Netflix 15 The Lexicon of Jim Snow Shibboleths, a Racebot Training Course
About 50 minutes in we get a discussion of "White saviorism." In it the philanthropic efforts of White people are belittled. As images of Whites engaged in charity with Blacks appear on screen, Raquel Willis, described as an "author, activist, and media strategist," glibly states of White anti-racists, "If you are really doing something in a truly altruistic manner, you really don't have to use me up as a receipt." Apparently Willis cannot conceive that the Whites and Blacks in these photos became fond of each other and wished to commemorate the moment for the same reasons everyone takes photos. Such moments are frequently concocted for the political capital they may afford the Whites and/or Blacks involved, but, critically, she targets those who are engaged in genuine altruism for ridicule.
As an anarchist, I despise this world of haves and have nots and the need for charity of any kind, however, one would think that those making personal sacrifices to alleviate suffering should be lauded, at least not mocked. Putting aside Willis' narcissism, does she really care about the Black people in those images? Really? Or are they political capital for her in the age of the Great White Bogeyman? Career boosters? Stage props? Means to an end? She's described as a media strategist, which means she's in the perception management business.
But enough of misanthropes, it's time for racebot vocabulary. If you want to go far in Jim Snow America, you must master the following.
1) White saviorism. The point of this one is to deny credit to any White person no matter how deserving they may be, and to subaltern Whites in political activism.
When your whole Jim Snow line is based on the theory of White villainy and Black innocence--the Whites who purchased ten million slaves are evil, and the Blacks who kidnapped those ten million, yoked them, marched them to the coast, held them in "slave farms" and sold them to Whites, are innocent victims--what can you say about those Whites who act in an undeniably admirable way? When you have Adandozan of Dahomey on one hand and John Brown on the other, whatever is a erstwhile racebot to do? You suppress Adandozan--the whole myth of Black innocence goes up in smoke--and you lie and depict John Brown as a racist. White saviorism is a theoretical dodge, a prophylactic against honest inquiry, the kind that would demolish the House of Race.
And it is brilliant as it is most effective right where the rubber meets the road. Where people convene to effect change, often enough, even in anti-racism activism, there will be non-White people who will assert racial privilege. Yes! Really! That is they expect to lead, and if you are White you are expected to endlessly defer. If you protest this racial subordination, you may hear the phrase "White saviorism." And if that doesn't sufficiently chasten these uppity Whites, one may very well hear "White supremacy."
It must be said that there are plenty of non-White activists who do not fit this description--all praises to them, but there are plenty who do. And, rest assured, the Bureau will see to it that there always will be such disorganizers whenever we unite to take political action. (The FBI never sleeps.) The political utility of the White saviorism canard should not be underestimated as it manifests and sunders precisely where unity is necessary.
Racism is binary. No single race can defeat it. If you don't understand that, then you understand nothing about race. The accusation of White saviorism is a brick in the wall which divides the races, it's effective class war.
2) The attack on color-blindness. The belief that racial entitlement isn't necessarily racism.
This argument is used to justify racial discrimination against White people. Anti-White and anti-Black racisms are impossible without color-sightedness. Color-blindness, by which is meant neutrality, is the ultimate goal, racebots of all races assure us, but racial equality under law denies the history of Black victimhood. In order to achieve color-blindness, we must first pass through a stage wherein the historical victims of racism benefit from the imposition of racially discriminatory practices against the historical beneficiaries. Laws guaranteeing racial equality, proportional racial representation in all walks of life are insufficient, just White supremacy in disguise so the theory goes, we must have more racial discrimination to achieve racial equality.
I must confess, that when these anti-White discriminatory policies were green-lighted by the Supreme Court I was pleased. I enthusiastically supported them. I didn't understand race and its political utility for the plutocracy, and just how inimical this ruling was to the effort to bring racism to an end, certainly to bring capitalism to an end. In my defense, I was then young, dumb, and afflicted with that Orwellian mental disorder known as liberalism.
Forsooth! Oh, the ignominy! I was indeed a racebot. There, I said it. I feel better. Catharsis.
In order to justify racial discrimination against innocent people one has to believe in collective guilt, in this case, collective racial guilt. In my view, this is racism in and of itself, moreover, one simply has to have the ethics of a child molester to endorse the systematic marginalization of innocents. And the Supreme Court just sanctioned it.
The SCOTUS decision reinforced racism in America, protected racepolitik by ruling that racial discrimination is justified under certain circumstances--that is to say it ruled against the idea that racism is never justifiable--and by designating a racial outlier eligible for that subordination. Let this not pass unappreciated: the court not only reintroduced racial discrimination as acceptable, legally protected practice, it validated race as a concept in law over which it had jurisdiction.
Racial prerogative--the sine qua non of racepolitik--and the government's right to purview and administer it, was re-affirmed. If the means by which the hegemony of capital is asserted in the US can be reduced to a word, to a single locus through which power is exerted and compliance compelled, it is race. And that is what was preserved. The raciocracy emerged intact, and with it racial prerogative as the organizing principle of American life. The family jewels were safe.
That's not the solution to racism, that is its re-homologation. As a result of public pressure. long-standing, racially discriminatory rulings had by then been struck down by the Supreme Court, but they were just pushed out the front door and pulled in the back door, and under the guise of anti-racism. Thus the precepts which justified Jim Crow survive to justify Jim Snow. Crucially, racially discriminatory practices were re-normalized.
The solution, I would argue the only solution, is to destroy those social systems which gave rise to and/or support racism, and to emplace safeguards against its revival. And that is precisely what did not happen. Racism wasn't defeated, it had won a critical victory. Racepolitik is the art of perpetual counterposition, of differentiation. It's a see-saw which places the races at opposite ends, the gains of one come at the expense of the other. Historically, the greater weight was placed on the Black side, lifting the White end. Now, in the name of correcting historical injustice, more social pressure is put on the White side. The real solution is to destroy the see-saw once and for all. Racism and the class which benefits from it will exist so long as the see-saw exists, they are coterminal. Race is how the ruling class rules. Racism, and certainly capitalism, will not end with the proper balancing of the see-saw, with the equilibrium of racial interests. It can only come to an end with the negation of racial interest. It ends when we all refuse to get on the see-saw.
The SCOTUS decision regarding racial quotas was a great victory for the plutocracy. In preserving racepolitik, it breathed new life into an old ruse and began a new chapter in the history of American racism. There were to be new rules in the race game, but the same old referees. The game itself emerged none the worse for wear and as effective a method of class warfare as ever it had been. Same puppets, same puppet masters pulling different strings.
As I wrote elsewhere:
"What if Black leaders had gotten together and denounced the court's ruling? What if they issued a statement like this:
"'We condemn all forms of racial discrimination. We have been the victims of this sort of racism and have no wish to be perpetrators. Not in our name. We demand proportional representation, nothing less, but nothing more. Long live racial equality.'
"That is anti-racism. That would have broken the back of prejudice against Blacks, and brought people closer together. That would have thrown a dagger in the heart of American racism and the global capitalist expropriation regime which depends upon it. That would have sent asphalt-breaking waves of panic from one end of Wall St. to the other. But, alas, the raciocracy had nothing to fear, critical race theory, Whiteness Studies, post-colonial studies, intersectionality and the like had performed the task for which they were contrived. Racism had prevailed in the ghetto just as it had everywhere else. The plutocracy had the minority communities right where they wanted them."
What an opportunity, what a shame. If you expect the victims of injustice to act in a more principled manner than their victimizers you are a damn fool.
3) The worst racist shibboleth of them all: the all-White jury. It doesn't get any more racist than this.
This is the quintessentially racist idea that White people are unjust. More specifically, that non-White defendants will not receive justice from White jurors, and because White people are either indifferent or antipathetic to non-Whites. In such cases where non-White accused were wrongly convicted by all-White juries the error is invariably attributed to the race of the jurors.
In my experience, this ugly, anti-White racist idea is never challenged. "Oooooooooooooooh, an all-White jury..." The question never posed is whether all-White jurors always convict non-White defendants. In fact, there are literally thousands of cases in Jim Crow America in which all-White juries acquitted non-White defendants. Yes, even deep in the heart of Dixie, White jurors acquitted Black defendants.
Brace yourselves, racebots, this one is going to be painful. Your deepest, most-cherished, anti-White racist convictions are about to be undermined: There are cases wherein Black defendants were accused of violent crimes against Whites, even cases (hold on tight) of Black men accused of raping White women, wherein all-White juries voted to acquit. White juries acquitting Black defendants, happened all the time.
An anecdote from the racedom. I watched a documentary about the Scottsboro Nine which aired on PBS sometime (I think) in the late 70s. By this point The Great White Benefactor and his White man's burden were long gone and the Bogeyman firmly in place. Nine young Blacks were accused of raping two White women and were found guilty by an all-White jury. The documentary pounded on the racial composition of the jury, mentioning it frequently. The documentary's lugubrious tone was one of White predation.
A retrial was granted, and in this case new forensic evidence dealing with the motility of spermatozoa was admitted and the nine acquitted. I could not help but notice that the documentary had de-humanized the original White jury, reduced them to one-dimensional racial caricatures, and the issue of jury composition went unmentioned once the nine were acquitted. An all-White jury had just concluded that two White women had lied in accusing nine Blacks of rape when presented with refuting evidence. That is not supposed to happen in the United States of Race. Clearly, in this case it was the motility evidence, absent from the first trial and introduced in the second, which determined their verdicts and that the racial composition of the jury was irrelevant.
Oops, did I say irrelevant? Of course, in Jim Snow America one is not allowed to conclude that race is ever irrelevant. Race mediates everything in the racedom. As was the case in Nazi Germany, the US is a race-based polity whose modus operandi, whose method of population control, is racepolitik. This is just one case, and I do not mean to suggest that racism never determined trial outcomes. I only wish to expose the racist mythos of the all-White jury trope.
I had just witnessed racist propaganda brought into my home by my national government's television channel. The documentary detailed a case which confuted its POV. The untroubled theme of the documentary was the inescapability and insuperability of White racism for Black people in that time and place. Yet nine Black defendants were acquitted of rape against White women by White jurors. Could they not see the incongruity?
And it goes without saying that in discourse on the all-White jury, the topic of the anti-White racism of non-White jurors and its effect on White defendants is never broached. Jim Snow won't tolerate such heresy. Only White people are racist.
Which brings us back to the subject of stupidity and its importance in propaganda. I will elaborate in a future part, but with this documentary one is left to wonder why they hadn't chosen a case which supported the racist, all-White jury canard given that it was a major theme. I believe the producers were well aware of the incongruity. It was purposeful.
A more recent anecdote from the racedom. I am a basketball fan, and I often watch ESPN's NBA Today show. After a trial in which a White supremacist male was acquitted (or received a light sentence), the show removed the sole White panelist from the set and the Black host, Malika Andrews, asked her Black companions how they felt about "the majority-White jury's" decision.
Jim Snow racism writ large: a majority-White jury! In the US, unanimity is required for conviction. In other words, the Black jurors came to the same conclusion as did the White ones. Apparently those White jurors were just exuding Whiteness through their pores which infected and corrupted the minds of the Black jurors and caused them to vote the wrong way! I mean, what other explanation could there be?
And, of course, there was no truck with the notion that the jury may have given the case honest, careful attention and rendered an unbiased decision. That possibility didn't even get mentioned! After all, it was a majority-White jury, what can one reasonably expect?
Now that juries are no longer exclusively White, the all-White jury trope has been revised to majority-White. Which, again, brings us to the political utility of stupidity. The majority-White shibboleth is farcical on its face in a criminal justice system which requires unanimity. Yet Malika and co. treated it as though it was a valid consideration when anybody with two or more contiguous brain cells can see its absurdity. The fact that one must be vapid to entertain such notions adds to their value as propaganda. (How could that be, you ask? More to come in a future part.)
And to state the obvious: that the one White voice on the panel had to be silenced in a discussion of racism is racism of the ugliest sort. The inescapable underlying theoretical premise is beyond foul. There can be no greater affirmation of racism than this, no greater assertion of racial superiority and privilege. It just doesn't get any worse than that. And that two media giants such as ESPN and Netflix engage in such obscene acts of racial denigration speaks to the depth and ubiquity of the problem. "Anti-racism," in the age of Jim Snow, means contempt for White people.
My generation, we who came of age in the 60s, were determined to purge the US and the world of racism, and we failed spectacularly.
4) Saving the most important for last: Racism = prejudice + power. Or, I cant be a racist because I'm Black and I don't have the political power. This is your members-only, racebot, get-out-of-jail-free card, no terms or conditions apply.
This is the official Wall Street soundbite definition. Here the political application of the thing is redefined as the thing in itself, without, of course, the need for justification. The value of this imbecility to the ruling class is obvious--immunity. This racebot shibboleth allows you to be a racism creation machine and yet claim not to be a racist. It's not your fault. It can never be your fault. Racism is unique to White people.
I have heard Black people say that long ago there was an evil Black man who hated humanity so he invented human-like demons to torment humanity. This, according to the theory, is the origin of White people. Another theory is that Adam and Eve were Black, and that their excrement mixed with vegetable and animal remains and that is the origin of White people. These beliefs do not constitute racism under the R=P+P theory. These ideas are not common among Blacks, but a view that Blacks are superior intellectually and/or ethically to Whites is. It is, in fact, widespread, even among Black antira activists.
I confess I enjoy moments when racist ideas are expressed in my presence as they are so easy to combat. You really do have to be an idiot to be a racist in 2026, but, sadly, each generation produces these in abundance, there's always a glut. And nobody likes having their favorite soapbox kicked out from under them, and that seems to be my especial skill. I've made myself quite unpopular doing so, but anti-racism is too important to be sacrificed to cordiality.
My father dropped out of school on his 16th birthday and entered the work force. Child labor laws in our state prohibited the employment in factories of people younger than that, otherwise he would have dropped out earlier. My White father had no political power, in fact his labor would be exploited for the remainder of his life here in the alleged White utopia. He was victimized by the system, not empowered by it. He exerted no power, power was imposed upon him for every single second of his life. He never knew a moment of real freedom, when he wasn't a means of wealth creation for the bourgeoisie. It was his belief that Black people were inferior to Whites, and he held it throughout his life, despite my efforts to dissuade him.
If I say my father was a racist--and he was--it would not be challenged. If my father were Black, and believed in Black superiority, then it would be. If you have a brain, nothing more need be said. If you don't, nothing more can be said.
If you believe in the superiority of a race(s), you are a racist. If you harbor hostility for a person because s/he belongs to a particular race, you are a racist. America is full of Black racists, and denying it exacerbates racism where it already exists and breeds it where it doesn't. For the plutocracy, Black America isn't just a source of cheaper labor (in fact, it isn't anymore), it serves as a check on the larger White working class. Just about every large American city has a ghetto in it, and they are filled with Black people with a deep-seated hostility to White people. Obviously, this is a major impediment to the interracial working class solidarity necessary to defeat racism.
That there are many Blacks who don't meet this description, and that those who do have been given good reason to feel as they do, does nothing to diminish the enormous political advantage this reality affords the ruling class. White racism cannot exist without Black racism and vice versa, they are a matching set. Black racism is real, and a real problem. Racism is racial estrangement, mutual racial antagonism, and Black racism plays a crucial role in its maintenance. R=P+P is an attempt to disguise that fact.
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