It's OK to be White and Black Lives Matter

Please stop confusing literal and cultural meaning.

Photo by Fabian Møller on Unsplash

Of course, this is inspired by Scott Adams’ response to the Rasmussen Report survey which found that 72% of white people and 53% of black people agreed with the statement “It’s OK to be white.” However, I don’t intend to address Adams’ response itself. If you don’t see why “[T]he best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people” is unambiguously and indefensibly racist, this essay is not for you. If needed, I will write a very accessible beginner’s guide to why evaluating people collectively by their skin colour and making negative generalisations about any of them is both erroneous and unethical.

What I want to look at is literal meaning and cultural meaning and how it is impossible to know which meaning responders to the question asked by the Rasmussen survey were agreeing with. The problem is that “It’s OK to be white” is both a literal statement and a slogan that people put on banners in order to make a political point. So too is “Black lives matter.”

This isn’t some obfuscating, nitpicking, pedantic point. It is about the reality that people often respond to the baggage around a statement rather than the statement itself. You will know this intuitively already, I’m sure. You too are very likely to naturally recognise different discourses and apply the associated connotations and general baggage to key phrases even if you conscientiously try not to make assumptions. If you look at people’s bios on social media and note that someone has ‘she/her’ in it while another person has ‘adult human female’ and you are at all familiar with the positions and arguments around gender identity, you are very likely to extract a lot of cultural meaning from these few words. You are likely to categorise the first person into a ‘trans ally/activist” group and the second into a “gender critical” group and attribute a number of foundational principles and positions to each of them. And you’d probably be right (assuming you are someone who keeps their deductions within reasonable bounds of probability).

The same is true of the statements “Black Lives Matter” and “It’s OK to be white” when used as slogans. If you saw someone had one of these in their biography and you knew of their significance within political political discourses, you would be likely to gain a lot of cultural meaning from this. You could assume, with a very high chance of being right, that the first person believed they lived in a society which does not value the lives of black people and that the lives of black people are in particular danger and that the second person believed they lived in a society that regards being white as intrinsically bad and demonises white people. You could agree with the first person’s worldview or the second person’s or disagree with both of them or even agree with both of them! And yet, read literally and without cultural baggage, nearly everybody is likely to agree that black lives matter and that it’s OK to be white. This is what makes interpreting the answers of people asked whether they agree or disagree with the statements particularly tricky because we cannot know if they are expressing agreement or disagreement with the literal statement or with the worldview they perceive to underlie it.

If I told you that several people of all races wrote into Counterweight saying “I don’t agree with Black Lives Matter” and asked you to guess what percentage of them literally meant that they did not agree that the lives of black people matter, what would you guess? What percentage of people expressing disagreement with Black Lives Matter do you think were of the opinion that, if someone is black, it does not matter if they live or die? If you are guessing 0%, you are correct.

In every single case, the individual was disagreeing with one or more aspect of the political movement that uses the slogan “Black Lives Matter.” For one of our firefighters, the biggest issue was the aim to defund the police and the fact that the fire service and police service need to work together to save the lives of people of all colours. Several people shared this concern and disagreed with defunding the police while not disagreeing at all that black lives matter. One of our black correspondents was facing disciplinary action for saying he did not support Black Lives Matter and for him, the primary concern was a statement that was on the website at that time claiming to wish to dismantle the nuclear family. Family was very important to him as a Muslim and so he did not feel that he could, in good conscience, support the Black Lives Matter movement. He completely agreed that black lives matter and it was, in fact, the lives of his family, who were black, that he considered himself to be defending. This was a primary concern to several people, particularly religious believers and non-religious social conservatives. Other people were concerned that two of the leaders of the movement had declared themselves to be ‘trained Marxists’ and one of our contacts wrote a tongue-in-cheek letter to his employer asking how the company was intending to pay him if it committed to dismantling capitalism.

You can see that, in all these cases, people were disagreeing with the cultural meaning of the slogan that they had gained from researching the movement, not the literal meaning contained in the words. Quite often, the objection was the implication that that they or society needed telling that the lives of black people mattered as though they did not already know this. That is, they were disagreeing with the implicit worldview that they, their company or their society was so racist that it needed the proposition that it matters whether black people live or die presented to them. This objection commonly produces the response “All lives matter” which means, in this case, “I know because I already recognise black people’s lives as equally valuable as white people’s.”  This frustrates BLM activists because they perceive it  to miss their point that it is black lives that are treated as though they don’t matter. In reality, the individual saying “All lives matter” may be missing the point the activist is trying to convey or they may be fully aware of it but just disagree with it either entirely or to the extent claimed by the activist. Either way, it’s unlikely that they disagree that black lives matter.

Had the Rasmussen survey asked “Do you agree or disagree with the statement “Black lives matter” (even though it is in lower case indicating a statement and not a movement) some people’s brains would go to the general political discourse around the slogan - the cultural baggage - and they might answer ‘disagree.’ However, they would be disagreeing with the cultural meaning they attach - defund the police/dismantle the nuclear family/dismantle capitalism/society is horrendously racist - rather than the literal meaning - the lives of black people matter. (Unless they actually are racially genocidal psychopaths, obviously, but these are rare). This could be avoided by rephrasing the question to avoid slogans that prompt people to agree or disagree with a particular political discourse with much cultural baggage instead of the literal meaning. e.g., “Do you agree or disagree that the lives of black people are of equal worth and merit equal protection and care as those of people of any other race?

Unfortunately, in its actual question “Do you agree or disagree with this statement: “It\s OK to be white?” the Rasmussen Survey used a slogan that invokes a political discourse with a lot of cultural baggage and connotations. Therefore, it is extremely likely that very many people who disagreed with the statement were disagreeing with a cultural meaning – a particular worldview, political group or position – and not with the literal meaning that there’s nothing intrinsically bad about having a lower level of melanin.

The first association that people are likely to make is with the imageboard 4chan and its 2017 trolling campaign to stir up hostility towards the left using the slogan. The ADL cites users explaining its purpose like this,

“The point of IOTBW,” explained one Twitter user, “is to bait shitlibs into showing their ass to normies.  The beauty is in the simplicity.”  One 4channer successfully promoted the idea of putting out the fliers on Halloween, especially on campuses.  Describing what would happen, he declared that “The next morning, the media goes completely berserk.”  People would realize “that leftists & journalists hate white people, so they turn on them.”  This would “nuke” their credibility and would be a “massive victory for the right in the culture war.”  In addition, it would cause “many more /ourguys/ [to be] spawned overnight.”

Many people could certainly disagree with this use of the slogan for race-baiting political purposes without disagreeing that it’s OK to be white. They could also have negative views of 4chan for a variety of other reasons. Although the forum is a mixed bag, some horrible things have come out of it including threats of violence and child pornography.

Then there are the groups, individuals and organisations that have supported the slogan which include Fox News, Lucian Wintrich, the Daily Stormer, David Duke, Milo Yiannopoulos, Lauren Southern and Pauline Hanson. It has also been used in (rather pathetic but still nasty) demonstrations advocating white identity politics and, at times, has been accompanied by swastikas and hashtagged alongside the most revolting of racist and antisemitic memes. Associations with the alt-right, far-right, white supremacists and antisemites or with more socially acceptable nationalistic conservatives or mere provocateurs is a hell of a lot of cultural baggage. This could cause people of all races and on the left and the right to say they disagree with the cultural meaning of the slogan without disagreeing with the literal meaning that there is something intrinsically unacceptable about having white skin. They associate the slogan with worldview, people or attitudes that they do not agree with.

Finally, and quite possibly most significantly, as with the ‘Black Lives Matter” slogan, people of all races could simply object to the implication that they need telling that it’s OK to be white as though they did not already know this. Again, many people could well disagree that we live in a society so racist that it is necessary to present people with the message that it is acceptable to exist while white. In the same way that people respond “All lives matter” to the slogan “Black Lives Matter,” one could respond “It’s OK to be any colour” to the slogan “It’s OK to be white”. This would then mean “I know because I have never regarded anybody’s skin colour as unacceptable.” This might not be missing the point the activist is trying to convey but simply disagreeing with their belief  that society finds white people unacceptable  either entirely or to the degree that they claim. Either way, it is very unlikely that many people genuinely disagree that it is OK to be white.

When the Rasmussen survey asked “Do you agree or disagree with this statement “It is OK to be white,” many people’s thoughts are likely to have gone to the general political discourse around the slogan - the cultural baggage - and answered ‘disagree.’ However, they are much more likely to be disagreeing with the cultural meaning they attach - race-baiting political trolling campaigns, 4chan more broadly, various elements on the right or the claim that society finds white people unacceptable - rather than the literal meaning – people having low levels of melanin present no kind of ethical problem. This could be avoided by rephrasing the question to avoid slogans that prompt people to agree or disagree with a particular political discourse with much cultural baggage instead of the literal meaning. e.g., “Do you agree or disagree with the statement: Having white skin does not make people intrinsically bad or inferior.

I am quite sure that to many of you, this still seems like pedantic nitpickery at wording when the original wording already seemed perfectly clear, but I would argue very strongly that it isn’t. We really are animals who are quick to detect signs of tribal allegiances via language and fill in the gaps to classify someone and then respond negatively or positively to the whole perceived package. We really are not animals who naturally take a statement as a solitary unit and then respond to it in a vacuum. This is why we should avoid slogans wherever we can if we want to know what people think about a specific proposition and not what they think about a worldview they see it as attached to

Wording really does matter and when Mr. Adams rephrases the survey as ‘Nearly half of all blacks are not ok with white people,” he is simply wrong. That is not the slogan. People were not asked if they were ok with white people. They were asked if they agree with the statement “It’s OK to be white” which they could read as a literal statement or as a slogan associated with a specific campaign and a movement. I do not appeal to him to get this point as even if it were true that nearly half of black people were racist against white people, it would not justify being racist against black people. Nor does it make much sense to focus on the 47% of black people who disagreed with the slogan and ignore the 28% of white people who did.

I am talking to anybody else inclined to believe that this survey found that nearly half of black people are not OK with people existing while white. Please understand the difference between slogans associated with campaigns and movements and neutrally phrased surveys of people’s beliefs. Also understand the difference between cultural meaning and literal meaning. I am quite sure that this is within your grasp. You may well disagree with “Black Lives Matter” while still (I hope) believing that black lives matter. This is because the former is a movement with political purposes and principles that nobody has to agree with and the latter is just being a human who cares about fellow humans. If you understand this, you are also capable of understanding that people can disagree with “It’s OK to be White” while still thinking it’s OK to be white. This is because the former is a campaign with political purposes and principles that nobody has to agree with, and the latter is the simple recognition that people naturally come in various shades and that this is a morally neutral reality.

The use of a slogan in that survey, plus Mr Adams’ interpretation of it plus other people being inclined to uncritically accept it has the potential to inflame racial tensions and stoke paranoid victimhood narratives entirely unnecessarily. Do not succumb to identity politics or divisive polarising narratives in some kind of bizarre attempt to oppose identity politics and polarising narratives. There are certainly people who do genuinely think it’s not OK to be white just as there are people who genuinely think it’s not OK to be black. We can condemn those individuals for their views without buying into identity politics and collective blame.

Anyway, I have written about the problem with this before and I think my argument still stands so I will end with it.

We are seeing the rise of a new and largely reactive white identity politics and a new white victimhood narrative at the moment. White identity politics have always existed, of course. That’s what underlies the historical racism that has caused so much harm to non-white people. But we have made remarkable progress toward overcoming that old racism which just ignorantly assumed the superiority of white people. What we are seeing now is something new which is appearing in response to the identity politics and victim narratives of the Critical Social Justice movement. It is a defensive response to theories which make negative claims about white people such as that they are all racist, oppressive, arrogant, entitled, selfish, ignorant and more. This occurs alongside the development of concepts like ‘whiteness’ which is nebulous and indefinable, is explained in the Theory as a kind of ideology held by white people that upholds white supremacy but is often used in practice to mean existing while white which is inherently bad.

There are good grounds for seeing these ideas as racist and ‘anti-white’ and you are not fragile if you are a white person who feels wronged by being presented in this way when you are actually none of those things. You are feeling the sting of injustice and it is natural to feel defensive. However, it is essential that what you defend is consistent principles of opposing racial essentialism in all its forms and not evaluating people by their race. Do not defend being white – this is an accident of birth and not something you should feel either proud or ashamed of, be credited for or blamed for. If you find yourself defending your white identity, you could be slipping into white identity politics which could separate you from everybody else who consistently opposes evaluating people by their race. This is a fatal error as a post-racial future is a vitally important goal that requires the combined efforts of all of us.

…

Instead, rise above any efforts to demean you as a person whose skin happens to be white by consistently objecting to anybody being demeaned because of the colour of their skin. This keeps you in sync with liberal opponents of racism of all races.

This really is the only way to do it.