‘white fear’ so strong and thick you can cut it with a knife

“May we who op­pose this na­tion­al ma­lig­nan­cy, nev­er be­come so de­void of light­ness that we re­sem­ble those who cel­e­brate it.”
—John Pavlovitz, The Mis­er­able Peo­ple
 

Crack­er,
honky,
hill­bil­ly,
red­neck,
hick,
trail­er trash,
whitey,
good ol’ boy,
peck­er­wood,
bump­kin,
white trash …

These words have nev­er of­fend­ed me or made me feel in­fe­ri­or.

I be­lieve it is be­cause as I was grow­ing up, white peo­ple ruled every­thing.
 

 

I grew up with an aware­ness that oth­er races were dif­fer­ent,
not less than,
just dif­fer­ent.

I knew I would nev­er suf­fer the os­tra­ciz­ing that faced them every mo­ment.
Like us­ing the com­mu­ni­ty pool,
sep­a­rate drink­ing foun­tains,
be­cause they were dif­fer­ent.

Grow­ing up I used to stare at black peo­ple,
not be­cause I feared or dis­liked them but be­cause they were dif­fer­ent.

I nev­er felt that my black and Asian friends weren’t true friends,
they just weren’t white.
I loved them dear­ly, yet,
they were dif­fer­ent.

My un­con­scious ac­cep­tance of this stayed with me un­til the ear­ly 60s when I was liv­ing in Thai­land.

I was one of three male white teenagers in all of Chi­ang Mai. The Amer­i­can Con­sul there was a black man mar­ried to a white woman. I used to vis­it their home of­ten, his wife loved to play Har­ry Bele­fonte all the time, see­ing them to­geth­er was fas­ci­nat­ing. I knew oth­ers thought it wrong,
I was en­am­ored though
be­cause it was dif­fer­ent.
 

 

Then while in the ser­vice in the ear­ly 70s I found my­self with more close,
tru­ly close,
black friends than white friends.

There was some­thing new that was dif­fer­ent now,
it was me.

What I then be­gan to see in oth­ers was a real fear:
Fear of not con­trol­ing every­thing any­more.
Fear of los­ing their ‘white­ness’ to all the dif­fer­ent races catch­ing up.
Fear of not be­ing the rul­ing race.
That ‘white fear’ is so strong and thick now you can cut it with a knife.
 

 

That fear is tear­ing this na­tion apart.
That fear is a mat­ter of life and death to mil­lions.
That fear may well put us in an­oth­er civ­il war.
That fear how­ev­er, doesn’t pit black against white.

That fear places their white­ness against an en­tire plan­et of a mul­ti­tude of colours.

White pig­ment is the ab­sense of all colours.
White light is the pres­ence of all colours.

Pig­ment cov­ers over.

Light re­veals.

Pig­ment or light?

The choice is ours.
 

—Louis Warfield

Flom­mist Louis Warfield is a fab­ri­ca­tion spe­cial­ist who runs the award-win­ning Rhi­no De­sign Stu­dio, “You dream it, we’ll build it.” Copy­right © 2018 Louis Warfield.

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