Who Taught You To Hate?

Due to the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests in recent weeks I have been watching old speeches by James Baldwin, reading letters by Martin Luther King, learning about Fred Hampton, I've begun reading a book by Angela Davis, I've read books and watched documentaries about Malcolm X, and I'm currently reading the excellent book How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America by Manning Marable; I've watched the documentaries 13th and LA 92 on Netflix; and, of course, I've seen the footage on social media of the BLM protesters, and the rather excellent journalism from Vice News (whose work must be the outstanding journalistic achievement to emerge from these protests).

BLM activists have asked us (as non-blacks) to 'listen and learn', and I'm certainly doing my best in that regard.

One thing I have learned was something that Malcolm X made so brilliantly clear, that capitalism has made Black Americans hate themselves.

Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin to such extent that you bleach to get like the white man? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind? - Malcolm X

I thus realised that capitalism has also made the white working-class hate themselves. 

The white worker (as all workers) develops a self-loathing from the situation in which they find themselves.  We hate the contradictions that trap us, the hypocrisy that stems from it, the denial we have about the petty things we do and think, we blame ourselves, we distrust ourselves, we are cynical of others, we sneer at our neighbours, we are in despair for our communities, we are in despair for our jobs, and we are filled with fear, ignorance and confusion.  The capitalist system has taught us to hate ourselves and our class.  We're encouraged to be bourgeois, not proletarian.  Supposedly, it's our fault we're poor, jobless, homeless, sick and depressed (if you're depressed, so we're told, it's not because of the system - it's because you don't know how to deal effectively with your own depression).  Even climate change is the fault of the poor worker, who hasn't bought a hybrid vehicle or used eco-friendly coffee cups.

I'm white and I'm working class.  I hate how the system has made me behave; I hate how the system has affected my psychology, my consciousness, my inferiority complex; I often hear how I speak; the unsuredness, the self-doubt; the imposter syndrome from which I suffer has been detrimental to my career and greatly damaging to my mental health.  I compare my working-class accent and manner to the confidence and presence of someone from an established middle-class background; their accents and manner are different though they come from the same place and time.  What's different is their class.  Indeed, Ross O'Carroll-Kelly has discovered a market for parodying the middle-class accent.  He's virtually the only one who has.  Most novels mimic working-class accents, not middle-class ones, from Dickens to Tressell.  Working class people tend to subconsciously discriminate against their own accents.  When I was younger, I certainly caught myself doubting the credibility of a working class speaker whilst watching them on TV or elsewhere, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. 

Much of my personal life, I have realised, is a struggle against my own ignorance and confusion.  I am greatly frustrated at the thought of the time making profits for others at my own expense, or washing dishes! (wealthy people don't spend as much time, if any, cleaning their houses - they hire someone to do it for them); instead, I could be learning, getting better at what I love, improving myself as a human.  I am frustrated at my own ignorance and my slow struggle against it, which, at times, seems like a futile one. 

And I struggle against my own frustration too. Increasingly.  This is the struggle to stay mentally healthy.  It's a struggle against bitterness.  It's a struggle to convey things in a calm, confident and reasonable way.  It's a struggle to avoid getting unreasonably angry, or to take my anger and frustration out on undeserving things.

The pathology of working-class self-hatred has created a working-class snobbery.  In Ireland we hear Irish workers remark about "those Romanians, those Polish... " even among union shop stewards in retail.  Even where racism against nationals of former Soviet countries abounds, Black African people are still regarded as the lowest.  Irish racists, Polish racists, Hungarian racists can all agree on something - "at least we're not black".  In fact, racism is ironically stronger among white immigrant workers to Ireland.

Manning Marable wrote:

...lowly paid white workers, particularly in semi-skilled occupations, can "justify" their low wages, poor working conditions, and deteriorating standards of living with the racist view, "At least I am not living like the niggers". Another perspective on this process is provided by Jean-Paul Sartre.  Anti-Semitism in the West, Sartre suggested, is "a poor man's snobbery.  By treating the Jew as an inferior and pernicious being, I affirm at the same time that I belong to the elite".  The philosophical foundations of "redneck racism" are the same dynamic.  For generations, many white American workers refused certain menial jobs on the principal that they refused to do "nigger work". 

Of course, this describes the darker moments of everyday working-class life.  Community inevitably takes precendence over individualism, progress takes precendence over reaction.  The moments of hope, of solidarity, of learning, of enlightened ideas, of bravery, of sympathy and empathy and understanding develop.  As does an understanding of when to be urgent, and when to be patient, of when to be peaceful and when to use force.  Workers and communities educate themeselves, establish their own morals and standards.  They realise they can police themselves - there's no need for a classist, racist, capitalist police force anymore.  This development is part of the collective struggle against fear, ignorance, hypocrisy and self-loathing.  Socialists call this simply the struggle against capitalism.  Such virtues can overcome racism to a large extent, but they cannot eradicate racism completely without replacing the conditions that create it in the first place, that is, overthrowing the capitalist system that creates class-division and thus, racism.