When whiteness came for Kevin
OPINION: Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's hands were bitten by the beasts he fed and now he's now part of white history.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Last week, a brave hero saved me from a racist animal attack.
I was having lunch at a posh sidewalk cafe next to a crew of white people who, of course, had a dog with them. Even though I have a Great Dane, as a Black man, I typically don’t mess with other people’s pets. As I always say: White people love dogs; Black people love their dogs. In any case, my lunch companion was petting the strange dog that she had never seen in her life when she realized I was in danger. Just as the ferocious beast pierced my skin, my friend screamed, kicked off one of her shoes and — in one swift move — killed my attacker.
It was a mosquito.
After neutralizing the threat to my life using nothing but bravery and a bejeweled sandal, she returned to the table where I sat calmly and slipped on her shoe/weapon. As she marveled at my composure and checked to see if I needed anything for the bite, I promised her that I would be fine and offered to go inside if the bugs bothered her. “No, I love being outside,” she said. “I know I just went up to a stranger and petted their dog, but I don’t do bugs. Is that crazy?”
I explained that I was from South Carolina and now live in Georgia, so I’ve actually developed a tolerance for mosquito bites. They don’t even leave a bump or make my skin itch anymore. I don’t even feel them.
“But you’re not crazy,” I said. “That’s how I deal with white people.”
She furrowed her brow, leaned in and whispered: “Say more.”
I began by explaining that, when I was in college, I fulfilled my major’s science requirement with a class on entomology — the study of insects. I had absolutely zero interest in the subject but heard rumors that all the athletes had signed up for the course, which usually meant the class was an easy A. The rumors were not true; it turned out that the class fit the football players’ practice schedule. In any case, I was walking around with all this useless bug knowledge, and I finally had a chance to use it. So, with no regard for my savior’s interest, I turned our lunch into a lesson on analogies, biology, entomology and — my area of expertise — wypipology.
This is a story about Kevin McCarthy
In a 216-210 vote, America’s highest-ranked affirmative action beneficiary, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (W-Calif.)*, became part of white history on Tuesday, finally succumbing to the second white insurrection under his leadership. The vote came after accused sugar daddy Matt Gaetz (W-Fla.) called a “motion to vacate,” a procedural move last used in 1910, during the period of American history when Southern conservative Democrats and Lily-White Republicans joined forces to keep Congress all-white.
*While McCarthy is a Republican, for this article, W is a more accurate designation for the subject’s political affiliation.
To be fair, McCarthy agreed to subject himself to the whims of the Congressional White Caucus by agreeing to the demands of Gaetz and the far-right Freedom Caucus in exchange for their support for his bid to become House speaker. The backroom handshake agreement included a rule that allowed any single member to call for a motion to vacate, a vow to get the bottom of whatever Hunter Biden might’ve probably been doing on his laptop and … well, we don’t actually know what else McCarthy traded to become second in the line of presidential succession. However, we do know why he was forced to make these concessions.
Here are the eight Republicans who cost McCarthy his job.
- Andy Biggs (W-Ariz.): The MAGA Albert Einstein opposes masks, LGBTQ rights, abortion, science, Juneteenth and everything except white nationalism.
- Ken Buck (R-Colo.): Another election denier, Buck didn’t just vote for the recent government shutdown, he’d love to shut down the Department of Education, schools that teach critical race theory, health care facilities that provide abortions to rape victims, Google and Colin Kaepernick’s right to free speech .
- Tim Burchett (W-Tenn.): Tim Burchett believes in things. Aside from God, family and insurrections, the redneck comedian believes in UFOs, school shootings, and election denial.
- Eli Crane (W-Ariz.): This is the guy who referred to Black Americans as “colored people.” That’s all you need to know.
- Matt Gaetz (W-Fla.): Even though he doesn’t support McCarthy, you may know Gaetz from his support for Donald Trump. Or Kyle Rittenhouse. Or the Proud Boys. Or the Jan. 6 rioters. Or, if you’re in high school, you might know him from prom.
- Bob Good (W-Va.): Despite his name, Rep. Good thinks everything is bad, so he just condemns stuff. Certifying elections. Averting government shutdowns. Critical race theory. Same-sex marriage. Kids who want gender-affirming health care. Wearing masks.
- Nancy Mace (W-S.C.): Nancy Mace is a white woman from South Carolina.
- Matthew Rosendale (W-Mont.): Like a lot of people, I always assumed this Trump-endorsed candidate was the real-life John Dutton until I found out he’s from Baltimore.
The politicians who joined Gaetz to kick McCarthy to the curb of their party’s legislative leadership were not just Republicans. They were not a united wing of his party or an ideological faction. Considering most of the white people in Congress voted for McCarthy, it’s unfair to say he was felled by white people. They are not all far-right. And, while they are all white, describing them as “white people” isn’t quite fair. They were a disparate collection of kooks, fanatics and dog whistlers. But there is one common denominator that ties them together and explains why Kevin got canned.
Whiteness.
Whiteness is different from “white people.” Not all white people are affected by whiteness. Some whites have never been bitten while others have developed a tolerance. “White people” is a plural noun; “whiteness” is an idea. And, like the GOP and mosquitoes, whiteness has no political or economic ideology. It is a divider, not a uniter. It giveth and it taketh away, and survival is its only goal.
Pundits have even suggested that the Democrats make a deal with McCarthy to support his leadership, a wholly absurd prospect House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) seems unlikely to fall for. “It is now the responsibility of the GOP members to end the House Republican Civil War,” said Jeffries, when asked about Congressional Republicans’ white-on-white intra-party violence. Jeffries was summoning the sentiment of the great Black political leader “Bennett,” who retired with a 100% voting record of not being “in it.” Like my lunch companion, he was adhering to the ancient African-American tradition known as “staying out of white folks’ business.”
By saving McCarthy’s job, Jeffries could have theoretically ushered in an era of bipartisanship, but he could have also been bitten by the same Republican bait-and-switch that cost McCarthy his job. The last Black man who fell for that okey-doke ended up getting evicted from his lush garden estate in Eden. Jeffries probably isn’t afraid of the political turmoil. He might even have a tolerance for white nonsense. But history, science and experience have taught Black people everywhere a valuable lesson:
Whiteness is a bug.
It is a predator whose survival depends on the blood. The entire species cannot multiply without sucking a tiny bit of the life force of others. White people are not inherently dangerous … unless they are affected by whiteness. The deadliest diseases attach themselves to whiteness and use it to go viral. White people did not defeat the Indigenous natives of America. But by attaching land ownership, constitutional rights and manifest destiny to racial identity, whiteness did the genocide for them. Most white people did not enslave Africans, but whiteness was the foundational principle that justified America’s race-based human trafficking system of chattel slavery. And Jim Crow. And redlining. And voter suppression. Whiteness is responsible for the vast majority of the rapes, massacres, lynchings and wars that have ever occurred on American soil.
And, contrary to popular belief, white people are the most frequent victims of white supremacy. According to Elliott Currie’s book “A Peculiar Indifference: The Neglected Toll of Violence on Black America,” because of America’s indifference to violence, poor white communities also experience high levels of violence. Although Black people suffer disproportionately, most of the people who suffer from student debt, poverty, gun violence, low wages and bad schools are white. But because of how the GOP has attached itself to whiteness, most white people support the party that refuses to fix these problems. Whiteness is what makes white people support an intolerant white supremacist and vote against their economic interests. It is why the GOP has crazy, far-right wingnuts making important America’s legislative decisions. Partisanship is not what’s wrong with American politics; it is whiteness. But because white people have built up a tolerance, the GOP’s lunacy seems harmless — until white people are bitten by whiteness.
This is what happened to Kevin McCarthy. I remember when Kevin was a “young gun” who was the future of the party. Then whiteness infected him with the MAGA virus, and he supported Trump. After Jan. 6, Trump’s whiteness made McCarthy a Republican In Name Only. Because of white-ringers like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan, McCarthy needed 1,484,948 voting rounds to become speaker. He ultimately prevailed because of his deal with the hard-white faction of his party. And because they have no fiscal, economic, social or political agenda, the unwoke mob came for Kevin when it needed something to feed on.
Maybe this was his first time being bitten. Perhaps he wasn’t aware that he could be affected by the world’s most vicious predator. It is possible that he assumed he was immune to the negative effects. By the time he found out he was wrong, it was too late. Whiteness always, always, always bites, which is why I ended my amateur entomologist lunchtime analogy by explaining why it’s not crazy to avoid mosquitoes.
“In the entire history of the planet Earth, mosquitoes have killed more people than all of the animals, diseases, natural disasters, murderers and wars combined,” I said. “So you’re not crazy, you’re smart. ”
“But you’re immune, right?” She asked.
“Well, not immune,” I replied. “I’m tolerant. No one is immune They still bite me. I still itch. I know I can’t slap all of them, but I ain’t gonna let them stop me from —”
“Say less,” she said, as I scratched the tiny bump on my arm.
Correction, 10/22/2023, 1:20 p.m ET: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the speaker’s place in the line of succession. The speaker is second in the line of succession. The story has been updated.
Michael Harriot is a writer, cultural critic and championship-level Spades player. His NY Times bestseller, Black AF History: The Unwhitewashed Story of America, is available everywhere books are sold.
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