Breaking out of the Whiteness trap

The Whiteness trap is my way of describing the contradictory catch-22 any White person who reckons with their relationship to racism will inevitably come up against:

(1) “Own your Whiteness. Own how it benefits you, how it protects you, how it places you in a position of unearned racial power and agency over others in society. Get to know your Whiteness thoroughly, that you may finally use the privilege it bestows on you to fight racism, rather than abet it as you have ignorantly been doing all along.”

(2) “Disown your Whiteness. Stop making such a big deal out of being White! Don’t go around reminding everyone of your racial privilege, lest it be understood that you secretly enjoy it. In fact … stop calling yourself White, dammit! The problem, after all, is not your skin but your mentality … that you think you’re White.”

White people reckoning with their relationship to race face both of these opposing pressures simultaneously, despite the reality that step 1 inexorably must come before step 2. After all, you cannot disown what you are not yet even conscious that you own. I always capitalize “White” where it refers to race precisely because I am opposed to this wishful premature disowning of the importance of Whiteness communicated through writing “White” in lowercase (particularly when “Black” is simultaneously capitalized).

Our vocabulary needs to expand so that we are not using one term to speak of different and contradictory things. Whiteness as a racial construct is after all a very legitimate target for eradication. But if Whiteness is irrevocably intrinsic to White people, then how do these White people cast off Whiteness without … erasing themselves in the process?

When I talk about race with peers who are beginning their race-consciousness journey, I often start with a key point of universal common ground: the importance of consent. I tell them, “when you are mad or distressed about people treating you a certain way because you’re White—you’re damn right to feel that way! You never consented to being raced White!” This is a truth, of course, that applies to everybody, of all race classifications. None of us asked to be boxed into this arbitrary bullshit. We have a collective interest in eradicating not just racism, but race itself. For real—what is racism but race-ism?

How, though, can we simultaneously hold both the undeniable reality of race / racism while also making clear our refusal to accept that reality? By making a distinction between identities we consent to and those we don’t, that’s how.

Here is how it works for me: I, Mitch Lewis, am “raced White.” I had and have no choice in this matter. My “White-racedness” has great meaning in society, which in turn gives me unearned privilege that many others don’t have. I don’t ever deny this.

But do I “identify as White?” Oh no. No way. I am indeed of European background—Ashkenazi Polish-Russian Jewish and French, to be precise. I identify as that. And I grew up in a proudly multicultural town near a major American city. I identify as being from there.

But in regards to “White,” I’ve made a pledge to myself recently: I will no longer refer to myself as a “White person.” This phrasing implies that I am comfortable with / consenting to Whiteness being attributed to me. I’m not. I didn’t consent to this and I still don’t. Instead, I now use the term “raced-White person” at every turn, to make clear my lack of consent to this categorization. With the words in that order, “raced White,” such that there is a clear understanding that this has been intentionally done to me rather than the more “natural” status implied by “White-raced.” And yes, “raced White” and “raced-White person” sound stilted and uncomfortable. As they should.

Now, is it possible for someone to accept and even identify proudly with something they didn’t consent to? Of course! Cisgender people everywhere do this all the time. Some folks also inhabit ethnicities that are the direct historical product of racialization (“Black” in North America and “Coloured” in South Africa being a couple of examples). But “White” has no ethnic meaning separate from its legacy as a colonialist marker of racial advantage, as much as some White nationalist programs at times would like to fool people into thinking otherwise.

This is how we who have been nonconsensually raced White may now cast off White identity, an identity that is not ours and never was. And mind you: Doing this will certainly not magically erase our race privilege, or make us free of racism. But it is, at least, a good first step toward claiming only what belongs to us, while just as importantly letting go of all that doesn’t.

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Small addendum, a few days later: I want to make some things very clear:

(1) Raced-White people cannot truly start casting off the White identity without simultaneously fully accepting and owning that we are indeed raced White in society. Denying this is embracing White-as-default racing as an invisibility shield for a superior status above those "other" raced peoples — which is the foundation of Whiteness in the first place.

(2) I cannot repudiate White identity for anyone but myself. That choice is up to each raced-White individual. Until large numbers of raced-White people themselves make the choice to actively break with White identity, it is still totally fair game to use the term "White people" to generally describe people who are raced White. Do not use this distinction as a smokescreen for woke brownie points around race languaging; speak for yourself and your own identity and experiences, as I have done here.