Race is the Opium of the American People

Karl Marx once wrote, “(religion) it is the opium of the people. While not trying to downplay the role of religion in the American experience I do think there is a slightly different opium currently in America and that is the ideology around race. Like religion, race is made by man, man is not made into separate races. Race is also used as a false consolation to make people happy with their place in the world by either telling them their superior due to being white or that they’re inferior due to being black or another non-white race. This has been the case for the majority of the existence of the United States as a country, and it still is very much today. Also, just like in Marx’s critique of religion the beginning of our attempt to overcome racism comes with the rejection of the ideology of race all together and to embrace a common love of all humanity.

The was race is used in society we are most familiar with is racism which historically usually puts the white race on top and all other races, especially blacks, on the bottom. This began early in the history of the US through chattel slavery and the displacement of the American Indians by the white settlers. This ideology of white supremacy was used to justify these atrocities. However, the ideology of racism was not what caused these atrocities, but rather an ideology that formed afterwards to justify it. As explained by Barbara and Karen Fields in their excellent book Racecraft, “Some people would have you think slavery was to reproduce white supremacy and not cotton.” This of course would continue long after the abolition of slavery to Jim Crow and would even last after that to the modern Black Lives Matter struggle against police brutality. However, I would also like to address how race ideology infects the liberal and left in our culture as well and why this is also counterproductive.

Most leftists and liberals rightly denounce racism and white supremacy, but it seems that many have taken an equally as wrong position on race, be it with better intentions. This is most notable by public anti-racist authors like Robin DiAngelo with her book White Fragility and Ibrahim X. Kendi with his books How to Be an Anti-Racist and the even more silly Anti-Racist Baby. In both cases they take an essentialist take on race which maintains the hegemonic ideology of race, but it asks white people to feel guilty about their whiteness and complicity in racism against black people. This form of self-flagellation has made them best sellers and made both DiAngelo and Kendi very wealthy. However, this is nothing more than opium for the liberal that feels white guilt. Maybe they’re not as devout a Christian as they once were, but they are devout to the Church of Anti-Racism.

Another high profile example is the 1619 Project by the New York Times which is led by Nikole Hannah Jones. The 1619 Project’s major claim is that the American Revolution was actually a counter-revolution to preserve the institution of slavery. This is of course a revisionist understanding of the American Revolution which in reality was one of the first strikes against the slave trade. Yes, many of our Founding Fathers were slave owners, but some including Thomas Paine and later Benjamin Franklin would become early abolitionists. Even Thomas Jefferson would make critiques of slavery as an institution even if he hypocritically did defend the institution until his death. Despite this and even despite the fact that the 1619 Project’s own fact checker had pointed out such factual inaccuracies it is being implemented into school curriculums to be taught around the country as fact. I will not go into too much more detail in this as the World Socialist Website has already done far superior critiques featuring top historians.

However, this entire ideology has essentially bred a secular Christianity which in replacement of origin sin is American slavery. This breeds white guilt and the discussion of white privilege. Every white person inherits this guilt and privilege which essentially makes them an oppressor and they must confess for their sins to be a good liberal accepted in our society. This then leads to the explanation of the majority of oppression and inequalities in society to be the case of white supremacy and racism which must be confronted with anti-racism. It is not that racism isn’t real. It very much is and I think we must stand against it to the fullest, but the racial ideology that currently dominates the mainstream oversimplifies complex problems to a singular problem, racism. Take police brutality for example which does disproportionately hurt black people. While it is true that police brutality disproportionately hurts black people, it is also true that police brutality is even more correlated to hurting lower income people. What we find is that in all regions in America it is usually the lower income people that are most likely to be the victims of police brutality. It’s just that in urban cities those are disproportionately black and in rural areas they are majority white. This doesn’t mean that racism isn’t a factor at all. In fact, I’d argue that the legacy of Jim Crow plays a role into why black people are disproportionately the inner city poor and makes them victims of police brutality. However, we cannot end our conversation here with calls for racial sensitivity training and whatnot. That won’t work as it is too complex for that. We must instead analyze all possible factors and come up with solutions to prevent police brutality against all people.

White privilege is all the rage in liberal circles. Most ridiculous someone wrote an article accusing Bernie Sanders of white privilege for wearing mittens at the inaugaration of Joe Biden. However, while one could maybe argue some truth for white privilege it is a political dead end. The idea is that no matter anything else in your life if you have white skin you possess some form of privilege over black or non-white people. This is not progressive, and it provides too much value to white skin. To say that white skin overrides or is even important enough that it would even provide a homeless person privilege over a middle class black person is absurd. If we want to defeat white supremacy we probably shouldn’t agree with their base claim in such high value to white skin alone. This also comes with the reality virtually every time white privilege is brought up people have a knee-jerk reaction to say that they are not actually privileged and they had a hard life. While in many cases it is very likely they are exaggerating how hard their life has been it is also unlikely you will convince them otherwise. That and it is possible they have had an extremely difficult life and it just seems utterly absurd to them to be told their skin color makes them privileged. It’s hard to feel privileged for many of the poorest whites in America.

This brings me to the final point I would like to make. We cannot continue to play with this racial ideology. It is opium regardless of our intent. Just like new age and tolerant religions are still false, so is the social construct of race. It hides our common humanity in favor for a racial collectiveness which only serves to divide us. I understand that many people want to build up a positive racial identity for black people and other non-whites, but the reality is that to do this it is impossible to think that white people won’t try to do so as well. Then when they are told that being white is actually bad and something they should feel guilty their reaction will almost always be to rebel to a reactionary form of racism to maintain their positive white identity. There is however an alternative and this may have been best displayed by the Black Panther Party with the Rainbow Coalition. They partnered with the Young Lords, Puerto Rican urban youth, and the Young Patriots, a white and southern group, based on the common interests of their community fighting against poverty and police brutality. Chairman Fred Hampton once said, “You cannot fight fire with fire, you fight fire with water. We cannot fight racism with racism. We fight racism with solidarity.” This is a much better outlook and one that can see genuine progress. This is what I am asking is for us to discard our racial opium and instead embrace humanity for the common good. Only then can we truly be free and find liberation.