On "whiteness as a death cult"

Interrogating essentialist rhetoric

In a recent Instagram video, Sonya Renee Taylor claims that whiteness is a death cult and, with frank gravity, implores white people to confront what she asserts is the existential crisis of the deluded march towards death that whiteness entails.

Taylor’s reflections on whiteness as a “death march” recall W.E.B Du Bois’ The Soul’s of White Folk.

Du Bois writes,

For two or more centuries America has marched proudly in the van of human hatred,-making bonfires of human flesh and laughing at them hideously, and making the insulting of millions more than a matter of dislike,-rather a great religion, a world war-cry: Up white, down black; to your tents, 0 white folk, and world war with black and particolored mongrel beasts!

And so it is in the vein of a long line of Black thinkers explaining how whiteness functions as a social force of anti-human domination, coercion and exploitation, Taylor calls whiteness a death cult. In her video, she zones in on the psychology of white people, who have internalized this position of superiority so much that it is the foundational schema of who they are and how they understand the world.

Taylor says:

The nature of whiteness is to constantly validate its existence. And the only way to validate its existence is through the illusion of superiority. Without the illusion of superiority, then literally it creates the kind of existential crisis that says “Do I actually exist?”

Like if whiteness doesn’t exist—and it doesn’t, it’s made up—and someone’s identity is firmly structured on the illusion that is whiteness, then to challenge that illusion is to challenge the very nature of one’s existence. And when challenged with the very nature of our existence, when challenged with trying to understand or create reason for being alive—inside of that question is suicidality. Like if I don’t exist, why do I exist? Because it creates such conflict inside of people who have no other sense of understanding of themselves it creates a willingness to uphold the illusion at any cost. Because to get rid of the illusion is some ways is to kill one’s self.

And so, however, particularly in the current context we’re living in, to hold onto the illusion is also to kill one’s self, but at least it’s to die with the belief still intact. And that is what whiteness is, is being willing to die and kill everybody else for the ability to maintain the illusion. And that is what whiteness has us all on a death march toward. Because whiteness would sooner die than denounce its superiority, because to denounce its superiority would be to denounce its own existence. It would rather die in the physical and live in the imagination than to live in the truth.

Her language is powerful and impassioned. I will focus primarily on her idea of whiteness as an existential crisis.

I absolutely believe and have experienced firsthand that, in coming into consciousness around issues of social injustice from which you benefit, there is 100% an ego death. This devastated me for sure when I was like 18 and learned about social inequality. The psychological torment—really—of resolving the cognitive dissonance when you’ve always believed in equality and liberation, yet you are living in a country that does not uphold those things…that takes a toll. What takes a harder toll is being taught that you are complicit, and therefore responsible. This is where I get stuck. On the one hand, I believe that white individuals are absolutely responsible for their own individual biases and ingrained reactions that dehumanize people of color. To me, this is indisputable.

Yet, I can’t fully get behind painting with a broad stroke that whiteness in and of itself is responsible for some sort of existential crisis. I’ll reiterate that yes, the cognitive dissonance of reconciling the white myth of superiority with a belief in ones own compassion onsets (in my experience) a kind of existential crisis. Though maybe in my own case, if I’m being honest and stepping outside of the SJ doctrine, my existential crisis was a result of thinking the world is fine and then realizing it is fundamentally at odds with that myth is what spiraled me into a crisis of faith in what I had previously believed to be true (among other personal life events).

So I think this sort of existential crisis is not simply about undoing superiority, but the reality of what is on the other side of that recognition. It isn’t just losing your superior status, but confronting your capacity for doing harm. It is also a recognition of the vulnerable precarity of your own relative social location. To me, this is one place where the psychological havoc of capitalism weaves into whiteness. The myth of whiteness presupposes a type of certainty that I think is born of the capitalist myth that there is endless supply. Whiteness, with its social and (on the whole) economic advantages, enables white people to more effortlessly, unquestioningly buy into the capitalist myth. These two myths are born of histories and systems that are impossible to disentangle. This is the myth of invincibility, infinity, and inevitability that keeps systems of domination in place.

“Whiteness” is one recent (in the whole of human history) force of domination that enables abuse, violence, and coercion so that those in power can remain in power and profit no matter the cost to human life. This is where Taylor’s assertion that whiteness is a “death cult” comes in. To refuse to concede that whiteness is a lie is to continue the deadly exploitation that capitalism—again, inextricable from whiteness—executes leads us to certain global death as corporations overconsume resources and overproduce earth-destroying material.

Du Bois reveals something foundational to the soul of whiteness in this passage:

All through the world this gospel is preaching. It has its literature, it has its priests, it has its secret propaganda and above all-it pays!

There's the rub,-it pays.

It pays.

Whiteness pays.

This is where I see whiteness in itself as not sufficient to explain this psychological experience Taylor explains. People are absolutely invested in any aspect of them that affords them supremacy. But why? I mean at least a small part of it is just basic social psychology in group/out group bias that should be resisted, if we all agree on creating a world free of discrimination.

Functionally, though, if we take as fact that white people do in fact have an investment in a self-concept of being racially superior (simply by nature of their dominant social standing rather than some sort of “essential” quality of those with features labeled white), I submit that the function of this belief is to protect them from becoming conscious of their own economic precarity and exploitation. It keeps them from losing their shit upon realizing that they’re being exploited by the ruling class.

When shifting to the idea of what to do about this, Taylor says,

But if you got some part of you, some inkling inside of you, some ancestor who was down for survival, you gonna need to figure out how to excavate that energy. Then you gon’ need to figure out how to convince your friends, cousins, grandmas, uncles and aunties cause the truth of the matter is your people finna kill us all.

This is where her speech really turns into a spiritual issue of reckoning and personal change.

In all of this, I can’t help but think speculating on individual psychology while conducting systemic analysis is imprecise and ends up being a moral. philosophical or spiritual argument that, well. I just don’t know if it offers a genuine solution. Rather, it imparts an affect.

So, I am wary of this entire argument, including my own counter-argument. I think there is a level of unnecessary anguish or confusion that can come from this sort of writing, by asking people to try and psychologically (or internally) correct issues that need to be corrected systemically.

Can we really change individual psychology if external context of domination and supremacy is still in tact? If capitalism remains?

At any rate, the reason I really felt compelled to write about this video because it conflates “whiteness” with “white people” repeatedly, even though Taylor does concede that whiteness is fake (“it is made up”). And on one level, I don’t know. Who cares? Especially in speaking, I don’t think people need to be painstakingly precise. Yet, I still feel a need to challenge this particular crossing of wires.

Whiteness is considered something socially constructed, a set of beliefs, a force. It’s not something inherent or inherited genetically. Du Bois describes it well: “I am given to understand that whiteness is ownership of the earth forever and ever, Amen!” It’s a belief in ownership and, like I said earlier, invincibility, infinity, and inevitability. Whiteness deems superior those who are classified in the ever-shifting category of the “white” race.

White people are, of course, people who are considered “white” in the ideology of whiteness.

The importance of the distinction is to avoid the dangers of essentialism. Essentialism (in the context I’m using it) is the assertion that people on the basis of race have a fundamental, fixed “essence” that makes them behave in a particular way. There is a fixed behavior or mindset that is born into “white” people or “black” people, and so on. An example might be the idea that Asian people are “naturally” good at math. Essentialism becomes dangerous territory really quickly. It can be used to legitimize violence against people on the basis of racial differences, because it is “natural” or what people “deserve” on the basis of their biological weakness.

Personally, I think any sort of essentialist rhetoric needs to be interrogated and should always be off the table. Always. Power shifts with time. And if in that power shift there are people who are essentialized as bad, then violence persists. This is something I refuse to concede on. So, here we go:

And white people, I don’t know what to tell you. Because here’s the sad sorry truth is, again: Some of us are built for survival. It’s whiteness that isn’t built for survival...So, this isn’t a question actually about you know, all of us. This is a question for some of us. Some of us gon’ be alright because we are epigenetically designed to survive.

The idea that white people are genetically inferior is scientifically baseless and morally inexcusable. It is foundationally opposed to liberation. I resist this assertion as much as I resist the assertion that “matriarchy” is superior to patriarchy, or that women are essentially better than men.

Why I feel compelled to point this out and encourage people to interrogate this particular section is because Taylor has a great deal of influence. Her speaking style is compelling in itself, nevermind the perspective-legitimizing force of a major social media platform. This video alone garnered nearly 215,000 views.

I’m not familiar with her other work as I do not follow her on social media and haven’t read her book, but I have heard positive things about her generally. So, I can’t speak to whether or not this was a one-time perspective sharing that came from an impassioned and tenuous moment in the liminal space of the election. I don’t fault her as a human for this, but I do hope for better in her role as an influential thinker.

I concede that whiteness as a racialized form of domination and supremacy and its inextricable tie to capitalism as an economic form of exploitation and unchecked expansion are leading us towards a path of global annihilation without serious collective intervention.

Yet, the essentialist view of white people as weak or not built for survival is one we cannot normalize as the fight for liberation and racial justice continues throughout these next many years. Rhetoric that suggests the inferiority of individuals on the basis of race is not liberatory; it is an invitation to simply invert existing power dynamics. It should never go unchecked.