The Unstoppable Whiteness of Being

I am back after a long absence of writing on this blog. I was busy with life (as if being busy is a reason not to write) and in general was so overwhelmed with black bodies being on display brutalized everywhere I turned in the media, that honestly, all I could muster was my twitter feed (@bflood28) most days. One hundred and forty characters was all I could muster most days to express my rage, sadness, disbelief and at the same time, eye rolling at whiteness working in its usual way in America. In homage to famed Ferguson activist, brother @Deray (Deray McKesson) whom I first saw use the phrase, I started hash tagging instances of systemic white supremacy in action as  (Watch Whiteness Work). There was something immediate and freeing with getting my thoughts out in such a succinct manner. However today fam, I need to write it out. Several incidents recently have made me reflect on what I call “the Unstoppable Whiteness of Being.” How whiteness can and will do anything any any time, destroy itself and everyone in its path freely. Here are the latest examples of whitness working.

Steven Paddock, the Vegas shooter, as he is being called is a prime example. Here we have a wealthy (by all accounts) white man who moves freely back and forth in and out of his hotel for days, carrying bags of fully automatic weapons and basically stockpiling them in a hotel room. He was never stopped. No one asked him what he was doing with all of these weapons or multiple bags. The unstoppable whiteness of being allowed him the privilege of one, acquiring these guns, and two, carrying them up to the thirty second flooor of a luxury hotel for days. A black person would not have been able to cross the threshold of the resort without being accosted, accused, and most likely murdered on the spot. If this seems like hyperbole check out another black man who was gunned down by police in an open carry state ( John Crawford ). What this says to me is how dangerous white privilege is because in the end it killed indiscriminately that day. He shot, black, white and brown people. So in the end white privilege does indeed kill us all.

Cam Newton is no hero of mine. His constant efforts to undermine Black activists and propensity to be way to eager to play sambo for white audiences on the field leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. So when he recently got into trouble for his recent sexist comments, I was not shocked that he would hold those ideas. I completely reject them as ludicrous and inappropriate, however how race is playing out here is of note. The reporter (Jourdan Rodrigue) who circled the white feminist wagons to drag Cam Newton all over social media, has been exposed (thank you for always having the receipts internet) for her racist tweets. She routinely uses the N word and has racial slurs for other races all up and down her timeline. She has issued an apology for the slurs, but this part of the story is barely being covered in the media, her whiteness acts as a shield to hide the truth from getting out. The story is “Sexcist Cam Newton insults female reporter” not “Racist White Female Reporter meets Sexist Pro football player”.Both of them are garbage people and need to be cancelled, but her whiteness protects her from any kind of fallout in the media. Cam Newton has lost sponsorship deals already from this error. What is this reporter losing for her racism? Nothing. She has not been fired as of my writing this today. Racism is just fine in America as long as your unstoppable whitness of being is intact. Here we have an example of what is so often wrong with white feminism and why womanism is the true goal. Rodrigue even had white feminists defending her after she was called out for her racist tendencies claiming that ‘race was not the story’. As if there is some kind of Olympics of oppression and sexism trumps race. They are both trash behaviors and they both need to be cancelled. However as usual, only Cam is feeling the burn.

Until we really start breaking down the systems of white supremacy in all things, this will continue to happen. Mass shootings will occur over and over again, because the news media refuses to even refer to Paddock as a domestic terrorist simply because he is not brown. Rodrigue not being publically shamed for her racist tweets is poroblematic and only continues the cycle of racism and micro aggressions/bullying online. We must do more to call out and stop white supremacy in all things.