Playing with the British White Man is the very definition of playing with fire. Take the second great white war (popularly known as World War II), for example: the Germans were as tough as nails, high as Cheech and Chong5 and, of course, ‘efficient’, yet they couldn’t conquer the British. While the rest of Europe fell like a stripper’s G-string, Britain held off against fantastic odds (with the usually uncredited help of millions of African and Asian people).
The German White Man made the Czechs choke on currywurst, romped through a drunk Poland, slapped the spliff out of the Dutch man’s mouth, and reduced ‘imperial’ France to a glorified social-justice think tank, but he was forced to behave himself when it came to Britain.
Britain stood firm and alone (not really alone, but national folklore has to be upheld) against the Germans until the Americans (including 130,000 African Americans stationed in Britain) and the Russians defeated the Nazis once and for all. And we all lived happily ever after. ‘We’, in this instance, of course didn’t include ‘the blacks’. The blacks had to go home and fight the whites – both those we had just fought alongside as well as those we fought against – for our own freedom and equality. A fight we’re still fighting till this day.
The British White Man is the quintessential White Man. Even the American White Man, gung-ho as he is, knows this only too well. Britain is the architect of much of the world as we know it today, thanks to its conquests and colonies. Britain played (and continues to play) a unique and interesting role in shaping the world. In fact, don’t be shocked if somewhere near the very pinnacle of your firm, wherever it may be but especially in America, there is a British man. There would be no such thing as an American or a Ghanaian or a Pakistani or a Nigerian or a Saudi Arabian without Britain.
The British White Man is the White Daddy of the world. Yet, even in full knowledge of how abusive (and occasionally deadbeat) he has been, he is still loved by much of the world. Amazing. Nevertheless: while you’re gazing at the British White Man romantically thinking, ‘he is so lovely. He reminds me of Mr Bean and Benny Hill’, he is looking at you, thinking, ‘I’m so glad we reserved the right to bomb niggers.’6
Once upon a time, not long enough ago, the British White Man would proudly proclaim that his empire, the British Empire, was ‘so vast that the sun never sets on it’ – a phrase originally ascribed to the Spanish Empire, who turned out to be knock-off paella when compared to the British – which in practice means ‘we had slaves toiling like fridges: nonstop.’
With that said, as years have turned to decades and decades to centuries, the British White Man has become much more sophisticated and subtle than his American counterpart. Practice has made perfect.
Case in point: unlike America, Britain never actually enslaved Africans in large numbers to toil the soil in Britain itself. Perhaps because ‘the air of England is too pure for any slave to breathe’ (a quote attributed to the beautiful mind of William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield). Britain opted instead for a more slave-from-home and ‘offshore-outsourced-enslavement’ approach. Popularly known as colonialism. Of course, Britain led/industrialised the great hustle of the day but they preferred to do it in ‘the colonies’ and the Caribbean. Entire nations such as Jamaica and Barbados were built and populated by enslaved Africans for the purpose of making Britain rich. And Britain got paid in full.
Britain’s prosperity was, like that of America and many other ‘developed’ nations, built principally on the enslavement of Africans. Slavery was the fuel of industrialisation.
Another intriguing fact: unlike America, Britain never had segregation or any other explicit white supremacy laws on the books at home, as opposed to the slave quarters (known in sanitised terms as ‘the colonies’). Yet Britain, like America, was and remains a nation deeply segregated along racial (and class) lines.
Perhaps owing in part to these superficial realities, Britain never willingly acknowledges its role in the mass enslavement and debasement of Africans. In fact, if you ask the average British person what role Britain played in the slave trade they are likely to say that Britain ended it, which is the equivalent of a person morbidly obese as a result of over-eating standing in front of the very buffet that enhanced his waistline screaming, ‘NO MORE. THIS IS NOT GOOD AND IT IS NOT GOOD FOR YOU’ to other, slimmer diners. And if you dare to take it any further, don’t be shocked if you’re invited to ‘fuck off back to Bongo-Bongo land’.
The British White Man is a top-shelf Louis Vuitton sneaker to his American cousin’s bargain-bin Nike: quality over quantity. He may lead you to believe that he is a happy Manolo Ribera to America’s Tony Montana but he isn’t. In reality he is Alejandro Sosa to America’s Tony Montana: he’s the boss. Fuck with him at your peril.
To understand how the British White Man thinks is to understand how the White Man thinks, and to beat him at his own game. If you can master how to think and act like a White Man, you, too, can have an empire the sun won’t set on.
1 ‘Mitt Romney says “corporations are people”’, Washington Post, 11 August 2011.
2 ‘Ben Affleck apologises for PBS slavery censorship: “I was embarrassed”’, Variety, 21 April 2015.
3 ‘Marlon James: “Writers of colour pander to the white woman”’, Sian Cain, The Guardian, 30 November 2015.
4 Please note that the white man of Hollywood Villain White People descent is still a White Man. Just not at this moment or historically as strategically full-fat-white (i.e. anti-black) as the White Man who enslaved, colonised us and often let his mistress name and draw the borders of our countries during pillow talk. How many times in your life have you met a black person with a Russian name?
5 ‘High Hitler: how Nazi drug abuse steered the course of history’, The Guardian, 25 September 2016.
6 According to his baby mama, this quote was made by David Lloyd George, at the time he was Leader of the Opposition. It is not clear if he was being sarcastic or serious. Nevertheless, since that statement was made Britain has been, to coin a phrase, getting its David Lloyd George on (i.e. bombing sand, land and swimming niggers).
CHAPTER 2
The White Man Commandments
‘The only good Indian is a dead Indian.’
— General Philip H. Sheridan
‘The only white man you can trust is a dead white man.’
— President Robert Gabriel Mugabe
‘Can’t we just all get along?’
— General Emir Osama Bin Laden1
Let’s get deep.
Depending on who you are, where you are, and how lucky you are, the words ‘white man’ probably evoke imagery of a three-toothed Jerry Springer contestant clutching a Bible, a gun, his cousin’s hand in marriage and a fourteen-word manifesto (possibly something along the lines of ‘we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children’ or ‘because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the earth’).
The key downside to such people also happens to be their biggest upside from a black professional’s perspective. They’re extremists and therefore easy to curtail, manipulate and, politically, castrate.
There is a gulf of difference, however, between a white man and a White Man.
A White Man has the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behaviour of others or the course of events, which is, of course the definition of power. Real power. Absolute power. White Man power.
A ‘conventional’ white man has white skin, sometimes precious little more, and the illusion that it makes him somewhat special, important or desirable. It doesn’t.