By Mansfield Frazier
The first paying gig I got as a writer — close to 20 years ago — was from a quarterly publication based near the campus of Harvard University, which went by the unusual name of Race Traitor. I still clearly recall how thrilled I was to receive the check for $25 because, to me at least, it meant I was no longer an amateur … I was a “paid” professional. However, it would be quite some time before any other publisher validated my belief with cold hard cash. Nonetheless, I persisted.
The reason this comes to mind is that I was sloppy in my logic or explanation and caused a degree of consternation in a reader … who also happened to be a valued friend. The mistake I made — to which he rightly in his mind took offense to — was referring to him as “white” when he considers himself mixed-race.
While this was the first time I’d made such a mistake in print, on more than one occasion I’d had people — who damn sure, by all appearances to me, looked white — ask me to please not refer to them as white. Each time this has happened it’s given me pause, but not until I got the email from my friend accusing me of being purposely insensitive did I really give this issue very much thought.
The journal referenced in the title explains itself thusly:
“The white race is a historically constructed social formation. It consists of all those who partake of the privileges of the white skin in this society. Its most wretched members share a status higher, in certain respects, than that of the most exalted persons excluded from it, in return for which they give their support to a system that degrades them [non-whites].
“The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the white race, which means no more and no less than abolishing the privileges of the white skin. Until that task is accomplished, even partial reform will prove elusive, because white influence permeates every issue, domestic and foreign, in US society.
“The existence of the white race depends on the willingness of those assigned to it to place their racial interests above class, gender, or any other interests they hold. The defection of enough of its members to make it unreliable as a predictor of behavior will lead to its collapse.
“Race Traitor aims to serve as an intellectual center for those seeking to abolish the white race. It will encourage dissent from the conformity that maintains it and popularize examples of defection from its ranks, analyze the forces that hold it together and those that promise to tear it apart. Part of its task will be to promote debate among abolitionists. When possible, it will support practical measures, guided by the principle: Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.”
Previously I had not read Race Traitor’s brief manifesto. When I wrote the article for them 20 years ago I was writing from inside a federal prison and didn’t have to access to a computer, therefore no Internet. However, after recently reading it my thinking on the issue has clarified … I now understand what these white-appearing people were talking about and why they prefer not to be considered white.
What my acquaintances are doing is to take to heart one of Dr. King’s speeches, in which he says, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” They’ve turned his famous quote inside out, making the words apply to themselves also.
They are rejecting privilege based on skin color, which gets in the way of them being recognized for the types of individuals they truly are. They too want only to be judged on the content of their character, not the color of their skin … and to me that’s really kind of cool.
Now, of course, in the real world things still play out a bit differently. I got some negative feedback a few years ago when I criticized in print a TV network for having Soledad O’Brien host what was billed as a ground-breaking program, “Black in America.” I wrote something smarmy at the time that said, “If Ms. O’Brien is black, then I’m the king of some obscure African tribe.”
People took exception to my challenging Ms. O’Brien’s right to call herself and be whatever she views herself as. But my point was — and is — if a person can walk down any street in America and everyone who looks at them assumes they are white, then indeed, for all means and purposes, that person is white (and will receive all of the aforementioned privileges their white skin carries, immediately on-sight). Folks like O’Brien really don’t have a choice in America as to what race they are in public spaces, unless they want to wear a sign around their neck saying “Hey, I’m really black!”
While I don’t fault Ms. O’Brien or the genetics that caused her to look the way she does, I do fault mainstream media and advertising in America that will often use the lightest skinned black person they can find to make it “easier on the eyes” of potential white buyers of their corn flakes or whatever else they’re hawking.
Privilege based on pigmentation is such a ridiculous construct I’m almost embarrassed to write about it since assigning it importance makes us all look so juvenile. Nonetheless, race (which is largely — and wrongly — determined by skin color) is still such an issue in America, affecting much of what transpires and controlling so much of the conversation, it still has to be addressed and dealt with until it’s rendered meaningless … and for me that day can’t come soon enough.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.neighborhoodsolutionsinc.com.
One Response to “MANSFIELD: Race Traitor”
Steve from Shaker
I admire your writing & point of view.
Read the piece about Billy Tell, and know the house he built.
Keep giving them hell…all of them.