Being structurally incompetent injects friction into every interaction, between people, and between people and organizations, and between organizatio… - Tressie McMillan Cottom

The assumption of black women’s incompetence — we cannot know ourselves, express ourselves in a way that the context will render legible, or that prompts people with power to respond to us as agentic beings — supersedes even the most powerful status cultures in all of neoliberal capitalism: wealth and fame. In 2017 Serena Williams gave birth to her daughter. She celebrated with an interview, as is the ritual custom of celebrity cultures. In the interview, Serena describes how she had to bring to bear the full force of her authority as a global superstar to convince a nurse that she needed a treatment. The treatment likely saved Serena’s life. Many black women are not so lucky.

Originating as it does not from nation or kin but from the primordial ooze of capitalism, whiteness can only be defined by state power. It requires a legal system that can formalize irrational biological expressions, making them rational. It needs a justice system that will adjudicate the arbitrary inclusion and exclusion of people across time. And, most of all, whiteness requires a police state that can use violent force to defend its sovereignty.

Political theorist Corey Robin understands the history of the conservative right in the United States as a search for a fight, because the act of being conservative necessitates an undesirable progress against which it can rebel. In a sort of manifestation politics, the “right” co-creates or at least abets social progress against which it can be juxtaposed. Staid conservatism is far from seeking stasis. It is provoking and reactive because without progress there is no reason to prefer the lack of progress.