White History Month

The only thing white folks hate more than people talking during movies is not being invited to a happening party. Especially when it’s in our own house! You may have already seen the forwarded chain e-mail that suggests how unfair it is that there is no White Entertainment Television; no United Whitey College Fund; no White History Month. On that last bit, the author(s) of this e-mail may have a point. We Caucasians have been separated from our true legacy by white privilege, and it’s time to make that privilege work for us. Finally. That’s why I propose that December (it being the whitest month) be named White History Month, and that this time be dedicated to educating everyone about the important, detrimental contributions we have made to the world.

I can picture it now: the whole family sitting in front of the television, little Bobby playing his PSP; Emily talking on her cellular phone; Dad clicking through the channels obsessively; Mom quietly and pleasantly drunk in her easy chair. Dad lands on a channel to find Charlton Heston strolling along a gallery of paintings depicting famous whites: David Duke, Benito Mussolini, Jesus Christ. He talks briefly about the legacy and tenacity of racism and white superiority, then speaks some of the ofays that we would like to remember during this month of reflection:

Francis Galton (1822-1911) – No, he didn’t invent racism, but he allowed white folk to feel good about it. He published his theory of eugenics—that’s the inherent superiority of certain genetic traits—in 1869. This was just in time for America, which was wrapping up its Civil War. We were able to put all of that bad blood behind us and move forth as a nation unified in a common belief: the scientific basis for racism

David Hume (1711-1776) – This Scottish philosopher was a major proponent of the Laws of Nature, one of which is apparently the inferiority of black Africans:

I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilised nation of that complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or in speculation. No ingenious manufacture among them, no arts, no sciences.

Of course, he only articulated what Whitey was already thinking.

D. W. Griffith (1875-1948) – President Woodrow Wilson (another upstanding cracker) is alleged to have said, "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so true,” about Griffith’s landmark 1915 film, Birth of a Nation. A remarkable achievement—twelve reels of silent film at a time when most films clocked in around twenty minutes—it was the Titanic of its day, a remarkable technical achievement with little regard for historical accuracy. This film re-spawned the Reconstruction-era hate group, the Ku Klux Klan, by depicting the Klan as valorous defenders of white womanhood. Of course, the uppity bitches would turn around and use this to gain national suffrage rights in 1920.

Cut back to Charlton, who is sitting on an ivory throne and being fanned by palm fronds. He promises that this information is just the tip of the white superiority iceberg, and if we want to know more about white history, we should make like good crackers and do some reading at our local library. Or make your own history! Racism is alive and well in America, and there’s nothing to say that you can’t be a modern-day J. Edgar Hoover or a Tuskegee scientist. Bobby looks up from his Ratchet & Clank video game, and he is inspired. Of course, he was already a racist. But now, he is an informed racist. And that makes him twice as dangerous.