Black Exceptionalism Pt. 2

Continuing a previous essay.

In Black Exceptionalism Pt. 1, I detailed an ideological orientation and disposition taken on by the broader progressive American public. The contemporary American progressive movement is driven forward by identity politics, and specifically by a racially defined group interest. This isn’t supremacism; unlike Black supremacist movements, exceptionalism does not hinge on the rejection or alienation of White America. Its attitude towards Black history is its defining feature. (I’ve found this thread to be particularly engaging.)

…it’s to suggest that the Black Freedom Struggle occupied (and probably still occupies) a unique place in the minds of many activists around the world. That unique place is due, largely, to the position of the United States itself in the minds of many of those same activists.

The above quote speaks in terms of the perception of African Americans by Afro Cubans — can it then be extrapolated to contemporary American progressives? In particular, American historiography, as informed by Black exceptionalism is the singular narrative of a White versus Black racial dichotomy; one that wholly orients the experienced reality of progressive Americans.

The perceived uniqueness of the African American freedom struggle has occupied the minds of many, both in the United States and abroad. However true this appoach to history may be, it bleeds into our political understandings of both Blackness, Whiteness, and progressive social reform.

Good-faith critique and holistic exploration of causal factors leading to social ills are often abandoned in favor of an easy scapegoat. Poverty is a product of White institutional oppression. Police brutality is a product of White institutional oppression. Low test scores, low graduation rates, high crime — all a product of White institutional oppression. See the trend here? White is always the operative word.

Black American exceptionalism, unlike Black Supremacy (which positions Blacks as superior to Whites) in the “racial hierarchy”, builds itself upon the implied and perceived socio-political (and economic) superiority of White Americans, and the continued need for opposition against their controlled institutions and systems. Being White is a privilege. Whites who suffer from material oppression, disability, or persecution are considered, still, beneficiaries of their race, and that is weighed heavily against the fortune of materially successful, able-bodied racial minorities.

Historical racism and the actions of a White oppressor class are deterministic forces in the lives of Black Americans. To progressive White people, they compose an oppressor class that has a moral obligation to pursue racially-focused social reforms against existing structures that curtail the advancement of “Black progress”. They subscribe to the historiographical method that describes social relations in America as dualistic between Whites and Blacks.

Whiteness persists as an explicit, contemporary privilege; there is something creepy about the idea of Whiteness as being the defining feature of good fortune as opposed to material or familial circumstances. If you are White, you possess privilege, and if you are Black, you lack privilege. This cognitive dissonance is observed in the many ways Black celebrities — objectively members of the international elite — are characterized as victims of racial oppression by entertainment media. Meghan Markle is a victim of systemic racial oppression…because she married into the royal family and has amassed an estimated net worth of $50 million. Bottom-feeding tabloids wrote bottom-feeding tabloid content about her, as they always do with anyone notable — in no way did it affect her material circumstances. If anything it lifted her public profile. These tabloids all follow an editorial narrative, much in the same way Vox writes on all matters of structural racism — tabloids take an inflammatory bent because that is what sells.

Progressive White proponents of the framework of Black exceptionalism benefit socially from their perceived altruism and their interest in causes of “social equity” by leveraging an ideology that intentionally positions them atop existing structures of power. They are in a better societal position for the sole fact of being White, and their duties of altruism are predicated on uplifting an “inferior” racial-minority group. While nominally intended to highlight the inequity (largely attributable to disproportionate poverty) that affects the Black community, it frequently ends up implying lesserness or otherness where there is not. This assumption is construed as positive and accurate in an empathic, progressive sense. The Black exceptionalist narrative is necessarily centered on White people, their history, and their achievement relative to Black people.

Using the recent #StopAsianHate “social activism trend” and its blatant denial of Black culpability in racially motivated hate crimes, I demonstrated how the Black exceptionalist narrative relies on the consistent projection of Black racial reality as exclusive to a White versus Black dichotomy. Asians and their conflicts with Black American society represent an inconvenient reality for an ideological movement dedicated to the progressive maxim of “racial solidarity of minorities” against oppressive White institutions and individuals. In order to justify the change being promoted as necessary to pursue racial equity, the demographic narrative of Black Americans must portray them as an exception within the National legacy. In essence, the Black American’s unique position of persecution, incomparable to the broader global history of human rights abuses, entitles them to an exceptional destiny, oriented around the righting of historical wrongs. The root of these wrongs is, with little room for nuance, White society, its establishments, and its institutions. Therefore the racial divide between Asians and Blacks is attributable, too, to White Supremacy.

To clarify, this is not to suggest that Black Americans do not experience racial discrimination or that the seeking out of indemnities is necessarily incoherent or wrong. The historical truth of racial oppression in the United States exists and cannot be denied. Black Americans have been victims of subjugation, enslavement, and segregation. However, oppression and persecution by the dominant majority has been a consistent and ever-present element of every civilization in the world, the primary distinction being the degree to which that oppression flourishes. Even to this day while many protest in the street against racially-motivated police brutality, modern slavery exists as a normalized reality outside of the liberalized Western world.

This essay, the previous essay, and its typifying of Black Exceptionalism as an weltanschauung taken on by mainstream progressives, seeks to define a prevailing trend and dominant worldview within progressive politics. Many adherents to this worldview are not Black. While many Black people subscribe to and proliferate it as well, unlike Black Supremacy, White membership is critical to its foundations and legitimacy. There is no rejection of a White ‘other’ but rather a need to re-educate the White ‘oppressor’. Black Exceptionalism must perpetually situate Black Americans as uniquely victimized by a socially, financially, and academically superior White class. Therefore, Black Americans are narratively bound to seek ‘solidarity’ (help) from the racially progressive (“right side of history”) White activists/advocates. It is White guilt (and Black grievance) mobilized into a contemporary progressive movement, and it is a strategy used to mask nonracial progressive issues as urgent to racial injustice in society.

An obvious example of this would be the striking disparity between the documented views of actual black Americans towards LGBTQ communities and the views portrayed as representative of the black community by BLM (the organization). The artificial construction of a monolithic progressive black community exists in a highly subjective narrative reality distinct from an objectively supported one. The artificially constructed BLM narrative is best viewed as a social device primarily serving to reinforce the views of a vocal minority who unapologetically present themselves as valid arbiters of the orientation and scope of the black community’s beliefs. It should not be lost on anyone that, for example, LGBTQ+ rights are mentioned so many times on a page clarifying a movement centered on Black lives.[1]  Only 1,210,000 U.S. adults identify as both Black and LGBTQ+, out of a total Black population count of just under 47 million Black Americans.

If you were to pluck a random Black man off of the streets and ask them what they thought about issues within the Black community, it would be hard to believe that he would identify LGBTQ+ issues as a primary concern. The founders of BLM are themselves queer-identifying, college-educated, Black women whose championed ideals have permeated the ruling upper class. Whether these efforts are or are not noble is not being argued here, but rather whether or not their activism is honest or useful in its attempt to represent reality.

Take the vile beating of a Black transwoman that happened in the summer of 2020. It was a horrific event that involved around 20 perpetrators, and by the looks of the video, most were Black men. Many cases of extreme violence against Black women and transwomen are committed by Black men. Obviously this video is not remotely representative of the entire Black community. But the lived reality of individuals within the Black community calls into question the legitimacy of groups such as BLM who champion their progressive ideals as representative of the entire Black community. Some members of the Black community are not progressive. They do not attach themselves to “woke” utopian ideals, nor do they care to achieve them.

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[1] “What We Believe.” Black Lives Matter, 7 Sept. 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20200829013157/https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/.