The Unbearable Whiteness of Being; Racism in the USA

In the age of so-called ‘Enlightenment’, Europeans, using the Bible as their main reference, determined that the landing place of Noah’s Ark – the Caucasus Mountain region – was the true origin of man and his descendants. This myth (that Caucasians were the original – and thus superior – ‘race’), fit in with similar religious-based science of the time, such as the earth being flat, or situated at the center of the universe, with a sun that revolved around it.

If one looks out in every direction, ‘as far as the eye can see’, they would discover themselves to be in the exact center of their visual range. Those who seek confirmation that they are indeed the center of the universe, and that everything revolves around them, would no doubt be satisfied by this discovery, and look no further. If science can be performed simply by using one’s eyes and a Bible, it makes sense that skin color might also qualify as a way to ‘classify’ various people. And so it came to pass.

Armed with a ‘scientific’ taxonomy that divided people into four distinct groups – Europeans, Asians, Africans, and Native Americans – white people began their unique history of imperialistic conquest. Deemed a cultural crusade to ‘civilize’ more backward peoples, this white plague eventually spread to the North American continent, where it still resides today.  

The TAKEAWAY: White people invented Race, and therefore are ‘Racists’. Current United States institutions (like government, education, healthcare, rehabilitation, immigration, et al) are built on a foundation of ‘Racism’. This is confirmed by the U.S. Government Census, that continues to recognize the fabricated hierarchal designation of ‘Race’. It has no choice at this point. What is done cannot be undone. Our ancestors fashioned this weapon of racial hierarchy, and with it, forever altered the trajectory of human society. 

360 Degrees of (Trust) Separation

Taking ownership of one’s actions, especially when they cause harm to others, is called ‘accountability’. It has been the consistent policy of the United States to never admit to (let alone repent for) the sins of the past, no matter how egregious the violation. This is one of many obstacles along a rocky path toward reconciliation.

Each step we take away from each other represents a degree of separation that is measured in trust. The ‘trust gap’ between whites and non-whites is so wide at this point, it cannot be ‘walked back’ with a few empty words or gestures; atonement can only come in the form of discernible actions.

The Mind is a Terrible Thing

The whole of human suffering can be traced back to a problem in semantics: when we talk about Power, what we really mean is Control.

In the beginning, there is only Ignorance and Uncertainty. It can be said that our entire lives are an attempt to manage both of these. ‘Control’ is one of the survival strategies organisms use to manage this Uncertainty; to ‘Adapt’ is the other. If an organism believes it can Control its environment, it will ‘fight’ to do so; otherwise, the ‘flight’ response kicks in, and organisms go to Plan B, attempting to Adapt to their ‘oppressive’ surroundings. This makes up the yin and yang of our existence.

Our Hindbrain Calls the Shots

Without a single conscious thought, early humans fed, fought, fled, and fornicated their way along, generation after generation. As we developed ‘brains’ (meaning a forebrain), and achieved ‘awareness’, we instantly (and mistakenly) assumed we were using these newfound ‘brains’ to freely think, choose, and act, when in reality this has never been the case.

Of course, when we find ourselves in a battle for survival, or even in some form of controlled competition, our hindbrain is quite useful. The problem occurs when we ignorantly make everything a competition, like we do in our current Economic Growth model. This is where Systemic Oppression could be greatly alleviated. The constant drive toward increased hierarchal ‘Status’ locks our hindbrain impulses into the ON position. The steady stream of free-floating anxiety which ensues needs an outlet – a THEM – and thus makes some form of ‘othering’ guaranteed. Whether it is malicious MicroAggressions, (which we will discuss momentarily), or questionable cries of ‘reverse racism’, the real issue gets sidestepped: that we are all feeling the effects of this systemic manipulation of our hindbrain.

To seek the MORE from outside ourselves is the root of human oppression, conflict, and suffering. The Third Option seeks to shift this paradigm of Control to one of Power, by refocusing us to seek the MORE from within ourselves instead. It also plans to tie all our fates together, so that the more each of us achieves, the more we benefit as a whole. More on this later.

Blockbusting, Steering and Redlining: Segregation Nation

Also called ‘panic peddling’, Blockbusting comprised a money-making strategy used by real estate agents, who scared white home owners into selling their properties ‘below market value’, by informing them that black families, seeking local employment, were looking to move into their neighborhood. Once whites ‘fled’ the neighborhood, real estate agents would resell the property to a black family at a price ‘above market value’; the bank would get its cut by tacking a high interest rate onto the loan. They were able to get away with this because government employed a policy of ‘Redlining’ neighborhoods based on high and low financial risk, then passed this information on to mortgage lenders, in order to more subtly segregate the various neighborhoods. Black families had very few options; real estate agents were ‘steering’ them into specific neighborhoods, where banks would then approve the loans. Investigative reporting at the time showed how whites with less income would still get loans over relatively wealthy blacks, as part of a ‘credit rationing’ policy aimed to give whites the financial edge in wealth creation, through exclusive use of private banks. The overall effect was one of White flight into newly-built, outlying ‘suburbs’, leaving black families behind in the inner city.

Where there is no money to be made, profit-seeking businesses like banks, healthcare facilities, and grocery stores tend to move out, leaving more predatory businesses to move in and fill the void. In a process called ‘Reverse Redlining’, black families were targeted with much higher cost products. “Check cashing fees can be 6% or more”…“The cost of a loan from a payday lender is typically $15 for every $100 borrowed…for a two-week loan, that’s effectively a 391% APR. If the loan isn’t repaid in full…a fee is added on and the cycle repeats…within a few months, borrowers can end up owing…an average of $520 in fees to borrow $375.” 

Where Grocery stores exited, convenience stores, smoke shops, liquor stores, and cheap fast food entered to take its place. Welcome to a ‘Food Desert’, where nothing healthy grows. As healthcare issues skyrocket, actual health ‘care’ flatlines within these neighborhoods, because even healthcare, ironically, is not designed for people, only for profit.

“The crack years was one of the most racist periods of our government,” confessed former DEA agent Robert M. Stutman (who also confessed to being “white and very conservative”, which apparently implies that drug ‘crack’-downs were considered racist even by racist standards – it also implies that he has not read very much American History). Laws ensuring the longest possible prison time (mandatory minimum sentencing) turned black drug offenses into the criminal equivalent of White murder convictions.

Meanwhile, schools were also imposing these ‘zero tolerance’ policies. Students deemed ‘difficult’ were expelled, no matter what their age. Parents were often working and not at home to supervise these children, so they drifted out into the streets, which acts like a ‘catch basin’, designed to collect the ‘runoff’ and filter it straight into the prison industrial pipeline.  

W.E.B. Dubois referred to this phenomenon as a “double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others”. One friend puts it this way: “I feel like I always need to make a good impression when I speak to white people, because I may be the only black person they’ll ever get to meet up close”. 

White folks need to know that blacks folks are beneath them in the social hierarchy. Code Switching is one way black folks assure white folks they are not a threat. Unfortunately, white folks still feel threatened; MicroAggressions are the ‘passive-aggressive’ way to put black folks back ‘into their place’. Psychologist Derald W. Sue (author of MicroAggressions and Marginality andMicroAggressions in Everyday Life) describes MicroAggressions as “the everyday slights, indignities, put downs and insults that people of color, women, LGBT populations or those who are marginalized experience in their day-to-day interactions with people”. Sue breaks MicroAggressions down into three categories:

• MicroAssaults are intentionally discriminatory remarks, somehow believed to not be offensive, like telling a racist joke, then claiming it was ‘just a joke’.
• MicroInsults are unintentionally discriminatory remarks, like telling someone that they “are really smart – for a woman”. 
• MicroInvalidations downplay or even negate other people’s experiences, like telling a black person that “racism does not exist in today’s society.”

Slave Patrols were armed groups of private citizens – white male citizens – who were allowed to voluntarily police enslaved black folks, in order to restrict their movements and maintain a measure of White domination. Today, white police officers still serve as ‘patrollers’ of black neighborhoods, dispensing inequitable, arbitrary and reactive law enforcement measures designed to perpetuate this paradigm of White domination.

Meanwhile, land within predominantly non-white communities is being bought up by developers; gentrification is the private sector’s answer to eradicating poverty: simply bring the suburbs back into the inner city. Designed to ‘increase the economic value’ of the neighborhood, it has proven to be just another way to push poor people aside. The new homes are too expensive for anyone already living there, and to maintain the safety of all new homeowners, police presence gets ramped up even further. One would hope that people coming back to these city centers would be doing so to create diversity, but often, they want the neighborhood to assimilate to their sensibilities, to the point of even shutting down longstanding neighborhood fixtures, like annual festivals and parades, basketball courts, live music, or just plain ‘hanging out’ (white people call it loitering). “Culturally, I think the way that a lot of African American and Latino people experience gentrification is as a form of colonization.” – Paul Butler,Chokehold: Policing Black Men 

Toward A ‘Third Option’: Make Every one an Offer They Can’t Refuse

The concept of the Third Option is simple because we have taken out all the Oppression and Corruption. Systems only become complicated because they are oppressive and corrupt. People have been oppressed for so long, they are used to everything being complicated, and therefore would probably trust the plan more if they weren’t able to understand it. Either way, the Third Option is not going to put any Oppression or Corruption in there just to make people feel better about it. Sorry for the inconvenience. 

It starts with a National Public Bank, like our nation’s 1st and 2nd Bank of the United States (founded by first Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton). Andrew Jackson decided to get rid of the bank in 1832 – he also got rid of Native Americans around that same time (see Trail of Tears), in order to expand southern slavery to the point where only a war could stop it. That makes him a moron, a racist, and an asshole (he was also a sociopath apparently).

Private Banks have definitely been used as a tool of Oppression in the United States, but banks aren’t so bad, once you own one. Think of this bank as one of those giant department store chains. 

The good news is that we have just created a self-sustaining circular economy. We made the jobs to create the basic needs services that would in turn sustain us. A portion of the income from these jobs would provide us with the following year’s ‘income investment’, that we would use to create more goods and services (small business loans, student loans, housing loans, infrastructure loans, etc). We would pay back the loans when we purchased the goods or used the services we had created (food, healthcare premiums, utility bills, rent or mortgage payments, car registration, etc.). Normally, this money would go to the private sector, but we would be the owners of this corporation – our shareholder investment created all of it – so all the money goes back into our Bank, plus interest. This would create ‘shareholder dividends’, that would accrue over time, and eventually become a steady income stream in retirement (this means we would not need to have a payroll tax anymore, either). Because we would not look to make a profit off of ourselves on products like housing, electricity, food, etc., the ‘cost of living’ would become more ‘affordable’, thus creating a ‘living wage‘, not by having to raise the minimum wage (though we would do that, also), but by lowering the actual ‘cost’ of living. This scenario could never happen within the current Economic Growth Model.

Our society fails to provide adequate Liberty, then holds the threat of prison up as if to say “see – it could be worse.” In the Third Option Model, there will be no more prisons; our Liberty already takes enough of a beating. There will only be Education and Healthcare, and by healthcare we mean Mental Healthcare. It will serve as the new ‘mechanism’ to catch people before they ‘fall through the cracks’. The road of life is long – all of us will occasionally need a little 24-hour ‘roadside assistance’. Some will say this is not profitable, but A) this is not about profit, it is about people, and B) in reality, people are expensive to fix once they are broken; ‘front end’ maintenance – to keep us all running smoothly – is actually cheaper.

Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion.

Simon Sinek

Meanwhile, Back in our Communities:

We need Diversity. Inbreeding, whether it be physical, mental, or political, has proven unhealthy for us as a nation. To encourage diversity at the structural level, The Third Option would offer affordable housing for all basic needs employees, but only in the neighborhoods where they are currently employed. In this way, there could be a potential connection formed between the people who purchase neighborhood goods and services, and those who deliver them. Perhaps they might occasionally acknowledge each other out on the street, as they are, in reality, intrinsically tied together.

We need to be Understood. Besides Mental Health Counselors and Social Workers (who would comprise some of the fastest growing occupations in this Emerging Future), we would also need ‘counselors’ on the street; let’s call them ‘Federal Peace Advocates,’ until someone comes up with a better name. Tamar Manasseh has proven (within her own Chicago community) that having a visible, caring, and familiar presence out on the street does make a difference in how we treat each other. In The Third Option Plan, there would now be less people in Washington DC, and more people available to represent and serve folks at the community level. 

The Third Option believes that once people truly owned their community, and had a stake in its success, they would be able to hold themselves accountable – as a community – and not need police to do it for them. Within schools, the indigenous practice of Restorative Justice (having all parties ‘talk it out’ with a mediator present) could similarly be applied, and again eliminate the need for a police presence. In most cases, police arrive late to a crime scene; in some cases, they create a crime scene where none existed. The issue of ‘crime’ will never be effectively solved ‘after the fact’; we must proactively ask ourselves “what can we do, as a society, to identify and address the systemic causes of criminal behavior in people?” It is a question that those in ‘Control’ never ask, because they already know the answer, and the answer does not serve their interests. By the way, more Fairness, more Certainty, and more Inclusivity is how to eliminate so-called ‘criminal behavior’. Read more about the Third Option plan here. 

We Need to be Heard. The Third Option recommends that communication infrastructure be considered a universal human right, and thus within the scope of Federal oversight, in order to secure a more ‘inter-connected’ system for all. The Communication Grid we propose would serve our Healthcare, Banking, and Education agendas, but would also be used to tie Communities to their citizens, and to all other Communities.

Politically, our current communication system works perfectly – if you are an Oppressor. It gives every one a voice, but no power to make change. It turns up the volume, and points the speakers right back at each other – nothing but ‘feedback’ – vented emotional frustration directed at ourselves, or in ‘echo chambers’, where at least someone ‘hears’ us. This is yet another oppressive system doing exactly what it is designed to do. The Third Option solution would finally give every citizen a chance to improve the world locally, nationally, and internationally; likely, if someone were to use their voice to do nothing but complain, they would no longer be considered relevant to the discussion. In the current environment, however, complainers make eight-figure salaries. 

There is a lot of work to do. It will be a process that cannot begin until we ‘upgrade’ the nearly 300-year Operating System to better reflect the people we want to be now. Our institutions are filthy with racism; they cannot be salvaged. They must be replaced.

For our actions to be effective, they must be organized around some foundational premise. Think of this premise as an overall Mission Statement, or a general working hypothesis that can guide each of our decisions. The Third Option has chosen this premise:

Intersectionality is a theory developed by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw that demonstrates, among other things, that A) there is a line around the block of people who are discriminated against, oppressed, and dominated, and B) Every one has the potential to be both victim and perpetrator, and often in more than one way. The Third Option feels it is crucial to name OPPRESSION as the main suspect in this overall crime, if the People hope to seek ‘proper damages’ (i.e., true systemic change); filing a ‘class action lawsuit’ (i.e., having all oppressed groups speak together in one voice) would be infinitely more effective. This justice analogy is fairly accurate, as individual litigation would tend to drag on through the court of public opinion, only to reach some quiet settlements here and there, but never actually help the other victims of this crime – a crime felt by a full 70% of the population, at the very least.

If the People ever wish to mount a class action civil lawsuit against Oppression, the Third Option would like to go on the record as saying we would gladly represent the People on this matter.