the writer hate white people?
Good lord, no. I, and Lauryn Hill, I presume, don’t harbour the least bit of disdain towards white people. In fact, I, like many a black man who makes a bit of money, love and admire white women (especially the ones who have mainstream publishing in a choke hold). I have a white wife, a white ex-wife and two white stepchildren (whom a white judge has ordered that I pay private school fees for). And, in my working life, I’ve found myself under more mediocre white men than Stormy Daniels. So, I clearly have the right, as well as the authority, to write about white people.
I know white people much better than they know themselves.
To be clear and ethical, I lob white people together and write about white people in a sloppy manner out of absolute laziness and an unwillingness to let facts, complexity and diversity get in the way of a potential bestseller.
| The Whytelaw Classification of the Caucasian | |||
| Type of white person | Other names | Defining qualities | Interesting fact |
| White Man – spelt with a capital W and M. | the Man, Da Man, White Daddy, master, massa, the boss, coloniser, enslaver, etc. | Money, absolute power, total authority, absolute impunity. | Runs the world. |
| White man (‘white man’) – spelt with a lower-case w (unless at the start of a sentence) and a lower-case m. | Lil white man, wannabe White Man, underboss, assistant to White Man, useful idiot, etc. | Some money, some power, some authority, patriarchal power. And pink skin weirdly described as white. | Often mistaken for a White Man, often mistakes himself for a White Man. Paid more than you by default. |
| White people – an all-encompassing term covering all white people. Where there is a need to differentiate, prefixes are added. | Whitey, YT, Ypipo, oyinbo, crackers, missionary, etc. | Sometimes money, and the sympathy of the police department. And pink skin weirdly described as white. | To varying degrees, they are the key secondary beneficiaries of the practices and malpractices of the White Man. |
| White Tragedies | (White) working-class masses, white trash, po’ white trash, redneck, hillbilly, slave overseers, the police, prison wardens, etc. | Pink skin weirdly described as white only. | Easily persuaded by the White Man to believe that black people and other ‘non-desirables’ are the source of their brokeness. |
| Hollywood Villain White People (HVWP)4 | Russians, ‘Putin’, Rasputin, Gopnik, Drago, Commie, Rad, etc. | Nuclear weapons. And pink skin weirdly described as white. | They’re in some form of perpetual squabble with the White Man over Lord-knows-what so the White Man will buy your script if you’re slandering the shit out of HVWP.Moves in silence and often outsmarts the White Man. |
| White people trapped in black skin | See Appendix 1. | ||
| White Chocolate | See Appendix 1. |
All White Men Are Not Equal
Readers will notice something extremely rare and strange for a book on the black experience: it doesn’t focus exclusively on America. It draws examples, inspiration and wisdom from much further afield. Especially ‘Great Britain’. And there is a reason for that …
If I had to eulogise the American White Man, forbid the precious thought, it would be a fairly swift and straightforward affair: ‘Compared to his British cousin, that devil was an angel.’
And take it from a scholar, everyone in the room – the Chinese man, the Indian man, the Caribbean man, the African man, the Russian, even the freedom fries-loving French man – would give a collective ‘mmm-hmmm’ in complete agreement. The Irish man, his long-term whipping boy, would probably snatch the microphone and yell, ‘Ah, screw yooehr weasel wahrds! Give me de bloody micrahphone, wee lad, and let me tell ya abooeht dat bastard.’
Playing with the British White Man is the very definition of playing with fire. Take the second great white war (popularly known as World War II), for example: the Germans were as tough as nails, high as Cheech and Chong5 and, of course, ‘efficient’, yet they couldn’t conquer the British. While the rest of Europe fell like a stripper’s G-string, Britain held off against fantastic odds (with the usually uncredited help of millions of African and Asian people).
The German White Man made the Czechs choke on currywurst, romped through a drunk Poland, slapped the spliff out of the Dutch man’s mouth, and reduced ‘imperial’ France to a glorified social-justice think tank, but he was forced to behave himself when it came to Britain.
Britain stood firm and alone (not really alone, but national folklore has to be upheld) against the Germans until the Americans (including 130,000 African Americans stationed in Britain) and the Russians defeated the Nazis once and for all. And we all lived happily ever after. ‘We’, in this instance, of course didn’t include ‘the blacks’. The blacks had to go home and fight the whites – both those we had just fought alongside as well as those we fought against – for our own freedom and equality. A fight we’re still fighting till this day.
The British White Man is the quintessential White Man. Even the American White Man, gung-ho as he is, knows this only too well. Britain is the architect of much of the world as we know it today, thanks to its conquests and colonies. Britain played (and continues to play) a unique and interesting role in shaping the world. In fact, don’t be shocked if somewhere near the very pinnacle of your firm, wherever it may be but especially in America, there is a British man. There would be no such thing as an American or a Ghanaian or a Pakistani or a Nigerian or a Saudi Arabian without Britain.
The British White Man is the White Daddy of the world. Yet, even in full knowledge of how abusive (and occasionally deadbeat) he has been, he is still loved by much of the world. Amazing. Nevertheless: while you’re gazing at the British White Man romantically thinking, ‘he is so lovely. He reminds me of Mr Bean and Benny Hill’, he is looking at you, thinking, ‘I’m so glad we reserved the right to bomb niggers.’6
Once upon a time, not long enough ago, the British White Man would proudly proclaim that his empire, the British Empire, was ‘so vast that the sun never sets on it’ – a phrase originally ascribed to the Spanish Empire, who turned out to be knock-off paella when compared to the British – which in practice means ‘we had slaves toiling like fridges: nonstop.’
With that said, as years have turned to decades and decades to centuries, the British White Man has become much more sophisticated and subtle than his American counterpart. Practice has made perfect.
Case in point: unlike America, Britain never actually enslaved Africans in large numbers to toil the soil in Britain itself. Perhaps because ‘the air of England is too pure for any slave to breathe’ (a quote attributed to the beautiful mind of William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield). Britain opted instead for a more slave-from-home and ‘offshore-outsourced-enslavement’ approach. Popularly known as colonialism. Of course, Britain led/industrialised the great hustle of the day but they preferred to do it in ‘the colonies’ and the Caribbean. Entire nations such as Jamaica and Barbados were built and populated by enslaved Africans for the purpose of making Britain rich. And Britain got paid in full.
Britain’s prosperity was, like that of America and many other ‘developed’ nations, built principally on the enslavement of Africans. Slavery was the fuel of industrialisation.
Another intriguing fact: unlike America, Britain never had segregation or any other explicit white supremacy laws on the books at home, as opposed to the slave quarters (known in sanitised terms as ‘the colonies’). Yet Britain, like America, was and remains a nation deeply segregated along racial (and class) lines.
Perhaps owing in part to these superficial realities, Britain never willingly acknowledges its role in the mass enslavement and debasement of Africans. In fact, if you ask the average British person what role Britain played in the slave trade they are likely to say that Britain ended it, which is the equivalent of a person
