A Brief Note on the Question of “White Rage”

During a House Armed Services Committee budget hearing, a question was raised about the military doing anti-racism work within its ranks. As part of his response to that query, Chairman of our Joint Chiefs of Staff, General. Mike Milley says he wants to understand “white rage.” Based on my work on neo-diversity anxiety, I think I can be of some help.

How neo-diversity leads to white rage

Unlike any other historical period in America, neo-diversity is a part of the life of everyday Americans. Neo-diversity, you see, is the new interpersonal situation of America in which we all have to encounter and sometimes interact with people "not like us” on some group dimension. That means that in our everyday lives, we all encounter and sometimes have to interact with people as equals — people who are different from us by way of race, yes, but also sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, gender identity, nationality, sex-of-person, and on and on. And whether people admit it or not, that neo-diversity requirement causes some people to experience anxiety that can turn into anger about having to "watch what you say.”

“White rage” is racial neo-diversity anxiety catching that fire. Imagine being made to feel safe by a false sense of racial superiority and then suddenly having to deal with real information that made it clear that your beliefs about "them" were false; they were stereotypes that had nothing to do with real people. Panicked distress; violent emotions; erratic, irrational (lashing out) behavior (call the police); all that occurs because of having to face the now-very-real member of that group — one of "them" standing up to you demanding respect.

In my book To Live Woke, I say it this way:

“…psychologically panicked responses are what happens to an individual’s psychology in the face of the failure and collapse of institutional and organizational support for their race-superior sense of group-position.” [1]

People panic. Some of those people rage.