Hey Idiot White People! Eliminating Racism Helps You Too!

Don’t become an inadvertent accessory to white supremacy

“Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.” — Balzac

One of the things that I like about writing on Medium is that it affords me less time to get into asinine and inconsequential arguments with morons on Facebook. However, it takes only a brief perusal of social media sites to be inundated with ridiculous arguments and blatant propaganda which serves to underscore how steadfastly and willfully ignorant most people are on the topic of racism.

I’ve attempted to appeal to these people using nuanced, empathy based arguments with pitiful results. So now I’m going to try to make the message stick by appealing to selfishness. Here goes:

Hey idiots, if you work to eliminate racism it will make your life better too!

Do I have your attention yet?

Racism didn’t come out of nowhere. The current form of racism that exists in the United States has been carefully crafted to serve the needs of people in positions of political and socioeconomic power. Every time you write something dumb like, “well, I live in poverty too so I can’t have privilege,” you’re playing right into the hands of the people who want to hold you down.

How so?

I’ll summarize, but obviously it’s not the purpose of this article to give this topic the treatment it deserves. Instead, my objective is to focus on the one argument which I believe has the greatest chance of making an impact. Shortly after the Civil War, the precursors of the elite entitled rich jerks that run the country today, who never fail to give themselves two trillion dollar bail-outs at the first sight of a pandemic, noticed something that caused them concern. You see, we have a thing called voting in the US, and what the arrogant, rich, power mongers noticed was that poor white people were joining up with poor black people and winning elections.

This allowed these groups to have a seat at the table and their representatives were able to fight for social change that would make everyone’s life better. It really happened.

“We can’t have that!” screamed the rich, entitled bigots. Of course the period was rife with enduring and terrible social tension from the institution of slavery, so these elites had little trouble manipulating the narrative to serve their own ends. They used systemic racism to increase their own wealth, consolidate their position, and break up any chance of unity within the poverty class. Rich people have always known that if you blame poor people, minorities, and immigrants, then there is a much lower risk of the general population coming after them. That’s literally the blueprint to maintaining power throughout all of human history.

So, yeah, many fortunes that exist today were built on the hate rhetoric of the not so distant past. More equal distribution of wealth would solve a lot of the issues our society faces.

If you haven’t heard this argument before, I encourage you to look into it and educate yourself. If you have never heard of the Southern Strategy, read more about that here. How hard is it to believe that our entire power structure is designed to incite groups against each other so that those that have held generational power never feel any threat? That’s all people in positions of power ever think about, and the people who hold power come in all races, shapes, and sizes.

So while poor white people fight with poor black people in the streets, the entitled rich are pulling the strings and laughing all the way to the bank. We’re literally being a bunch of idiots doing exactly what our oppressors want us to do.

If you are a poor white individual mad about the fact that you feel you are also subject to deplorable socioeconomic conditions, you need to understand that anything you do to help out the African American community will also help you. An increase in wealth in any community helps everyone in that community and the individuals in adjacent communities.

It’s totally understandable that impoverished people are angry in the United States, but don’t let malicious forces harness your anger and reflect it back at you to your detriment. We’ve been told this is the land of opportunity, but every year a greater percentage of all the new wealth that is created goes to the ultra elite. It’s possible we’ve crossed a threshold already where it might be impossible to change the trend. One of the first things we need to do is purge all racist rhetoric from our minds.

If you really want to do something that might make life better for yourself and for your children, no matter what your gender, race, or religion, then cultivate a commitment to fighting racism. The groups that are most angry in our nation need to find unity with the forces they have been conditioned to fight against. Fight for equality for everyone, it’s the only way you can be assured that you and the people you love will be treated with anything approaching basic human dignity.

And for the record, racism is obviously far more complicated than what I’m getting into in this article. But think about what’s discussed here the next time you’re considering posting something stupid on social media. Ask yourself, “Who does it serve for me to maintain a commitment to this narrative?” If it DOESN’T make your life better, then why, why, why, why, why not change what you have been programmed to believe?

Don’t be a fool, racism exists to control you. We all need to work for equitable treatment of all people regardless of race.