Whiteness Is Not a Culture. It’s a System.

Photo by Cody Pulliam on Unsplash

MAGA folks want to be a persecuted minority so badly. Why? My answer: because whiteness isn’t a culture. It’s a system built on exclusion—and it’s spiritually empty. So they cosplay oppression to feel special.

Real marginalized people aren’t seeking pain. We’re seeking dignity. Safety. Survival. Freedom.

Whiteness romanticizes persecution when it isn’t happening to them—and denies it when it is happening to others. That’s why you see folks screaming about “reverse racism” at DEI trainings or calling public health policy “tyranny.” They crave the moral power of being oppressed—but without the history, the trauma, or the work.

Whiteness has always shifted to maintain power. It expanded to include Italians, Irish, and some Jews—after first excluding them. It creates the illusion of identity while stealing culture, labor, and land.

Whiteness is slippery—it adapts and expands not to include, but to consume. That’s how it keeps power. Is whiteness like the Borg on Star Trek? It absorbs everything around it, strips it of uniqueness, and calls that unity. But it’s not unity—it’s erasure.

Think about it: the Civil War in America—a war fought to preserve slavery—wasn’t remembered as treason. Instead, it became "the war to preserve states’ rights," and symbols of the Confederacy were recast as “Southern pride” and “heritage.” What exactly is prideful about fighting a war to keep people enslaved—and committing treason to do it? Nothing. But whiteness rewrote the story. The Confederacy wasn’t condemned—it was rebranded. Instead of being remembered as a violent rebellion, it became the so-called “War of Northern Aggression.” That’s what whiteness does. It shifts, spins, and reframes shame into pride to protect its own power.

Look at what’s happening with the January 6th, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol—a violent attempt to prevent a peaceful transfer of power. Some of the same people who love to wave the American flag are now trying to recast that day as a patriotic defense of freedom. Whiteness doesn’t just revise history—it reinvents it in real-time.

We can’t fight antisemitism while protecting the same whiteness that harms us—and harms Black people, immigrants, queer folks, and so many others. Whiteness isn’t a shield. It’s a trap.

I’m not white. I’ve never had the experience of being Jewish and white. So when I talk about whiteness, I’m not talking about something I used to be or a system that once included me. I’m talking about the thing that’s tried to erase me—again and again.

There is deep beauty in Jewish identity. There is power in our memory, our resilience, our rituals. Jews don’t need whiteness to feel special. We have Torah. We have each other. We have a legacy of justice.

On one of my social media accounts, someone argued that the Black-Jewish alliance was never real, because it was just Jews helping Black people “in exchange for nothing”—as if that made it charity, not solidarity. And I get where that critique comes from. Because some Jewish institutions and dominant Jewish narratives have treated it that way. They erased Black agency. Centered themselves. Expected credit.

But that’s not the full story.

There have always been Jewish people—especially those pushed to the margins—who showed up in true solidarity. Not because it was trendy. Not for praise. But because justice demanded it. There are also Black Jews who live in the intersection every single day. We know what real solidarity looks like. It’s not transactional. It’s not performance. And it’s definitely not charity.

If the alliance failed, it’s not because it couldn’t exist—it’s because whiteness poisoned it. It turned partnership into performance. Solidarity into saviorism.

It doesn’t have to stay that way.

Marginalized folks don’t need to cosplay persecution. We’ve lived it. We’ve survived it.

Let’s choose peoplehood over whiteness.
Let’s choose justice over fear.
Let’s choose truth over performance.
Let’s choose solidarity—for real this time.