The Fear of the White Psyche

I often wonder what the first White father must have been feeling when he told his child about the Black man, whatever it was that he said. Reading history, I have several gut feelings on this.

I know plenty of what the White male says today about the Black male, both publicly and privately. This is a highly nuanced situation today, and the White psyche in the U.S. has undergone a transformation of sorts, not only in the way it deals with its own racist conditioning, but with the way it projects its racist conditioning. This transformation is largely due to historical context, but a transformation is not a destination in this country, anymore than the Civil Rights legislation was a destination or the abolition of slavery was a destination.

The interim, that vast span of time in which the White male psyche and identity developed between the arrival of Europeans to the North American continent and the people we see today, is not what I'm as curious about. I've done much reading and thinking on that in terms of how I can reconcile a way to approach what is increasingly being understood as the new problem of the 21st century, the "color-blind" (contrasted with W.E.B. DuBois's color-line), and indeed, this is still a relevant concern to be addressed. Instead, I've lately been wondering and studying more on what preceded the arrival of these people and what must have taken place internally in a cultural and social sense to allow such a cycle to unfold in their institutions and in their hearts and minds.

Indeed, what was the first White parent thinking when they played their role with children, as Neil Postman put it, of "sending a message to a future we cannot forsee"?

Suffice to say that I'll never truly know, but given what I do know about both living and being seen as White in North American culture, internalizing that life to now, and having read and analyzed history, I have an idea.

It has to do with a message (internal and external) of fear.

I don't imagine it's too far away from something once suggested by James Baldwin. Contrary to the popular narrative we like to remind ourselves of several days every year (both directly and indirectly), the first White people in America were not freedom seeking individuals. For that matter, they were scarcely "White people" at all. They were bands of unhappy people of Europe. They were not the winners of Europe, they were the disenfranchised. They sought prosperity, for one. And in their eyes, due to myths of God-sponsored Manifest Destiny, they had open arms awaiting them. Of course, for every prize, their is a price. There is a toll, physical, mental, or monetary (or all) to be paid. Europeans, by and large in an attempt to escape the wretched existence they feared in Europe, came to the shores of America, but with a sacrifice to make - an internal one that to this day is still being brought to account.

It is often said that the three original sins of this continent were that the land was stolen from the red man, worked by the black slave, and the white man had to become racist to feel okay about it. This term, "become" racist, is key, because this cultural-systemic initiation started a phenomenon deeply embedded in our country today. Indeed, in the Europeans escape from supposed misery, he put himself in a more miserable spot upon arriving.

He gained a psychological wage, in addition to the monetary wage he would garnish on the backs of those he would oppress or gain from. He would gain a social and cultural notion, albeit false, that he was above all else, no matter how poor his situation. He was poor, he was unheard, he was cast off to the side all of which if he were poor, but he could take some comfort in knowing he was not Black. As time went on, this psyche had to evolve as did the notion of Whiteness and race.

The White man developed, from his unchecked and unfaced fear from that continent his ancestors suffered in so many years ago, a false sense of superiority and power. His false power, however, was and is only that - false. He is slave to an urge he does not quite comprehend and can only feel driven by in a small way. He is constantly at war with himself because of this. The reactions to this struggle, this unmentioned turmoil, are as many as there are White people, to be sure. But more often than not, the turmoil has been time and again evaded, circumvented without courage and projected through aggression onto those more and more suspecting people he deemed and deems "non-White".

This turmoil exists in the mind of every White male, no matter how "conservative" or "liberal". This sentiment of directionless terror and confusion, stemming from centuries of hardening and crystallizing, is becoming harder and harder for many to ignore inside of themselves. The crystallization process may be halted and broken down to reshape a new identity in order for any White person to have the hope to regain what a corrupt system stole from them long ago and supports the theft of to this day - their humanity.

Whether Baldwin's statement that "This world is white no longer, and will never be white again" is becoming more or less true is something to be seen with time. But I can say this: White people cannot escape the misery of their past, the confusion of the present, and any hope of self-redemption in the future by evasion, furthering the fear they live with, and a lack of self-love and understanding. White people, in short, need to learn how to implement tough-love within themselves. Loving oneself and loving others is a difficult task, because one has to face and eventually let go of fear of hurt, fear of pain.

Non-white peoples lives as a legacy have been defined by a sort of existential and disenfranchised pain of identity unknown by White people in this particular context. This is the idea to begin with for White people, the idea to be internalized, but White people must be willing to confront the troubles that lie deep within themselves.

Indeed, the path White people choose is crucial and must be aimed at a humanistic goal: to work to arrive at the breaking down of this identity that is constantly being maintained by a structure of power, not only culturally and economically, but psychologically. The pain involved in the White mind of knowing one is both a beneficiary of the contract without having been a signatory is the key to beginning to take responsibility and starting the deconstruction. This internal struggle (no matter how long it may take, perhaps a life-time) is what appears to be the complementary process of the non-White struggle for self-empowerment and self-love in this place everyone is in now. Tim Wise, Robert Jensen, Peggy McIntosh...these people have identified the core of their fear. I just hope that other White people have the courage to do so.