Member-only story
Is White Supremacy a Mental Disorder?
I will state flatly that the bulk of this country’s white population impresses me, and has so impressed me for a very long time, as being beyond any conceivable hope of moral rehabilitation. They have been white, if I may so put it, too long. They have been married to the lie of white supremacy too long. The effect in their personalities, their lives, their very grasp of reality, has been as devastating as the lava which so memorably immobilized the citizens of Pompeii. They are unable to conceive that their version of reality, which they want me to accept, is an insult to my history, a parody of theirs and an intolerable violation of myself.
— James Baldwin
Here’s the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserved what happened to them before.
— Chris Rock
Back in the late ’80s, I signed up for a “creative writing” seminar at a prestigious Chicago university as led by a widely respected white, bow-tie-clad, fifty-ish author-professor. In the very first session, he asked the class of 15 students to name our favorite American author. The students responded with Faulkner, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the…
