarianism, which is extreme by definition (and no, it does not mean the existence or exercise of authority; it is more than that and something else), such as: working class jobs that require obedience more than thinking; families and schools that are oriented to those kinds of jobs; the military, which is now mercenary and overwhelming black and hispanic; the fact that most security guards and many cops are returned mercernary soldiers. Finally, you have a physical culture. My culture is intellectual. In my culture, a real man is not a very strong man nor a bully. Your people mostly excel, some few of them, in things like professional sports, not theoretical physics. I don't want any of these things to be this way, but they are?

I propose that over a generation or more, as it will take at least that long, we build a society and culture that is not based on violence as much of ours is, that has better jobs and educational opportunities, that is not authoritarian, that is therefore democratic, and in which we can argue about the values that should guide our shared spaces.

I even found it difficult to purchase a motor scooter from a black kid whose mother tried to browbeat me for not obeying the price, because she did not like me bargaining.

Look, friend, I am European-American or "white" and that's how I will act; that's where all my values come from. I am open to learning from others who are outside that; I am less open to being ruled by people who have different values and hate me for mine.

I do not like authoritarian values, partly because I have seen how they lead through hatred to violence. The things that happened to me really did happen; dear white liberals, I am sorry if you must despise me for it. Maybe you are not a liar, but you are asking to be one, because if I thought like you I would be.

The most important thing to me here is this:
I'm against the police state. Which is capitalist. You all seem to me to be for it. Just so long as it's in your hands or operating on your behalf, or even, which is more the reality, claiming to. That is liberals. Liberals talk around the block about how they are against bad attitudes that harm people by insulting their feelings, in case they are black or members of another privileged minority.

Don't side with the police, and do not oppose what they do only in the name of race. Revolutions are not made and won by 10% of the population. I'm on your side as your ally and comrade if you let me be. But I come with a price: I argue. I'll tell you when I think you are wrong. That may be often.

Most radicals are actually from privileged class backgrounds. That has been true since Moses, Prometheus, and Antigone. Actually, most of your people are pretty conservative in a lot of ways.

I could be forgiven for thinking something that the Brothers proclaimed a revolution and all we got was a guillotine. Maybe what they got was a slogan and raised fist. In other words, a pose. Which is to say: vanity. The respect-extortion racket. Free blacks, they take your lives, and let you suck your pride."