1. A thread of the idea of being “white.” To me it has always struck me as an odd concept. I grew up in a Dutch immigrant community which straddles the Canada and US border. We were divided by language and religion from the rest of society. We maintain a fairly strong identity.
2. I am a believer in the notion that a people has a “spiritual” connection that manifests itself in many ways, including genetics. This is why for immigrants-you see it in the children of missionaries as well-that immigration creates a kind of spiritual wound.
3. For some, they maintain their ethnic identity, they are still very much part of the ethnic community, but also feel very much at home in the adopted country. People like me, on the other hand, even though born in the adopted country, always feel spiritually more at peace…
4. …at home in the old country. It just feels right. The people look the way they should. They sound the way they should and they behave the way people should. The land looks right. Don’t get me wrong. I love Canada and it’s wilderness, the cold of winter…
5. …but the Netherlands is still spiritually “home.” My skin is light. I had blonde hair (it’s now gray). By all measures I would be classified as “white.” But I don’t think of myself as white. I am a Dutch-Canadian.
6. I remember my first real encounter with being made to feel on the other side of a racial divide. When I moved to Grand Rapids MI, I asked where the nearest grocery store was. I was told it was on 28th. Instead of turning east, I went west and ended up in a black neighborhood.
7. This being a first for me, it took some time to figure out I was the only one who looked like me in the store. Let’s just say that the looks I got we’re not friendly or welcoming. That was my baptism into racial politics.
8. After years of personal reflection on this issue, I would argue that “white” is a political concept and is utterly useless when it comes to talking about ethnicity and race. It really only gains meaning under a certain philosophy of immigration, the “melting pot.”
9. The idea of the melting pot is that a person would come to America (or Canada, or even Britain) and give up their previous identity and intermarry and become an “American.” Many did do this. They came, they intermarried, abandoned their old identity and became “American.”
10. As imperial America took shape following reconstruction and into the 20th century as immigration increased, especially immigration from non-British countries/cultures, there was a borrowing of a quasi-religious and imperial idea. America was an idea.
11. It is not a unique phenomenon in empires. The empire transcends local identity and binds everyone together into a cohesive cultural whole. You were Roman or British. To the degree that you take on the culture of the imperium, you would be considered a “Roman.”
12. Christianity has this idea at work more powerfully. When one embraces Christ, one’s previous identity is superseded by who one is “in Christ.” Christianity is very intentional about creating a single people out of the many nations all sharing their bond “in Christ.”
13. This is one reason why Christians are so threatening to the American imperium. It is more that merely an idea, it is a spiritual bond that transcends even one’s identity as a member of the imperium.
14. In theory, the imperial idea of America, the “melting pot” is that one would come to America and embrace American ideas of “freedom,” “self-reliance,” “individualism,” “democracy,” and the “American Dream.”
15. Your past identify might add a little colour and local interest within the imperium, but you expected to become an American. This identity, because it was an idea, it could be exported. Afghan tribesmen and Iraqis could loosely become Americans.
16. It was in theory a way to bind all of these disparate elements together and give them an identity. It might have been easier, had it been acknowledged that America was an empire not a country. It also begged the question as to those whose ancestors pre-date the union?
17. For those who thought of themselves as Virginians, for example, did they become something else in the forming of the union? 400 years in a place is enough to be properly considered an ethnic American. Are they more American? Would one born in Rome be more Roman?
18. The key to understanding this is to see this “America as an idea” and the “melting pot” as “imperial” ideas. They served the aspirations of the imperium. We might talk about the “melting pot” period of imperial ideology. These ideas serve the interests of the imperium.
19. They might benefit the people, but as imperial ideas, they served the needs of Imperial America. Did these ideas serve the needs of the people? It is clear now, that the imperial idea is now shifting away from “melting pot” to “intersectionality.”
20. The ascendent power within the imperium has built a power base on segmenting out different “marginalized” groups along the lines of skin colour, gender, and sexuality. Ethnic identity is not an thing. Those of European descent who gave up their identity to embrace the…
21. …imperial identity are now just lumped into a catch-all phrase “white.” This is nothing. It is an abstract concept without any culture, place or real identity. It is a pure political construct. You cannot talk of ethnic Americans, because that raises a lot…
22. …of uncomfortable questions. Can those of African descent be considered “ethnic Americans?” What is an American? Is the idea simply a tool of the Imperium or can it have a meaning separate from the imperium? If so how?
23. Here is the thing, if America is an idea, whatever it is, it’s meaning derives it’s content from imperial culture, and that is globalist and intersectional. That is the imperial culture, the ideas that drive the American imperium.
24. This is what many Americans have yet to figure out about the culture war. “America” is an imperial concept. The imperium has changed and thus the meaning of “America” has changed. If you fight for “America” you are fighting for the aspirations of the imperium.
25. That means if you are fighting for America you are fighting for its globalist and intersectional aspirations. The term “white” is an imperial term used by the imperium extend and wield imperial power.
26. First you gave up your identity either as an immigrant or as an ethnic American to become part of the melting pot. But then that never really happened. Some intermarriage happened, but black, white, yellow, red, brown, did not really melt together into a “new thing.”
27. But this term “white” and it adjunct “whiteness” does not serve the interests of the people it describes. It serves the imperium and the intersectionalists who drive the imperium today. They try to define its “negative” characteristics. It is largely pejorative.
28. It is really effective because those who are it’s target feel like the “true Americans” many of whom have roots in place and culture going back to the 1600’s. So they bang the drums that they are the real America. But America was always an “imperial” thing.
29. So they are on the outs from the imperium. In the “melting pot” period of the American imperium it was considered bad form to talk about ethnic Americans because it was exclusionary. And while the imperium was ascendant this was fine.
30. But now, with the recent shift in imperial culture, and weaponization of the term “white” by the imperium, it leaves a whole swath of people feeling like they no longer have a home. But they have also had their identity stolen from them.
31. Having mostly embraced the melting pot, and now that idea being taken from them, they are now nothing more than “white.” It is an empty vessel that can be filled with negative propaganda. And so it is.
32. Here is the thing. If you embrace the idea of “white” and “whiteness” you are in fact embracing the imperium’s categories and designations for you. You are fighting a battle on their terms. You are “white” because the imperium tells you that you are.
33. A person who embraces the idea that they are “white” has already lost. You have allowed yourself to be slotted into the category that the Imperial America has told you that you are. You can’t go back to being the “American” that you used to be in the pervious imperial era.
34. Because “America” is a thing of the imperium, what the “true America” is, is whatever imperial propaganda wants it to be. That is the true America. That America has the full force of the imperial intellectual and media apparatus behind it.
35. So if you can’t be “white” because that category serves the power interests of the imperium, and the idea of what it means to be an American (ie the imperial ideology) has shifted such that what you thought was an American is no long what it means to be an American, now what?
36. This is what the culture war is about. They have truly stolen your identity, your culture. You were told you were one thing based on imperial propaganda and you got used to that thing. Now you are expected to be something else you don’t want to be.
37. You can’t Make America Great Again. That America no longer exists because the Imperium says it no longer exists. So who are you? What are you? Can you still be an American? What does that mean outside the “American” of the imperium?
37. Before any battle can be fought, you have to figure out what you are fighting for. Who am I? Who are my people? What binds us?
I can tell you this, as long as you use the term “white” and “American” you will be forever at a disadvantage fighting on the enemy’s terms.
I can tell you this, as long as you use the term “white” and “American” you will be forever at a disadvantage fighting on the enemy’s terms.
39. This is why “build something” and alternate communities are so important as a way to establish a unique and distinct identity separate from that of the imperium within its confines. This helps you to hold onto yourself in the face of its relentless propaganda.
40. I completely agree with this assessment. These migrations serve the power interests of the Imperium against a large segment of the citizens of the empire whom they view as a threat. The imperium gives them the banal designation: “whites.”
41. Here is an older piece of mine in which I identify five major categories that contribute to the formation of a people: ethnicity/race, language, place/geography, religion/ideas, and public rituals. apokekrummenain.substack.com
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