‘The Psychosis of Whiteness: Surviving the Insanity of a Racist World’ by Kehinde Andrews – a Review. # 139. 21/11/2023.

Out of Many, One People

Welcome, to a review of a book by an author who relishes controversy. What do you think?

‘The Psychosis of Whiteness: Surviving the Insanity of a Racist World’ by Kehinde Andrews – a Review.

‘We have been trying to apply reason to the issue of racism, but that has failed. Whiteness is a set of ideas produced by the racist political and economic system, and as long as that system remains intact it will continue to reproduce delusions that prevent all of us from seeing the brutal reality of the social world we inhabit. There is no reasoning with Whiteness; instead, we must destroy the system that creates it’ (p xvi).

In the above text, concluding his Preface, lies the heart of Andrews’ analysis that carries through his book. In seeking to exegete it, four main principles emerge that summarise his argument.

1. ‘We have been trying to apply reason to the issue of racism, but that has failed’.

Racism, Andrews believes, is like Japanese knotweed: strong, resilient, resistant to incremental attempts to remove it. Rather, we need to see ‘the racial barbarity necessary to maintain the system’ (p124). The upshot is that ‘Racialized minorities are almost exclusively clustered away from the rest of society in the deprived areas of a handful of major cities’ (p 72), with only the slimmest opportunity for slight improvement. Updating Malcolm X’s historical distinction between the brutalised ‘field negro’ and the comparatively easier life of the ‘house negro’, he writes ‘One of the only real differences between the plantation and today in terms of race relations is that there are more opportunities for people to leave the field for the relative comfort of the house’ (p 186). It is a sign of ‘t he vicious institutional racism of the West’ (p 38)?

Personally, Andrews writes compellingly of his experience that ‘so-called microagressions are the paper-cuts of racism’ and how consequently he has ‘battled stress and depression as a result’ (pp 13,14). I have heard similar accounts far too often, not least from theological students. They need taking seriously. But it needs asking whether they are commensurate with the heavy generalised charge of ‘the vicious institutional racism of the West’ (p 38)?

The governing theme of Andrews book is that, contrary to widespread assumptions, racism is as bad as ever it was. As will be noted in § 4 his slippery geographical focus makes it hard to know when he is talking about Britain, but his repeated theme that nothing has changed is belied by the comparative rarity of actual racist incidents here. But then his focus is on the generalised ‘institutional’ or ‘systemic’ racism which absolves him from attending to detail (though the Windrush scandal surely provided him with a very specific example). So he need only fall back on inequality of outcome as obvious evidence of institutional racism, despite the widespread evidence for the ‘disparity fallacy’ that such differences can have myriad causes beyond institutions acting in racist ways. He wrongly accuses the Sewell Report of dismissing the idea of ‘institutional racism’. An error that he actually shares with The Times! Sewell wrote to publicly correct them.

The cold grip of institutional racism’s tentacles is found everywhere, allowing him the dogmatic pronouncement: ‘Yes, there are far more murders within the Black communities than at the hands of the police, but this is not due to a pathology in Black people: it is simply another manifestation of institutional racism’ (p 76). Certainly the cumulative damage of racist microagressions noted above carries weight, but the word ‘simply’ serves to make black people merely the unwitting puppets of string-pulling Whiteness. All are in thrall to the all-conquering psychosis. As regards universities ‘Simply by not being White, you are significantly less likely to get a good degree ranking’ (p 115). Does the number of hours you spent doing homework, or the encouragement (or insistence) from your parents to read books not make any difference?

2. ‘Whiteness is a set of ideas produced by the racist political and economic system’.

‘Delusion’ is a word that flows freely from Andrews’ keyboard. It is, of course, a key element in psychosis and is a governing theme of the book. His intellectual acuity in detecting it is impressive, with a range of superficial popular responses from widely different political and ethnic standpoints being shot down with glee. He is an excellent bull-shit detector, notably in chapter 2 on ‘The Anti-Racism Industrial Complex’. Anti-racist ‘self-help’ manuals such as by Robin DiAngelo, attempts to be ‘white allies’, the institutionalising of diversity and inclusion policies, the rise of critical White Studies all come in the firing line. Quite simply the idea that white people can be of help or have a part to play is, well, delusional. In Malcolm X’s analogy the liberal fox might seem to be your friend, the right wing wolf is out to get you. They both want to eat you up. Andrews rightly sees the sentimental delusions fostered by such films as ‘Belle’ and ‘Amazing Grace’, ‘airbrushing away the nation’s uncomfortable truths’ about the brutality of slavery (p 68).

Rather, Black people need to see they are on their own. That said, his penultimate chapter on ‘Black Skin, White Psychosis’ is just as forensic in bringing down the attempts of black leaders or writers to ameliorate the situation. So pervasive is it that ‘Black managers, CEOs and even presidents do not alter the underlying structure of racism’ (p 174). The system is on steroids – the ethnic composition of the chief officers of state is too weak to change it.

3. ‘There is no reasoning with Whiteness’.

One the one hand this leads to Andrews choosing to avoid evidence that he finds uncomfortable. He is good at turning a blind eye.

* He writes ‘What the data does tell us is that if you qualify for free school meals, no matter what your ethnicity, your GCSE results will be poorer’ (p 107). This is a simple, flat untruth. What the data does tell us is that Chinese students on free school meals have better results than students from all other ethnic groups, including those not needing free school meals. But allowing that diversity of outcome between ethnic groups arises implicitly from behavioural differences is anathema to Andrews, for whom grinding White oppressiveness is the only allowable cause. In fact, the whole of the powerful Far East is uncomfortable ground for Andrews, apart from a rather lame section on China, limited to saying that advocating increased milk consumption shows how ‘White’ they really are now (pp 200-201).

* Hostility to seeing behavioural patterns as a source of disadvantage pressures him to skating as deftly as he can over the impact of absentee fathering on African Caribbean young people, as in using the superciliously dismissive phrase ‘the obviously male-role-model-lacking poor Black boys’ (p 111). That there are multiple negative consequences of absent fathers - for example in education, abuse, criminality, or future family formation - is proven in a wide range of studies. Either Andrews just doesn’t want to know, or perhaps thinks the African Caribbean population has had some sort of inoculation that protects it from the consequences. That by A-Levels Black Caribbean students had fallen significantly behind not just White students but also other ethnic minorities (courtesy of the Sewell Report!) is noted but no analysis offered for their exceptionalism.

* Likewise the differentiating consequences of pre-migration status for ensuing status in this country is off Andrews’ radar. No matter that the high economic and professional standing and strong social capital of East African Asians rapidly reproduced itself in this country, despite the intervening trauma of impoverishing forced exile, for Andrews all non-White ethnicities must alike be equally disadvantaged under the brutal heel of ‘racial discrimination’ (p 107).

A second consequence of not being able to reason with Whiteness is that Andrews doesn’t try to. It can only be countered by abuse and derision. Writing ‘Sewage’ crossed-out before ‘Sewell’ (p 186) is childish and unintelligent; ‘Trevor ‘formerly of the Black community’ Phillips’ is not much better. Andrews throws in words like ‘supposedly’ as an evidence-free tool to undermine positions. Queen Elizabeth lay in a ‘likely empty coffin’ (p 173) -implication made, evidence not needed. Blacks who don’t agree with him are ‘examples of racialised shucking and jiving to the tune of White supremacy to pocket some pieces of silver’ (p 28), whilst white people who disagree with him – whether tv presenters or Professor Niall Ferguson – are ‘Mediocre White Men’. I have been warned.

Andrews (rather like Donald Trump) has little interest in reasoning with those who disagree with him, his sole interest is to fire up his base. This makes his book a significant case study as to whether ‘Grievance Studies’ should have a place in a university. Having a firm conceptual base, as some theological departments do, is one thing. Using derision and abuse of opponents rather than reasoning and debate is quite different. If as a professor in such a department, Andrews is satisfied with trading shallow, polemical insults then one can only dread what sort of output his students might aspire to.

4. ‘We must destroy the system that creates it [Whiteness]’.

But what is the ‘system’? Certainly it is slippery. The USA often gets pride of place. There is a 10 page excursus on ghettoization in the United States, followed by an unconvincing attempt to say Britain is as bad - bus passengers in Birmingham are ‘almost as likely’ to be racially distinct as over there. Not so in Tottenham busses. (Having previously dismissed Tomiwa Owolade’s book ‘This is not America’ as ‘not a serious book’, Andrews implicitly vindicates it by constantly using the USA as the prism through which to see race in Britain).

Occasionally Andrews rightly turns his attention to ‘the real coalface of oppression in the underdeveloped world’ (p 49) and certainly sees Whiteness as a global system, but majority world poverty is a sideshow, it is American racism and its younger British cousin that gets the bulk of attention.

The producers of ‘Whiteness’ are also similarly undefined. It is ‘not a fixed category’ (p 120). Andrews gets in a tangle trying to put distance between the black and white working class, so that the latter are still White. So too are the Jews, and the Irish. But so are Black and Brown people who become part of the ‘system’. Obama was a ‘house negro’ who just enjoyed the perks of not threatening ‘Whiteness’; Martin Luther King was an ‘Uncle Tom’ deluded into thinking integration was possible. In interview, Andrews told ‘The Voice’ we need ‘more Bernie Grant’s (sic) and less David Lammy’s’ (Nov 2023, p 5).  In the end only Andrews and Malcolm X seem to pass the test, and even Malcolm had his faults (p 35).

This is a ‘scorched earth’ book. In the end, the psychosis has spread so widely that everyone is suspect. As with Hamas or the Tamil Tigers insufficiently pure supporters are more dangerous than enemies and are to be eliminated. In fact, Andrews even suspects himself, he too is compromised by the ‘system’ – drawing a fat salary from a White institution. Certainly, destroying the system isn’t easy.

So how to do it? The essential bankruptcy of Andrews’ book is that he can provide only the weakest of answers. That ‘the system’ is the heart of the problem is his underlying thesis, and that capitalism is of its essence, and the solution is ‘revolution’. In a very critical discussion of Nelson Mandela, Andrews writes: ‘The African National Congress made radical demands for the redistribution of land and wealth. . . Had Azania [South Africa] erupted in revolution it would have quickly spread to Zimbabwe . . and then across Africa. But Mandela made sure that the course of the nation and the continent was steered down the cul-de-sac it finds itself in today’ (p 194). Certainly the present course of South Africa (under the ANC, no less) has not been a happy one, but would the revolutionary radical redistribution of land and wealth have led to a better future. The history of revolutions doesn’t suggest that Andrews day-dream scenario would have been for the benefit of African peoples.

Meanwhile in Britain Andrews offers no dramatic scenario. The best he can suggest (with what seems to me coy embarrassment about its weakness) is ‘interest convergence’ - a rather pretentious term from Critical Race Theory – of doing a deal where both you and the Whites each get benefit. He sees the founding of his Black Studies department as an example.

Is that all!!

After having not only exposed the evils of Whiteness but also excoriated all those of any ethnicity who attempted to work with it, reform it, or ameliorate its impact, Andrews can only produce this one example, which to me looks much persuading the Beast to give you a scrap that falls from his table.