Liberate
My word of the week is liberate, which was Trump’s word on April 17:
Definitions
Here's the dictionary definition of liberate:
The first meaning of liberate is obvious, but the third meaning may surprise some: “to take or take over illegally or unjustly.”
The definitions of liberate and liberty both have positive and negative meanings.
Lincoln made that point when he said,
“The world has never had a good definition of liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in need of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.
With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor, while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor.
Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name — liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names — liberty and tyranny.”
The Two Types of Freedom
In 1941, the psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm detailed the two types of freedom —negative and positive—in his book, “Escape from Freedom.”
According to Fromm and others, negative freedom is freedom from something, and positive freedom is the freedom to be something.
Fromm opens his book on freedom with these words:
“Modern European and American history is centered around the effort to gain freedom from the political, economic, and spiritual shackles that have bound men.”
Notice that Fromm locates this freedom in “modern European and American history,” and also his use of “freedom from.”
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes the two sides of liberty this way:
“Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints...Positive liberty is the possibility of acting—or the fact of acting—in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes... This [positive liberty] is not liberty as the mere absence of obstacles, but liberty as autonomy or self-realization.”
White Freedom
In the United States, Black freedom has changed over time, and coming out of the Black power movement Black freedom was about self-determination. Self-determination is the definition of positive freedom.
White freedom in the United Stares is primarily the definition of negative freedom—the freedom from obstacles, barriers or constraints.
The sociologist Shannon Sullivan in her paper, “White Priority,” says, “whiteness can function as an absence of an obstacle, rather than a positive advantage...”
The connection between white identity and liberty is old. The scholar Theodore Allen in his book, “The Invention of the White Race” listed “the presumption of liberty” as one main white-skin privilege before the Civil War.
By design, white liberty blocks democracy in America. In his book, “The Abolition of White Democracy,” Joel Olson says, “white citizens understand citizenship (as status rather than participation), freedom (as negative liberty), and equality (as opportunity rather than social equality).”
White freedom is one reason only 37% of white respondents in a 2019 Pew Research poll said America hasn't gone far enough in giving blacks equal rights with whites. In the same poll, 78% of Black respondents said the country hasn't gone far enough in giving blacks equal rights with whites. The negative freedom of whiteness satisfies whites.
For whites, any encroachment on white freedom is a cause to protest.
Feeling Less White
Trump supporters value white identity. The whites protesting the stay-at-home orders most likely value their white identity, and Trump's “liberate” tweets appeal to their whiteness. For someone with a strong white identity, for someone clinging to white freedom, the stay-at-home orders are obstacles that make them feel less white.
Whenever whites who treasure whiteness feel less white, more violence follows.
That's how the colonists felt before the Revolutionary War, and several protestors of the stay-at-home orders invoked the Revolutionary War. In Michigan, one protestor yelled at police and said the police were redcoats.
In both cases, “Give me liberty or give me death,” means “Give me whiteness, or give me your head.” It means “White or die.” It means “I’d rather die than not be white.” It means “honor my whiteness, or I will kill you.”
The call to reopen the economy is a call for white freedom, it is a call for negative freedom, and it is a call Americans should reject. These white protestors know their liberty means Black people and people of color will suffer and die the most.
It's sadistic. And being sadistic is the only way to be white and to stay white.
Contrasting White Freedom
White freedom is hypocritical, and it wants what it will not give. It selfishly demands and takes what it wants now, at the expense of others.
Look at what the historian David Roediger wrote in his book “How Race Survived US History” about white freedom:
“White freedom would come heroically in highly compressed ‘revolutionary time’...Emancipation of slaves, on the other hand, was to be at best gradual, unfolding over many decades...
For white Americans, the logic of revolution was that true independence would never be granted but would have to be seized while among slaves freedom could never be seized but only granted.”
In an essay from 2018, Ta-Nehisi Coates described white freedom as:
“freedom without consequence, freedom without criticism, freedom to be proud and ignorant; freedom to profit off a people in one moment and abandon them in the next; a Stand Your Ground freedom, freedom without responsibility, without hard memory; a Monticello without slavery, a Confederate freedom, the freedom of John C. Calhoun, not the freedom of Harriet Tubman, which calls you to risk your own; not the freedom of Nat Turner, which calls you to give even more, but a conqueror’s freedom, freedom of the strong built on antipathy or indifference to the weak… the freedom of suburbs drawn with red lines, the white freedom of Calabasas.”
In my essay from 2019, “Which Kind of Freedom Shall Ring?”, I build on the ideas from Angela Davis and Ibram Kendi to contrast what I call “racist freedoms,” “not-racist freedoms,” and “antiracist freedoms.”
Whites Trying to Liberate Themselves
It's a mistake to think whites are free. James Baldwin on the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation wrote to his nephew, “We cannot be free until they are free.”
The anti-lockdown protestors aren't free. They’re colonial subjects; they’re foot soldiers. White elites keep them strung up and strung out.
Ninety percent of all elected leaders in the United States are white. The cry for freedom from whites is often an unacknowledged cry to be free of white leadership. Whiteness desperately needs a political coup de grâce to end its misery.
The Revolutionary War and the protests are examples of whites trying to get free from whiteness without naming whiteness as their foe.
White Freedom Comes from Oppression
White freedom often claims to have the Black experience in America. Recall that the colonists, under the British, compared themselves to enslaved Black people, and a few of the lockdown protestors compared their protests to Rosa Parks’s protest.
That's not a coincidence, it's a method. White freedom comes from the oppression of Black people. The historian Edward Morgan wrote that Americans bought their independence (white freedom) with slave labor.
The Declaration of Independence puts life before liberty, and whites have yet to match what's on paper. Whiteness messed up the order. But the fix makes the last first—Put life first; put the living first; put humanity first; put Black and indigenous women first.
What I'm Reading
Michigan Protests Were So Full Of White Hate - Michael Harriot writes about freedom in this piece and how the white protesters express freedoms Black people don't have.
Liberty or death uses - Phrases about liberty or death are common across the world. From Patrick Henry, it was a one-sided phrase because it didn't extend beyond white men in America.
Coronavirus Is Making the Case for Black Reparations Clearer Than Ever | Opinion- White America sets up Black people for failure and death. The need for reparations is urgent.
The Anti-Lockdown Protesters Have a Twisted Conception of Liberty - The New York Times - Jamelle Bouie shows that whiteness means freedom from control and the right to control. Whiteness hogs all kinds of freedom. Without mentioning Lincoln, Bouie seems to say that whiteness is liberty and tyranny. Liberty and tyranny, “two different and incompatible names,” are in whiteness and make whiteness. Whiteness itself is twisted. Whiteness itself is a paradox.
A Twitter thread by Michael Harriot on the Freedom Riders - The 59th anniversary of the Freedom Riders was on May 4, 2020. Today, it’s a shame to see protestors use the same word for the wrong reasons.
What Shall We Do With the White People? - When I saw the reports of modern-day lynchings, I thought—What Shall We Do With the White People?
William J. Wilson asked that question in an article in 1860. David Roediger included the article in his book, “Black on White: Black Writers on What it Means to be White.”
This quote at the end of the article sums it up,
“Who knows, but that some day, when, after they shall have fulfilled their mission, carried arts and sciences to their highest point, they will make way for a milder and more genial race, or become so blended in it, as to lose their own peculiar and objectionable characteristics? In any case, in view of the existing state of things around us, let our constant thought be, what for the best good of all shall we do with the White people?”