Be White and Die

I had a bit of a realization after last night's post.

It's not the money y'all are most afraid of.

It's not even premium art, higher prices or even the appearance of arrogance.

It's being white.

I've been so white for so long, and so enjoyably, that I completely forgot that even the name of my undertaking is heresy.

"Racist".

Inappropriate. (Maybe white folks most loaded term.)

Or, as they say it now, cause they don't even call you the thing itself..

Wouldn't some people see that as racist?

It's not even fear but the fear of fear.

Whoo--

We're some ab-stract motherfuckers. That's for sure.

I was just as surprised when the first guy I asked for money ($7 mil for 1/3 the company—and you'll never see those terms again) couldn't get past it.

Before I even said what it was—and this was a guy who knew me and had seen how I roll for years—he asked what the name was.

I replied White Gold and it was all downhill from there.

He wasn't white, he insisted.

White people don't even exist! (Which may be true, but for different reasons than he insisted, I'd suggest).

There is not ethnic or racial catagory called white people was his reasoning.

Oh yes there motherfucking is, was mine.

And it's one of the—if not the—most entrenched, certain and exactly enforced realities on this planet.

Just ask anyone who's not.

They'll tell you.

As long as you don't seem too white.

Ask Tiger Woods if white people exist.

Well, he claims he's not black, so maybe he wouldn't be the best.

But I'd still be he believes in white people.

Playing on the PGA tour?

If he wouldn't say it in public, I'll bet he would in the gym.

And if he wouldn't...

No, his dad is black.

He may be able to insist that he's not black—and may even be right..

That has nothing to do with me.

But I'll be he wouldn't deny that white people exist.

Barack either.

In fact, ask anyone you like.

Except white people, of course.

One of the great strengths of white people is insisting that they don't exist.

(Which, unfortunately, makes them somewhat like the Klan in that respect).

It's something of an extension of Protestant pre-destination:

If we rich, then god must have wanted it so.

Or—since we're in charge, we get to call everyone else what we want, African-American, Pakistani, European, rich, poor, needy, worthless, important, whatever..

Yet we defy classification altogether.

Smashing, Bif, would you like another Compari?!

And that might even be the most accurate definition of white people:

Those who, by their own insistance, defy classification.

(Does that mean Tiger is getting closer?)

Now these days, being white certainly doesn't mean you're a certain skin color, even I'll admit that.

But that doesn't mean the term or designation is any less powerful.

There are plenty of folks insisting they're not black actors, or Arab comics, or Asian painters, or even female bankers..

All striving to get into that arena of non-classification that white men created and then excluded just about everyone from.

And that's their right.

And why deny them?

Everyone should get a chance to be white for a while.

For as long as they can handle it.

But if you're already white..

And whiteness IS an aspirational thing..

Maybe the most aspirational thing..

All sorts of Italians, Germans, Jews, French, and even Irish have worked their asses off becoming white.

And lots more folks are doing the same now: Indians, Chinese, blacks, etc..

And there's nothing wrong with it..

It's just that there's no there there.

There's no magic portal that opens when you get accepted to the Harvard Club (or is Princeton more white?).

In fact, what most folks on their way to being white—and this includes a whole lot of white people themselves—don't know, is that these men created the designation precisely because they DIDN'T feel special.

Not because they did and wanted to protect it.

Put it this way: nothing happens when you make your first four hundred mill.

When you get asked to sit on the board of GM.

When you finally get into the country club.

Nothing happens.

Except that you realize that you've given up a whole lot of yourself in the search for acceptance by some mysterious other.

Some group or judge you've never met.

And why does nothing happen?

Because whiteness is completely defined by otherness.

It's just people who have completely dissociated.

To the point that they don't even believe themselves.

(How they then get an intricate set of rules pertaining to even using salad forks—with no authority in sight—is anyone's guess.)

And both of the two last statements bring us to perhaps the clearest fact about white folks:

They will snap on your ass!

Guaranteed.

When push comes to shove and most likely just when you need it most.

Because what it's really about is control.

I was born in control.

It was etched in my frontal lobe.

And most other lobes as well.

Self-control, management, other control, discernment, and a whole bunch of other controls that I didn't even recognize.

And for ages, I tried what most other self-respecting white young people do:

I tried to become even more other.

I tried to be down with black people.

I associated with the poor, artists, minorities, women—anyone who was more other than me.

There the truth must lie, I was sure.

With other folks.

Folks who aren't in control.

If being white, male and in control was so wrong..

As my history books described and even my mother, father, and sisters knew..

Then being female, black and out of control—or feeling it—or punk, ashamed, guilty, remorseful, angry, whatever, must be right.

Ah, to be other!

How relaxing and authentic it must be!

How real!

I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that that didn't work either.

And then, one day..

I got far enough in to see.

It wasn't that I needed to be other..

But rather that I wanted to do what I felt other folks were doing.

Which was being them motherfucking selves.

WHAT?

BE A MOTHERFUCKING WHITE MAN WITH MONEY??!!

Are you fucking crazy?

Be a well-educated, soo-fist-icated, tight lipped, white-ass bitch?

And do it proudly?

Happily?!

Are you stupid?

And if that sounds like at least a challenge, coming from where I did—which was a solidly progressive white background, then you are right.

And if that sounds like career suicide coming from anywhere, then you may be partially right—but only very short term.

Cause life is long, and the tides of change swift.

And there's literally no where else to go.

Who would have thought in 1957, with the whole world laughing at the four fey, ostracized, unpopular Beats, that their way would soon rule the world.

And we'd be paying $900 for a pair of jeans that had been taken from their original new state—and destructed according to what was seen as an authentic Beat manner.

And that we'd laugh at the people wearing $90, less Beat jeans as posers, pretenders and fakes?

When all they had was each other and some sorry-assed San Francisco real estate—fucking pussies—and what everyone else had was the entire economy, and the rest of the real estate in the western hemisphere?

Go ahead and drop out you losers!

It just means more room at Harvard, in the management training program, in the crisp new suburb with everything I ever wanted for me.

But they flipped the script.

Just like Luther, Robert Johnson, the punks, our founding fathers, and a whole bunch of others.

And the value, and the money, and the love and the women and the work and the rewards and just about everything else went one way:

With the fucking truth!

It didn't matter how big anyone's bank account was, how many titles motherfuckers had, or how solid the aristocracy thought the army's allegiance was.

Nothing mattered but the truth.

And still who alligns themselves with the truth?

Who?

Who doesn't kiss ass at work.

Or defer to the jackass in traffic?

Who doesn't go along to get along?

And hope to high heaven that someone, somewhere is watching him be "good", or paying more attention to what's in his heart than what he does and will reward and love him some day.

Despite how he feels about himself and what he continues to do on a daily basis.

If there is one certainty that I can find in today's landscape, it's that us white folks have made ourselves white.

And we're either that or nothing.

We're not going back.

And we can't go black.

Sure, go visit the homeland—but you don't live there. You don't know the dances or like the traditions enough to stay.

So—what's left to do?

Be your freaky-ass, uptight and all-right white self.

And get into it, baby.

There is no other route to the self discovery that so many seek today.

Yoga won't do it, Chi Gong won't do it, not Tai Chi, Kabbalah, or anything else—no matter how foreign, fancy or high fallutin.

How could a foreign movie—with subtitles—tell us more about ourselves than one of our own?

Even if it wasn't what we wanted to hear.

Maybe that's it—our own shit isn't telling us anything we want to hear.

It's time to pay some dues and what's happening in France, or Istanbul, or Fiji suddenly looks mighty appealing.

Hmmm.

And it's not that they have no value. Foreign stuff may inspire, inform, or even help..

But ultimately what are you going to do besides be your white-ass self?

Where can a guru point but ultimately back at yourself?

What can any god say but YOU ARE?

And so why not just skip em?

And go straight to it?

And then go guruing, or to the movies or wherever you were going to go anyway..


AS Y-O-U-R S-E-L-F !!!!!

How are you going to get to just be without just being white—or male, or tall or 143 pounds, or blue-eyed or born in Des Moines —or whatever you are the fuck right now first?

You gonna skip that part?

Try to be cute?

Get an exemption?

You going to try to sneak in with a levatating Indian guru?

Or take enough classes with a Yanni'd goddess worshipper that you might receive an exemption?

Are yo going to feed enough other people that you won't have to admit your own copious hungers?

You gonna read more Krishnamurti?

Get more New Age?

Fix the political system?

Reduce your carbon footprint?

Just what conditions are necessary for you to be yourself?

—Do you have to read White Gold? :)

And even if any of that WERE helpful—how can you doing something—anything—that you are completely in charge of—make you anything but exactly more of who you already are?

And if you're a white man..

Or even a white woman..

How you gonna get past that?

Without saying it?

Without being it?

Without accepting it.

Ever?

You've got to go through it—at some point.

And the sooner the better as far as I'm concerned—though there's no rush.

Unless you want to be yourself while yo go about all this other stuff.

And what this involves is exactly why the name White Gold works so perfectly well..

What this involves is giving up the control and being in charge to which we white folks have always held fast.

We make the money then control how we give it away to poor folks.

We didn't just make less in the first place, or relax from the start so that others would have a fighting chance.

No, we competed ruthlessly and then make everyone else compete to receive a handout.

They compete in pity of course, but we try to make them avoid that as well.

Anything but give up control.

Anything but give up labeling ourselves as rich and others as poor.

Even though we haven't been able to use those terms for a long time.

The career path is well-worn now:

Make stupid retirement money guiltily doing something arbitrary and then redeem yourself by opening a non-profit.

Which includes telling others that they should no longer refer to themselves as poor—because they're now economically challenged, or differently abled, or otherly gifted or whatever new spin we put on fucked.

Or whatever.

Anything but give up control.

The truth is you can't get into White Gold without getting past white.

And paying to do so.

If manual gold miners had to get down in the mire and muck—the shit—to reach tangible gold..

Then emotional and creative miners have to get past their greatest fears to get their gold.

And for white folks—the richest market on the planet..

The richest market in the history of the planet..

One currently starving for culture of any sort—real, imagined, corny or great..

Our motherfucking fears are:

In order:

Fucking.

Money.

Being white.

Feeling it.

And probably some form of reaping what we've sown.

Call it payback.

After a couple thousand years of crusades, colonialism, atomic bombs, mideast interventions, determined economic competition, slavery, witheld votes, etc.

And that doesn't even scratch the emotional and energetic dalliances.

The icy looks, the disappointed glances, the withheld recognition, the false enthusiasm.

And the crazy thing is that no one else even seems to care.

It's us that's keeping score.

Holding ourselves to it.

Prodding ourselves guiltily on.

Other folks, I imagine, get mad as hell when it drops on their shit..

Who wouldn't.

But the nature of the universe is one of instant letting go.

And life itself—the loving and relaxed present—eternally re-asserts itself over the past.

As long as you've yourself let it go.

But first you've got to admit it.

Get real.

Or—maybe all that is still karma and the fear of retribution..

After all, we've achieved glorious greatness as well.

We've built power plants around the world, installed trains, roads, clean water.

Designed and given away entire social and economic systems, manufacturing processes and educational curriculi.

We figured out a good portion of the world's infectious diseases.

No, we haven't solved all of them yet, but hey, we get to do what we want as well.

That's how it works.

So maybe the forgiveness, the letting go has already happened.

Is dependent on nothing.

And we can sink into it any time we want?

Or was always permanently available?

I still don't see how we'll get to where or who we want to be without being who we are..

But I don't imagine the universe holds it against us.

Like we do.

Anyway..

The gold is in the white.

Just like the gold used to be in the shit.

And I'm not saying that the white is any less fearsome than the shit once was.

It's just where the considerable gold is.

And realize this:

The term shit is now bandied about routinely and casually.

Just 40 years after it was even allowed to be uttered publicly.

Same with fuck and cock and pussy.

And there was a huge, huge, huge amount of money to be made in the mining of those "inappropriate" fears.

And an enormous amount of fun that had never even crossed "decent" folk's minds.

Along with a gang of movies, music, books, magazines and conversations that were better than anything Leave it to Beaver had ever even dreamed of.

And it all became real almost overnight.

So,

Assuming that things are speeding up..

And knowing that the internet moves culture faster than the carrier pigeons of the Woodstock age..

We can expect the remaining vestiges of social and personal fear to yield even larger benefits in an even shorter amount of time with even greater—and less anticipated—cultural benefits than any previous cultural revolution.

More and quicker than Modernism, post-modernism—anything ever.

And with even more beautiful results.

And even greater effect.

This is what the fuck White Gold is about.

Applying all the hard core science and economic acumen that us white folks—us mainstream westerners—have..

And blinging shit out like never before.

By cracking the code.

And flipping the script.

Making what we actually WANT for once.

Putting our own shit on the line like countless bluesmen, outsiders, African tribes, and artists have done for centuries.

And getting to feel it as a result.

Getting to live INSIDE of a culture, instead of living outside and always feeling like the god damned Jonses have figured it out.

(Even though Jones Sr. is on meds and the Mrs. is OCD.)

And taking that love global for anyone who wants to create or participate fruitfully.

Or even unfruitfully.

Quite literally anything that people even think they love will thrive and find support.

And, since we're some rich motherfuckers, we won't have to starve a day.

no frustrated or starving artist.

What about well financed artists?

What about Venture Artists?

What about the suits tracking down the freaks like their summer houses depended on it?

The walkabout will be fully catered.

It will still require the SAME DEGREE of FAITH!

But no one's gonna cut off your heat.

You couldn't fail if you tried.

You're too well networked, my friend.

Way too well loved by too many people with way too much money.

All you have to do is take responsibility.

Full responsibility.

Start leveraging all the privilege into something someone actually wants.

Be a leader.

Which, at this point, means taking people where they are BOTH deathly afraid of AND dying to go.

And all you've got to do to do that—is go there yourself.

Which is exactly what you want anyway.

And I can guarantee..

It's way more fun.

Feels way better.

Is much more relaxing.

Tastier.

It's everything you want.

But you've got to admit it first.

You're white.

You were born white and you're going to die white.

Or, translating a black saying:

There ain't nothing you gotta to do but be white and die.