Why We Need to Be Able to Talk About White Identity Without Being Called Racist
I'm going to say something that will probably annoy some people.
Good.
Not because I enjoy offending people.
Not because I think controversy is a substitute for an argument.
But because there are certain subjects we have become so frightened of discussing that we have stopped having conversations about them altogether.
Race is one of them.
More specifically, white identity.
Before anyone reaches for the metaphorical pitchfork, let me be clear about what I am not arguing.
I am not arguing for white supremacy.
I am not arguing that white people are superior to anyone else.
I am not arguing that anyone should be discriminated against because of their race.
And I am certainly not arguing that the slogan “White Power” should be normalised as an expression of racial pride.
The phrase “White Power” has a very specific historical and contemporary association with white-supremacist ideology, including the belief that white people should dominate other racial groups.
That isn't what I'm interested in defending.
What I am interested in discussing is something rather different.
Why is it sometimes considered perfectly acceptable to talk about Black identity, Black culture, Black pride and Black experiences, while any attempt by a white person to talk positively about their own racial or cultural identity can immediately become suspicious?
That is the conversation I want to have.
And perhaps, in a strange way, it is a conversation about equality.
The Problem With the Comparison
There is an obvious temptation to compare phrases.
Black Lives Matter.
White Power.
They both contain a racial identifier.
They both appear to make a statement about a racial group.
So why are they treated so differently?
The answer is that words do not exist in isolation.
History matters.
Context matters.
Purpose matters.
And meaning matters.
Black Lives Matter describes itself as a movement focused on Black liberation, racial justice, community investment and addressing systemic injustice affecting Black people.
“White Power”, by contrast, is documented as a slogan associated with white supremacist movements and beliefs in white dominance or racial superiority.
So no, I don't think the two phrases are simply interchangeable.
They aren't.
Pretending they are would be historically illiterate.
But that doesn't mean we should therefore conclude that white people are not allowed to discuss their identity.
And this is where I think the conversation gets interesting.
White Isn't the Same as White Supremacist
There is a tendency in some conversations about race to collapse two entirely different ideas.
White identity.
White supremacy.
They are not the same thing.
A white person can be proud of their family.
Their language.
Their history.
Their grandparents.
Their traditions.
Their music.
Their literature.
Their country.
Their culture.
Their experiences.
None of those things inherently require believing that somebody else is inferior.
Pride and superiority are not synonyms.
That distinction seems obvious when applied elsewhere.
You can be proud of being British without believing Britain is superior to every other country.
You can be proud of your Irish heritage without believing Irish people are superior to everyone else.
You can be proud of your Indian heritage without believing Indian culture is superior to every other culture.
So why should race automatically make the conversation different?
Perhaps the answer is history.
And I understand that.
History matters enormously.
White-majority societies have often used racial hierarchy to justify colonialism, slavery, segregation and discrimination.
Those realities should not be sanitised.
But acknowledging historical wrongdoing doesn't require a person to feel ashamed of their ancestry.
There is a difference between acknowledging history and inheriting guilt.
I didn't personally create the past.
Neither did you.
We inherit history.
We don't inherit moral responsibility for every action committed by everyone who looked vaguely like us.
Culture Isn't a Crime
This is where I think we've made the conversation unnecessarily complicated.
Culture is good.
Cultural identity is good.
Tradition can be good.
Heritage can be meaningful.
The desire to understand where you come from is profoundly human.
We all ask the same questions in different ways.
Where did my family come from?
What did my grandparents believe?
What traditions did they have?
What stories were passed down?
What did the world look like when they were young?
What have I inherited?
What have I lost?
What should I preserve?
What should I leave behind?
These aren't inherently racist questions.
They're human questions.
And I don't think we should discourage people from asking them simply because their ancestry happens to be European.
There is nothing inherently virtuous about being white.
But there is also nothing inherently shameful about being white.
The same principle should apply to everyone.
A person's racial identity should not automatically determine their moral character.
Black Identity and White Identity
Black Lives Matter exists within a particular historical and political context.
Its own organisation describes its mission in terms of Black liberation, racial justice and addressing systems it believes disproportionately harm Black communities.
I can understand why people find meaning in that.
I can understand why someone might want to celebrate Black history.
I can understand why someone might want to celebrate Black culture.
I can understand why someone might want to say:
My life matters.
My history matters.
My community matters.
My experience matters.
I don't think the answer to that is:
Well, white people should get the same thing.
Because equality isn't always about producing identical slogans.
It is about applying the same fundamental principle.
Your identity does not make you less human.
My identity does not make me more human.
Your history matters.
Mine does too.
Your ancestors don't make you inherently guilty.
Mine don't either.
That seems like a much healthier foundation.
The Fear of Saying the Wrong Thing
One of the stranger developments in modern conversations about race is the fear surrounding language.
People become terrified of saying something incorrectly.
They worry that discussing their own identity will be interpreted as racism.
They worry that expressing pride in their heritage will be interpreted as nationalism.
They worry that asking questions will be interpreted as hostility.
And eventually people stop talking.
That isn't progress.
A society in which people are too frightened to discuss race openly isn't necessarily a society that has solved racism.
It may simply be a society that has become better at avoiding the subject.
I'd rather have an uncomfortable conversation than a dishonest silence.
I'd rather someone ask a stupid question and be corrected than quietly hold a poisonous assumption because they were too afraid to ask.
Conversation requires room for mistakes.
It requires nuance.
It requires people to distinguish between ignorance and malice.
And perhaps most importantly, it requires us to judge ideas rather than simply judging the person expressing them.
The Problem With Shame
I think shame has a limited role in conversations about race.
Shame can occasionally make someone reconsider their behaviour.
But collective racial shame is a strange concept.
I don't believe I should be ashamed of my ancestry simply because other people who shared some of my ancestry committed terrible acts.
Nor do I believe someone else should be ashamed of theirs because of the actions of people who came before them.
We should understand history.
We should teach it.
We should remember it.
We should acknowledge injustice.
But remembrance is not the same as inherited guilt.
The sins of the father are not automatically the sins of the son.
Or daughter.
Or grandson.
Or granddaughter.
If we genuinely believe individuals should be judged by their actions rather than the colour of their skin, then we have to apply that principle consistently.
Otherwise we haven't escaped racial thinking.
We've merely changed its direction.
Can We Be Proud Without Being Superior?
This, I think, is the crucial question.
Can I say:
I love my culture.
Without saying:
My culture is better than yours.
Can I say:
I am proud of where my family came from.
Without saying:
You should be ashamed of where yours came from.
Can I celebrate my heritage?
Absolutely.
Can you celebrate yours?
Absolutely.
Can we disagree about history?
Of course.
Can we criticise aspects of our own cultures?
We should.
Can we admire another culture without feeling threatened by it?
I hope so.
The moment pride requires superiority, something has gone wrong.
Pride doesn't need an enemy.
That is perhaps the distinction that gets lost.
A healthy identity doesn't require somebody else to be beneath you.
The Shakespearean Question
Perhaps Shakespeare would have understood this better than we do.
He wrote of kings and fools, lovers and murderers, foreigners and natives, the powerful and the powerless.
Again and again, his characters wrestle with identity.
Who am I?
Where do I belong?
What does my name mean?
What do I owe to those who came before me?
And what do I owe to those who come after?
A man's ancestry may explain the soil from whence he came, but it doth not dictate the fruit he shall bear.
That is the principle I keep returning to.
We are shaped by history.
But we are not prisoners of it.
We inherit culture.
But we can change it.
We inherit traditions.
But we can question them.
We inherit names.
But we decide what those names mean through our own actions.
Equality Means Everyone
Perhaps the simplest argument is the least controversial one.
If we're serious about equality, then everyone gets to be human.
Everyone gets a history.
Everyone gets a culture.
Everyone gets the right to understand where they came from.
Everyone gets the right to celebrate harmless traditions.
Everyone gets the right to discuss their experiences.
Everyone gets the right to question ideas.
Everyone gets the right to criticise their own community.
Everyone gets the right to criticise somebody else's ideas without attacking their humanity.
But nobody gets a racial exemption from the principle that superiority is wrong.
That applies to white supremacy.
It applies to any ideology that ranks human beings according to race.
And it applies regardless of which group is doing the ranking.
I don't think that is controversial.
Or at least, I don't think it should be.
What I Actually Want
I don't want “White Power” to become normalised.
I want something much less dramatic.
I want white people to be able to talk about being white without immediately being assumed to be white supremacists.
I want people to be able to discuss European history without either romanticising it or apologising for every part of it.
I want people to be able to celebrate their heritage without needing to diminish someone else's.
I want us to be able to discuss race without turning every conversation into a moral trial.
I want Black people to be able to celebrate Black identity.
I want Asian people to be able to celebrate Asian identity.
I want Indigenous people to celebrate Indigenous identity.
And yes, I want white people to be able to understand and celebrate their own cultural histories too.
Not because one group deserves more.
Because everyone deserves the same basic dignity.
That, to me, is equality.
Not identical experiences.
Not identical histories.
Not identical cultures.
Equal humanity.
The Conversation We Actually Need
Perhaps we've become too obsessed with the question:
“Who is allowed to say what?”
And not obsessed enough with:
“What do they actually mean?”
A phrase can be hateful.
A phrase can be historical.
A phrase can be political.
A phrase can be cultural.
A phrase can be misunderstood.
And sometimes a phrase can be deliberately provocative.
That's why context matters.
That's why history matters.
That's why conversation matters.
So yes, this is deliberately controversial.
But my argument isn't that white supremacy should be normalised.
It shouldn't.
My argument is that white identity should not automatically be treated as white supremacy.
Those are two very different propositions.
One celebrates racial hierarchy.
The other simply allows a person to ask:
Who am I?
Where did I come from?
What shaped me?
What should I be proud of?
What should I question?
What should I preserve?
What should I change?
Those questions belong to all of us.
And perhaps the fairest society is not one in which we tell certain people they aren't allowed to ask them.
Perhaps it is one in which everybody is.
Because at the end of the day, beneath the labels, beneath the histories, beneath the arguments and beneath the endless noise of modern politics, there remains one rather inconvenient truth:
We are all human.
And if equality means anything at all, it must mean that truth applies to everyone.