White people aren’t inherently reprobate, elect for damnation, or created for destruction. They were not formed by God to be exploitative, emotionally calloused, or drunk on privilege. This isn’t God’s design. In fact, whiteness is a cultural construct, not a biological reality. That isn’t to say skin color doesn’t exist but the categories of “race” that various skin colors are sorted into (which is different from ethnicity) are socially constructed. The thing is, though, whiteness was not constructed for good ends. It was constructed for damnable, anti-Christ, anti-Black ends. Though there is some flexibility in how whiteness has been conceived over time, essential to whiteness is white supremacy, and essential to white supremacy is anti-blackness.

Whiteness is real because it is enforced. Even if unknowingly, the white masses fervently believe in whiteness. They hold all people to the standard and norms of whiteness. It’s a violent faith, with material consequences on people of color. It is demonic, a false god, psychically transcendent, often seeming inescapable. Whiteness is anti-Christ.

Though there is a difference between whiteness and white people, it’s safe to say that white people are racist. They are born into, and are complicit in, generational sin bound to their whiteness. The structures of the world mold all white people into racists. It makes them unable to see how no matter how they navigate in the world, they will exercise white supremacy. The whites are not hopeless – but they are Satan in real, social, and material ways.

That said, I believe there is the possibility for even the devil to be reconciled to God.

Active, ongoing, life-long repentance – working out their salvation in fear and trembling – is necessary work on the white person’s end. This demands white people (and, because of the pervasiveness of whiteness, and its inherent anti-blackness, all non-black and brown POC) to determine themselves to become accomplices of black and brown people, with listening ears and humility, without defensiveness or condescension. This repentance demands material reparations. It demands building systems for reparations with others seeking to be accomplices. Building the base, an important strategy for so many leftists, must center the communities most often facing the violence of the state and capitalism. Working class solidarity must prioritize combating anti-blackness and white supremacy.

All that to say: whiteness is a force and sin that white people will need to combat within themselves, and in the world. This is not an option. This is their (constant) duty.

The good news is that there’s a God of generous grace willing to be a companion to white people, in restraining and exorcising the power of whiteness in their lives. There is a way forward for white people in the revolution. Real, material ways white people can repent, together. The ideological conditions of the U.S. make it near impossible for white people to be convicted of their sins and to commit to reparations, but the crisis of white supremacy continues to come to light. As we approach even greater material crises, the enemies become clearer and clearer. It is time for white comrades to commit to being race traitors. To be constant in pointing out the deadly functions of whiteness to other white people. Through building the revolutionary base and being an accomplice to black and brown communities, may white comrades live into true working class solidarity, and may we all struggle together for a new world.

God, teach us how to be accomplices to black and brown people. Teach us to be humble. To listen. To repent. Walk with us as we seek to de-throne whiteness in ourselves, and in society, and as we dismantle the systems of oppression that we benefit from. Teach us to be race traitors. Amen.