The Creator of Minecraft Tweeted Some Dumb Stuff About Race

If you've never heard of Notch, you probably don't have kids in your life. Notch is the man behind the wildly successful, world-beating success that is the video game Minecraft. In creating the most important video game of the 21st century, Notch made himself insanely wealthy. We're talking billionaire with a "b." In the process, he also developed a massive and devoted online following. I've never been much a fan of his game, but I respect the hell out of him for creating something that is so beloved by so many people. He deserves every bit of success that he has. But yesterday he tweeted some dumb stuff about race. Now, I don't think Notch is a racist. I just think he's showing signs of being a person who doesn't quite understand how race works. So let's go through his tweets one at a time, because they're worth addressing.

"It's okay to be white" has become something of a meme on the right. It began on 4chan as a way to prove that this seemingly harmless message would "trigger" social justice warriors. They act like it's something of a checkmate, because, in their minds, to argue against it would be to say that it's not okay to be white. This is not true at all, for a few reasons. One, the entire notion of "whiteness" is a social construct to designed to oppress people of color and consolidate power. Whiteness as a racial class system didn't exist until the 17th century when it was created and legislated into existence by Europeans in Virginia as a means of justifying a slave trade that gave them the massive economic advantage of free labor. Ever since, the idea of "whiteness" has been used as a cudgel to keep those with power in power, and to hinder the economic advancement of those outside of the scope of "whiteness." Additionally, black people were robbed of their ethnicities by the slave trade and reduced to simply being "black." So while I can sit here and say that I'm Irish, a large number of black Americans can't trace their families back to specific countries in Africa. So when one embraces their "whiteness," they are not embracing their heritage, the way that I do when I celebrate Saint Patrick's day. Instead they're embracing a system of oppression that they benefit from.

So, is it okay to be white? Well, it's okay to be a person who society would consider white, but embracing one's "whiteness" is not a great look. By all means embrace your heritage, but that heritage isn't "white." "White's" not a heritage.

Privilege is not, as Notch suggests, a "made up metric used to silence and repress." Privilege is the simply the idea that when you live in and benefit from a society that is designed to oppress some people, meaning those free of those mechanisms have, by design, an advantage. It is inarguable that white people, on the whole, have certain advantages in our society. See: hiring trends, generational wealth advantages, not needing to be terrified when you get pulled over by the police—white people have it just a bit better. Now, does acknowledging that such privilege exists invalidate a white person's success? Does it mean that a white person didn't work hard to earn all that they've had? Of course not. No one is saying that white privilege means white people get everything handed to them on a silver platter. Rather, it's just the acknowledgment that in a bunch of ways, some little, some big, we had things a bit easier. Not easy, but easier.

For instance, when I was a little kid, my family was poor. As I got older, my parents, through hard work, were able to raise their (and my) station in this world. They worked their asses off and overcame myriad obstacles to earn what they have. That's admirable and it's not taking that away from them to say that had they been black, they would have had to overcome all those same obstacles and additional ones. That's all "white privilege" is. Acknowledging it is just saying that you're playing the game of life on the "hard" difficulty-level instead of the "legendary" one.

Look, I get why white people get defensive about this topic. It's shitty to feel like your hard work is being dismissed. It's shitty to feel like people are mad at you when you personally haven't done anything wrong. And many people of color are understandably mad. Being on the shitty end of an oppressive system is nobody's idea of a good time. Hell, white gamers, including Notch, all got pissed at EA because Star Wars: Battlefront II shipped with a system of loot boxes that players could buy with real money to get advantages in the game. Gamers, again like Notch, deemed that this was unfair to players. After all, how dare EA ask people to buy a game for $60, and then give people who have a lot of money the ability to get ahead in that game faster? They didn't like being on the worse end of what they felt was an oppressive system.

Now, last year, on election night, I tweeted something dumb. I saw some exit poll data that said the only two demographics to vote for Trump were white men and white women. As a result, I tweeted "Fuck White People." And then tweeted it again, giving more context and including a screenshot of that exit poll data. A huge number of people got pissed at me, and though the countless death threats I got were uncalled for, I understand why people were mad. I didn't phrase that tweet correctly. What I should have said was "fuck whiteness." Or if I wanted to be more detailed, "Fuck a system that allows one group of people to be disproportionately advantaged in a society and fuck the natural impulse of those who benefit and are addicted to that system to vote in such a way that protects it at all costs." The world would be better if white people rejected the notion of whiteness. Embrace being English. Embrace being Italian. Embrace being Dutch. Whiteness can go.