White Blood

The now disgraced Louis CK once said, “if you’re white and you don’t admit that’s great, you’re an asshole”. His disgrace only furthers his point. He abused his position of power by masturbating in front of women that looked up to him. The mental gymnastics of white psychology is comical and grotesque. We are simultaneously almighty and impotent. We rejoice at SpaceX’s docking with NASA’s International Space Station and dispair at the needless death of George Floyd.

The sight of White blood is the truest thing that’s happening in the world at the moment. The sight of Black blood, Indian blood, Chinese blood, Middle Eastern blood and Native American blood is lost, or even worse, reinterpreted in the edits of history. It is fundamentally against the laws of physics for an undeveloped European society to go from feudalism to space flight within a mere handful of centuries without looting, bloodshed and enslavement on an Imperial scale. Modernity was stolen from behind the smashed windows of civilisations older and more respected than its own.

I am blogging from behind the intact glass of my apartment. Is that because I didn’t take part in the theft and brutalities of my ancestors? No it’s not. It’s simply sheer, cold accident that my white life is great. Just in the same way that it was bleak, frigid chance that fell upon the individual lives of Kenyan, Lakota, Mayan, Bengali, Han and Maori. They did not choose their fate and I did not choose my debt. Such is life. But indebted I am. I no more want my blood to be drawn from black hands than non Europeans wanted to give their lives and land in the construction of the great project of modernity.

Of all the philosophies, civil rights, hashtags, support groups, movements, liberal political policies, charities and protests, the truest expression of them all is White blood. Modernity came at a price: for hundreds of years, we’ve been either trying to forget that or claim that the price is less than it is. We faulter at the simple requirements of wealth equality and social distancing, let alone the necessity for sustainable carbon-free energy. Why is it so difficult? We’ve talked about this so much yet all our attempts at insight fall short. White blood as a formal policy is certainly not the answer, but as a direct view onto the sobering reality of our predicament it is unambiguous. Modernity’s foundations, by its own legal and ethical standards are illegal and unethical. Modernity’s foundations, by its own legal and ethical standards, are illegal and unethical. Modernity’s foundations, by its own legal and ethical standards, are illegal and unethical. The ends do not justify the means.

Despite this, I choose not to redistribute my own significant wealth. Nor exchange my British passport in protest. Rather I masturbate these words in front of you as some sort of twisted tenuous attempt at self fulfillment.