"Dear Black people" (continued)

Those black Americans who hate European culture usually do not know much about it, and their quarrel, misplaced, is with white Americans. Mine is with American culture generally. I think this is an excellent quarrel. I belong in some ways to both. I'm trying to learn more from American culture and appreciate it more. I grew up in it in a way that made me want to leave it behind. I came back and have been trying to adjust. I am maladjusted, misfit, alienated, a permanent exile, pariah, and proud of that.

To some Americans, I would ask you to not hate me or want to kill me, I'd prefer that. In return I'd like to think we can learn from each other, but if you have no use for me, I understand that. I do know what it is that some people would want to have you disposed of and eliminated on the grounds that they don't like you. I understand this; I do not like it. Please try to understand: I know that you fear being disrespected because you associate that with being socially oppressed and mistreated by the police, which I also fear, while what I fear from you is that you kill me because you are enraged because you believe I have not shown you respect. Yes, I believe you go too far in that.

Yes, I am addressing you collectively. There is no reason not to do so, because we appear to each other as members of collective social subjects and bearers individually of the identities that are conferred by this group or set membership. Thus, in a way, to you my middle name is White and to me your middle name is Black and there is nothing either of us can do to change this. And that is true of most of us when we encounter you and most of you most of the time or whenever you think about us. You hate us because you think we oppress you. And we fear you. You will hate us all the more if we show that. The bully says if you call me a bully again I will hurt you. Some people will kill you because you insultingly let on that you fear they will kill you. You are mostly bigger and stronger than many of us, certainly than me, and yes I know the ugly historical truth about why that is, a product of an unnatural selection. They used you for your bodies, and today you proudly think of yourself as bodily in this way that we tend not to; that's ok, but the super macho culture of American society harms both of us in my view, for why does one have to be that or anything else for that matter? I said to a black man who was spewing out hatred of me "don't kill me, I'm a human being." That enraged him more. So you think I'm not a human being, was his thought, but that wasn't my thinking. He needed me to hate him. I wanted to not go there. But I think something in his culture makes that very difficult and unlikely, probably impossible in this generation or my lifetime, and that is sad.

You say I'm wrong about everything (I suppose understanding this solves your problem of explaining to yourself why you must hate me, as I see you do). I think you are (horribly) wrong about some things and we should talk about it. I think it's important that we do. But, your culture being American, you believe that disagreement and criticism are assault, and so the slightest critical remark of mine is for you a cue to a violence the will which you will attribute to me. You will do so in error, but you might win that argument. In your culture it's all about respect and in mine argument is good, whereas you will think I am performing disrespect and thus hatred, making me the retroactive cause of your weaponizable trauma of the memory and consequences of slavery, which I never supported and do hate. I hate everything about the extreme authoritarianism that it involved, which, to my astonishment, you mostly continue and are not bothered by, unless it is against you. All identity politics holds that injustice is defined by the identity of those who cause it and those affected by it. Rather than by what is actually done, though that is actually what has to be judged. So we can't talk because I can't say anything to you without you being insulted.