213: Declaration of Independence from Whiteness

There is no such thing as race

We’re holding our next salon this coming Wednesday July 9th at noon Almonte Time, 5pm UK time, and 9am Pacific. The topic will be the Nature of Nature. To participate please RSVP via metaviews@gmail.com or via our not-so-top-secret Signal Chat (which you can request to join via the same email).

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“Race is the principle unit of social organization in America.”
— Barbara J. Fields, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life

Every empire has its myths. For the United States, one of the most enduring is whiteness. Not as a skin tone or heritage, but as a political fiction — a tool of domination and control. Whiteness was invented to divide workers, to justify enslavement and genocide, to naturalize hierarchy and theft. And on this day, the Fourth of July, a celebration of colonial rebellion turned nationalist ritual, we propose a different kind of revolution.

We declare independence from whiteness.

Not just as critique, but as practice. Not merely against, but toward something better — something freer.

In Racecraft, Barbara and Karen Fields explain how race functions not as a biological fact but as a form of magical thinking — a socially constructed illusion maintained through habits of speech, institutions, and ritualized belief. Just as witchcraft once offered a framework to explain illness, misfortune, or social disorder, race today explains inequality, violence, and hierarchy without reference to history, policy, or power.

Whiteness is the crown jewel of racecraft. It appears natural but is profoundly unnatural. It appears fixed but is maintained only through repetition — census boxes, job applications, TikTok fights, and police reports. Its primary function is to obscure the machinery of power: who gets what, and why.

If race is fiction, we are free to rewrite the script. For those who could be described as white or white-passing, the opportunity — the obligation — is to refuse the label.

Not to pretend to be something you are not, but to embrace what you are: a person with stories, ancestors, values, affiliations, and contradictions. Your identity might be shaped by place, politics, language, neurotype, disability, kinship, diaspora — anything but “white,” which erases more than it describes.

We call for a new etiquette of identification. When someone says, “You’re white, right?” try:
— “Actually, I’m Appalachian with strong anti-fascist politics.”
— “I was raised Canadian Jewish and identify as culturally diasporic.”
— “Nah, I’m post-collapse eco-anarchist.”
— “I'm a farm-grown punk with no loyalty to empire.”

The point isn’t precision — it’s liberation. Let identity be fluid, flexible, and full of joy.

To renounce whiteness is not to reject oneself — it is to reject a system that was never designed to include us as equals, only as instruments. Whiteness asks for conformity. It offers conditional belonging in exchange for allegiance to authority. It punishes difference, discourages imagination, and treats joy as a threat.

Renouncing whiteness opens the door to solidarity. To shared struggle. To pluralism. To weirdness. To fun. Let’s build cultures where difference is not a threat, but a gift. Where we play with identity rather than use it as a cudgel. Where we are always becoming, never boxed in.

This isn't about moral purity or guilt. It’s about power. When we opt out of whiteness, we weaken its hold. When we model joyful alternatives, we offer others the same escape hatch.

And as whiteness begins to unravel — as its borders blur, its myths collapse, and its foot soldiers turn on each other — we must be ready with something better. Something beautiful.

Something we’re already building.

Happy Independence Day.

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Metaviews is a collective exploration of power, perception, and possibility. Let’s keep remaking the future together.

@fixitfemalesNever forget your emergency moustache #fyp 😎

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