By Teka Lark

People often say race is not real. It is a social construct.

This is true. Race isn’t real, but the damage of race is very real. If I have an imaginary friend that isn’t real and that imaginary friend tells me to kill you and you end up dead then that imaginary friend should be discussed.

You can’t support blackness if you protect your imaginary friend of whiteness.

You can’t support my existence, if I only exist in the imaginary binary of black and white, that was created by the rich to force the masses to fight one another.

The end of racism is not people of color (POC) shutting up about race. It is people designated as white rejecting the idea whiteness.

As a Black woman in the US I am going to continue to let you know that I’m here and to get the hell off me. I am not going to be polite about it, because regardless of if race is real to you or not. It is impacts are very real to me. The impacts are very real for white people too.

Racism and divisiveness will continue as long as white is the default top on this pile of shit which is the West.

Whiteness does not benefit anyone, but rich people.

If you are white and poor, it is the idea of whiteness that  is what is keeping you poor.

It is not immigrants with no papers. It is not Black people. It is not JUST classism.

Race is not a distraction. A distraction is a mosquito. Race is a weapon of oppression. Race is a weapon just like gender and class.

The rich lull poor white people into a false sense of security by letting the people they labeled “white people” think that they are all on the same team.

Rich white people and poor white people are clearly not on the same team.

If you are white, how is your job going? How much money do you have in the bank? How has whiteness been working for you lately?

White is what keeps white people thinking that one day they might get in the big house. That they should have faith in this system, because it is working. It is not working for anyone.  Your whiteness will not get in. White people are the overseers of the leaders of industry.

White people are the masses. White people own nothing. White people control nothing, just like the rest of us.

Poor white people need to get off the plantation.

People on the political left (and right) often discuss Black people mindlessly supporting the left, which in the US is the corporate Democratic Party (the answer to that is because right is bat shit crazy and the US has the choices of zero or one in regards to politics, but that’s another post,) well I have the same question to white people who say they are oppressed too.

Why do you support whiteness?

I’m not speaking of culture like Jewish, Irish or Igbo, I’m asking why do you support a political idea that was created to turn you into the henchmen of the bottom?

In the US whiteness came into existence in the 1600s when the rich people (the plantation owners, landowners, bankers etc…) noticed the poor Europeans and African people working together to bring about some kind of justice in the US. To stop that, they created white and gave white people a few crumbs, they made them overseers of the Africans and gave them some shacks in the back of the big house.

You don’t hear rich white people talking about whiteness. They talk about their culture. They talk about their family name, they talk about England and they talk about their culture. Rich don’t give a damn about whiteness, unless it has to do with a bunch of poor white people working for them to oppress darker immigrants, descendants of kidnapped Africans and descendants of Native Americans whose land was stolen.

I am reminded of Niemöller quote:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

If the rich goal is accomplished and we’re all slaves working completely for the sole purpose of not dying then what do you think is going to happen to “white” people.

The rich are not going to share with poor white people who have no lineage or name. If you’re a white person and you say, “I’m a mutt. I am poor too.” If you know this,  then you already know you’re not part of their family. You’re the paid help just like everyone else, but you just get to eat vanilla ice cream every day instead of just on Sundays.

Is a scoop of ice cream worth it, to remain a slave?

Your imaginary white friend likes vanilla ice cream, but I don’t think it is an efficient meal for your Italian grandmother and Irish aunt.