The Real Truman Show

The white colonial lie

It’s been decades now. Watching my white friends and married family shocked in these inevitable moments where racism becomes visible like a curtain pulled back for a split second revealing to them the nature of their lives, a complex system synchronized to create the delusion of American goodness, ease, and convenient disconnectedness from this world. Watching them encounter challenges to their privileged perspective only to convince themselves that every other white person they have ever talked to is more correct than the one or two people of color in their lives. Majority rules right? especially when the majority is a homogenous collective of invisibly shared white culture. They become outraged, dedicated to anti-racism, and schedule a talk about race or add a book to their booklist. We’ve got to do something about this say my liberal white friends who take a moment to be surprised and heartbroken at the realization that what they thought was simply a past is still “kind of” present. Let me be clear, radicals are welcome, but less than radical about Palestinian liberation, Sudanese liberation, and indigenous liberation? the time for paced and easy stretching into collective and critical consciousness is something I can no longer accommodate. The time for liberation is now. It is inevitable. It is and must be a radical and unequivocal uncompromising commitment to this living planet and all she sustains.

At the beginning of the film The Truman Show, Truman who is happily living a quaint and quintessentially American life has no idea that his entire life is controlled, programmed, telecasted, and in every way, a lie. We see these moments where he hears exactly how controlled his life is over the radio as he hears a channel he isn’t supposed to, or as he genuinely connects with a woman who tells him the truth about his life, or tries to leave this perfectly curated city. He begins to seek the truth about himself and is honest about his desires. As we continue along we find that everyone in his life, his parents, his wife, and his best friend, are all actors whose sole aim is to ensure that the TV show which is Truman’s life goes on. It is after all a huge money maker and their livelihoods. They swear to Truman that their relationship with him is real even as they deny, dismiss, gaslight, and devalue this personhood, his doubts, and his search for truth.

Is this not an apt metaphor for whiteness? We get glimpses into how the creators of the show manipulate traffic, weather, fears, personal trauma, money, people, and trust to keep Truman’s reality invisible to him. Even the security workers for the show wear a t-shirt that says, “Love him, Protect him.”

What is love?

Is it protection from the truth? that seems to be the reason white children are not taught about the impacts of racism while Black and Brown children of the global majority experience the negative impacts of racialization from conception to their often premature and violent death. Why do we protect the innocence of white children while the children of the global majority must endure the most violent and horrific losses possible? I’ve heard white parents talk about how they want to shield their children from the emotional pain and trauma of knowing the realities of this world a little while longer as I watch video after video of parents picking up pieces of their children after the most recent bombings, people digging children out of mines, wild dogs feeding on the bodies of children who have died of malnourishment and genocide. Here we are protecting these children from the truth of our horrible deeds as a nation, as taxpayers, and as capitalists who have invested in companies that disregard human rights and evade human responsibility in the name of profits. Here we are protecting them from the truth in the name of love. What a huge and vile profanity of that sacred word and action, love, precisely because love honors truth. love accepts the truth because it sets us free, it liberates us to live a life of integrity and value. Love protects the vulnerable and marginalized from extinction not the powerful and privileged from discomfort.

In the movie, Truman must give all he has, including his willingness to live to uncover the truth. He is only able to reach the boundaries of the large city-sized dome that has contained his entire life after choosing to continue the process of liberation even if it costs him everything he knows including his very existence. he would rather die than continue to live knowing that his life is nothing more than puppetry. This is the cost of liberation.

This is the reality that white folks, white adjacent, and those with internalized white supremacy need to come to terms with. They can at any point turn back and live the privileged, protected life that hundreds of years of global colonization and racial capitalism have afforded them. They can and most do choose white supremacy even the liberals who are disgusted by the idea and set themselves as ideologically against it. These very people give in to the luxuries and comforts of having their perceptions undisturbed and unchallenged. They choose the familiar lie over the reality that we are in fact the callous monsters throwing away day-old bread while this world that produced it dies starving at our doorstep. We who put ammo in vending machines at our grocery stores and easily access weapons that are destroying our earth and everything on it are the villains of every dystopic narrative telling ourselves it’s because of our great love for our children that we do not expose them to the truth while the biggest cause of death for children in this nation is guns.

repost @scieneandnonduality

Core to every liberation movement across time and culture has been this: the truth sets us free. It is the truth of our human interconnectedness the reality that the web of life is so intrinsically woven that to harm one part of it is to harm the entirety of it. The truth is that we are no better, no bigger, no higher, no greater, no freer than the most oppressed of our world. That in someone else’s liberty, provision, and safety lies our own in correlation, not in competition. The truth is that the very integrity of this interwoven fabric that we call life sustains us and cannot be claimed exclusively by some blip in time, an accumulator of power and wealth. Empires fall. Life remains.

Here we are in our very own white (incredibly consequential and serious) lie, the American Empire show. Only we are not an innocent bystander or caring white saviors of the world but the ravenous consumer of it. How hard will you fight to dismantle the whiteness in yourself that allows your world to burn while you clock in and collect your paycheck? How hard will you fight to stop the war machine that is terrorizing this world? How adamantly will you fight the white-centeredness that is tearing this world apart to feed our comfort? I am looking for Aaron Bushnell energy from white people. I’m looking for Truman unrelenting energy to find and break the limits of the gilded lie that is white privilege. That is what it will take to break down this world your predecessors created. Perhaps instead of predecessors who protect the innocence of your white children, you can rise up and become abolitionist ancestors. Do not let the lives of the children of the global majority be truncated for the comfortable lie you grew up with. Do not let the lives taken for this awakening be in vain. White people, this revolution is happening with or without you. It requires passion. Join and do not be lukewarm.

To the desi (South Asian - in colonizer terms) population that upholds white supremacy. What are you doing? your self-hatred is palpable. Remember who your ancestors were, fighting the colonizers for liberation and independence. It was illegal to speak, read, write, or publish our languages in our lands for a hundred years. It was illegal for us to gather together with one another without breaking British law for fear of sedition. It was illegal to exchange goods we produced on our land made with our hands. And here we are using our resilience, power, work, and intellect to uphold whiteness? Usha, Vivek, Nikki, whoever you are, supporting the white victim rhetoric, watch them throw you away just as you threw away your people in exchange for what? the lie of supremacy that has been debunked by every fallen empire? Embarrassingly shortsighted choice no matter how you look at it.