A Love Letter to Whiteness

By Melissa Ferrer Civil

/ Nonfiction /

“We talk about the black problem. It might be interesting to see what would happen to the page if one decided to discuss the white problem.“

– James Baldwin in conversation with John Callaway on “Chicago Tonight,” 1985

Dear Whiteness,

This morning I was dancing with my white roommate in the kitchen. He was showing me one of his favorite songs. In it, the white men are screaming that the revolution has died. And I said something to the effect of “The revolution hasn’t died!”–a half-joke, in an effort to keep the air light. He jokes back, "Yes it has," and I replied “Maybe his revolution.” I laughed.

Whiteness, I have laughed with you more times than I care to count. In college, I used to say Black jokes in your name. Knowing your fragile demeanor couldn’t handle my Black body unless I quickly agreed with its worthlessness within your paradigm.

But that’s not how I saw it or said it back then. No. Back then, I wanted to find humor where there had been so much hurt. I wanted the white bodies before me to know it was safe to laugh and be with me. So I put myself asunder in the name of what I thought was good.

Whiteness, I thought you were good. Even when I entered spaces and felt validated only by the presence of white male friends by my side. I remember this feeling so well. The days when my body didn’t belong, unless I had visual evidence that I already had been accepted by other white bodies, my friends, my handlers. I felt held by your prickly hands, a form of propriety that demanded my smile in order for me to survive. Back then, I also had a love for activism but was filled with this inertia that would not allow me to participate in the ways I had seen my peers do so. I wasn’t angry enough.

More specifically, I had been taught to swallow my anger so that I wouldn’t scare your children away from me. So I could continue to be loved by my friends who thought they wanted me, when the best I could do at the time was give them my version of you. With my lazy intellectual prowess, my quick to coddle all white men nature, and my love of my tokenism.

I felt so special in your hands, Whiteness. Like I was the last or only of my kind, in a sea of white that would allow me to float, and was even quicker to drown me. And perhaps, Whiteness, perhaps I even called you Jesus. Though you would never really let me walk above your waters, would you?

I think that white people, or any people with Privilege, get to say (or joke) the revolution has died because, too often, they are not the ones who must live each day with the impact of their actions, their need for “innovation,” and their comfortable greed. They get to say the revolution is dead because they are not the ones who get the short end of their joystick.

Truthfully, the revolution is not for white people though it must include them, or else it would continue to feed into their sense of being outside the bounds of humanity. Both the collective sense of humanity and their own. They will continue to act in such a way that desecrates the sanctity of life while those who choose to exclude them will soon follow in their footsteps of insane (re: unhealthy) supremacy.

Under the American Umbrella, upon a claimed and possessed land, I have found that it is necessary to find a sense of love for myself, where I have come from, accept my past, and learn from its lessons. I must be able to listen and relate in a manner that reinvigorates and brings back into remembrance both in mind and deed, in heart and flesh, in spirit and truth, what a good community, what a good society, and what good relation looks like.

If we cannot remember that we come from somewhere under and possibly, even, beyond this American Umbrella and that there were those who originated on these now claimed and unceded lands, we run the risk of repeating the greatest symptoms and impacts that supremacy has inflicted upon our lives. This includes the false belief of ownership over ideas, objects, land, and, worst of all, each other.

In this way, we lose our footing in all that makes life good.

We end up pouring our energy into corporations and cruel taskmasters who do not care for us, the land, or its other inhabitants. Life then becomes, seemingly, a sucking void of empty, fallow ground that does not produce blossoms or fruit in the spring. Though this fruitless way of being continues to provide shiny new contraptions and “innovation,” we have become distracted from our true state of relation. Mental health cases continue to rise and people continue to falsely believe they are on their own and that their brother’s suffering plays no part in their life.

Because of your blinding nature, Whiteness, we lose sight that such ruthless and incessant pursuit of pleasure comes at high costs. For example, enslaved people working in the Congolese cobalt mines for the newest tech, or homelessness on any street in America due to mental illness and housing costs. This pursuit of money, material, and pleasure leads directly to other’s suffering. Such is the vicious cycle of capital-based societies that have forgotten the sacredness of true relation.

Under this American Umbrella which likes to consider itself a Christian nation, I must remind of what Jesus said: “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon.”

And in the insane pursuit of money and property (re: mammon) we have unleashed hatred upon all of life itself. Hence climate change, deforestation, prison systems, poverty, increasing illness, homelessness, children in cages, harming of the innocent, attacks, and murders are explained away in the news or blamed on specific classes of people rather than acknowledged as the symptoms of a senseless death-driven society. America can not be both a trading nation (as originally written) and a Christian nation. And by the fruit of all of her labors, one can see where she falls.

What does this have to do with you, Whiteness, and White Supremacy?

If we do not speak to the vacuum and nihilism that has taken over the white mind, we would not do justice to identifying the root of the problem in the current hegemonic class. I would be remiss not to mention that this same vacuum has existed in the minds of all societies that claimed ownership over others, that colonized and conquered all over the globe.

When a person is estranged from the context of their lives and their relation to one another and the land upon which they live, it creates an objectification of all of life itself. We objectify women, we objectify land, we objectify matriarchal societies, and we objectify people. In this way, our internal stores and compass become riddled with confusion that leads to worthlessness, mental illness, and death of one’s self or enacted upon others in the name of false progress.

New Tech will not make us better. Our pop stars and idols are not guiding lights. Truthfully what we have isn’t leading us to better relations with ourselves and with our neighbors. This path does not lead to better institutions or systems of caring for those in need. Or better ways of educating and caring for our children.

Instead, what we have binds us to supremacy, authoritarianism, capitalism, the patriarchy, and oppression. In much the same way we consume, we will be consumed. And such a consumption, such an illness, comes at the cost of our souls. This is what lives in you, Whiteness, where instead of divinity we find tombs.

This is not about a white body, do not get me wrong. Supremacy and capitalism do not need a white body to live in. It can and does live in all of us. And if we are not doing our due diligence to rectify it by making better choices about how we treat ourselves and each other–the end is nigh.

Whiteness, in your world that tells me tender is money, I must remember tenderness to myself and others as I relearn to value us. In your world that tells me a trust is a financial and property holding, I must remember what it means to hold myself and others. In your world that says equity is housing, I must remember the equitable nature of justice, where all needs are met, which makes any place I am a home.

Whiteness, things may be over between us. I may have to spend years getting you out of my system, but I just wanted to write this letter to you. A small admission that I have loved you, but now it is time to say goodbye.

Cue “Irreplaceable” by Beyonce

Respectfully, no longer yours,

Melissa Ferrer Civil