Film Sessions: Digging Up Roots on Media Madness
Digging Up Roots
Hey folks; remember me? As you may have already heard, I’ve been caught up in a remarkably frustrating month, or three, of feeling like an observer trapped outside my own ongoing experience. Frankly that hasn’t been a whole lot of fun, and as such I haven’t been a whole lot of fun to be around. Obviously, I’m back now, but I’d be lying if I told you that this tumultuous period hasn’t had a profoundly disruptive effect on my work.
I mention this because right before a poorly timed Twitter ban largely separated me from my social support network, I published what I consider a very important essay on Can’t You Read entitled “On Whiteness, Identity Politics and the Pig Empire Left.” Although that essay focused primarily on the dangers of ignoring white centrism when it emerges in left wing organizing, and why a reactionary brand of “anti-identity politics” isn’t going to build the broad coalition socialists need to succeed against the capitalist machine, it was never meant to be my final word on the subject of whiteness. While the term itself may elicit some nervous giggles, the simple truth is that for a white person, understanding the mental state of “whiteness” is a foundational precursor for discovering a wholly racialized world, necessary for the continued function of primitive capitalist accumulation; a world that has previously been hidden from them by an insidious type of normalized social propaganda about, well, class, capitalism, and racism in the Pig Empire.
Of course I’m more than aware that this might be an uncomfortable subject for certain portions of the reading public; I myself have spent half a lifetime avoiding awkward conversations about race, racialization, and what W.E.B. Du Bois called the “psychological wages” of white skin privilege. Eventually however, as I grew a little older and perhaps a little wiser, I discovered that walling oneself off from uncomfortable discussions about white supremacy was not only an act of selfish, gutless cowardice; but it is also utterly self-defeating for anyone who wants to call themselves a leftist.
In light of the intrinsic and inseparable class relationships between capitalism and racism, racialization and exploitation, or privilege and power; there is no such thing as a leftism that doesn’t identify and oppose the settler colonial mindset. To talk about race, is to talk about power dynamics, social hierarchies, and the “divide and exploit” strategy that underpins the entire capitalist project; and vice versa. This is, to put it bluntly, very serious business for any Pig Empire anti-capitalist.
Given the importance of this discussion then, I’d like to return to the topic of whiteness by examining a twenty-seven minute video essay called “Whiteness: WTF? White Privilege and the Invisible Race” by Tom Nicholas; the creator of a series we’ve featured a few times here on Film Sessions, which is titled “What the Theory.” Whereas my original essay was explicitly focused on how centering whiteness endangers left wing organizational efforts, in this video Tom offers a more academic study of whiteness itself; what is it, where did it come from, and how do we combat the ideologic framework it inspires in our society?
As always, ridiculously high production values and exceptional organization remain a hallmark of the What the Theory series; and this episode is no different. Dividing his discussion into easily-digestible packets, Tom explores key background issues like the invention of race as a sociological concept essential to colonial capitalism, why whiteness and the racialization of Pig Empire societies remain largely invisible to many white people, what we actually mean by the phrase “white privilege,” and how latent white supremacy shapes our society in ways that are overtly hostile towards nonwhites, but remain studiously ignored by white folks themselves. Drawing on important scholars in the broader field of critical race theory, including Charles W. Mills, Peggy McIntosh, Sara Ahmed, and W.E.B. Du Bois, Nicholas ultimately identifies recognizing whiteness as a vital first step in the praxis of dismantling white supremacy; which in turn, makes it a vital first step in the praxis of dismantling capitalism.
Overall I think “Whiteness: WTF? White Privilege and the Invisible Race” is an excellent video, but if I were forced to offer a couple of criticisms, I’d probably start by saying I wished Nicholas had been more explicit about the triangular relationship between genocidal colonialism, white supremacy, and capitalism even as we understand it today. Additionally, I found the (brief) inclusion of Robin DiAngelo as an authoritative source a little off-putting, given the extremely well documented problems with her bestselling book “White Fragility: Why it’s so Hard for White People to Talk About Race.” While the context in which Tom quotes DiAngelo in this video is entirely appropriate, I’d hate to give folks the impression that a corporatized anti-racism training program disguised as a book, represented any sort of reasonable answer to the ongoing problems of whiteness, white supremacy, and white-centric thought.
Despite these hiccups however, this video offers an excellent primer on both whiteness as a concept, and its relation to white supremacy – you can check it out by clicking the header, or watching the embedded video itself, below:
Whiteness: WTF? White Privilege and the Invisible Race
Additional Resources
Tom Nicholas’s YouTube Channel
On Whiteness, Identity Politics & the Pig Empire Left
The “Identity Politics” Debate Is Splintering the Left.
What do systemic racism, microaggression & white fragility mean?
How Capitalism and Racism Support Each Other
Why Liberals Separate Race from Class
The Capitalist Foundations of Racialization
What Does It Mean To Decolonize Your Mind?
Why Anti-Racism Must be Anti-Capitalist
Capitalism Always Produces Racism
The Pervasive Power of the Settler Mindset
The Racist Culture of Capitalism
White identity in America is ideology, not biology
Europeans invented the concept of race as we know it
We can’t talk about racism without understanding whiteness
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
Bonus Content
Originally after seeing it, my intention was to offer my thanks to “Emerican Johnson” by writing a full breakdown of “Why the Left is Always Right: Systemic Analysis” but the honest to god truth is that I don’t really have a whole lot to add here. Johnson’s theory that left wing analysts can seem to predict the future because they engage in systemic (often, but not always, Marxist) analysis is pretty much on point and warrants little elaboration.
Why the Left is Always Right: Systemic Analysis
nina illingworth
