Black Excellence: White People Fear the Culture They Can’t Live Without
We must rid ourselves of DEI through every facet of our society for the sake of our safety and the sake of our children. –Dominic Michael Tripi on X.
Hundreds of dancers in this half-time show and they can’t manage to feature one single white person. This is pathetic. –Dominic Michael Tripi on X a week later in response to Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl LIX halftime show.
Dominic Michael Tripi, who styles himself to be a conservative pundit and social critic, suffers from an acute case of DEI Derangement Syndrome. He fears diversity, equity, and inclusion programs endanger society and its children. Yet, when he sees that Kendrick Lamar’s spectacular halftime show excludes white people, he doesn’t shrug his shoulders and say, “Well, that’s how meritocracy works. No white Hip Hop dancers made the cut.” No, Mr. Tripi wants Mr. Lamar and his production team to embrace DEI to include white dancers, even if they might be “unqualified” for such an august occasion.
Mr. Tripi be trippin’.
The irrationality and contradictions embedded in White America’s love-hate relationship with Black America mystify me. The animosity so many white Americans harbor toward Black Americans — the virulence of it, the persistence of it, the sheer irrationality of it — all defy logic.
Growing up, I felt a mix of sadness, hurt, and anger when confronting the impact of white supremacy on my childhood. To my continued amusement, Black Americans never fail to have at the ready little adages and maxims to reinforce our humanity in the face of these dehumanizing experiences of prejudice and bias. My mother, ever the realist, said, “They can kill us, but they can’t beat us.” This aphorism, meant to stiffen my resolve to stare down hate, also serves as a sobering indictment of a nation still unable to come to terms with its original sin of slavery and racism.
More sanguine in his appraisal of the Black American experience, my late father often laughed at the inconsistencies and contradictions endemic to white fear and anxiety. Referring to the instability of white rage as “entertaining to watch,” my father had a point. His experience as a soldier in WWII taught him the dark humor of white supremacy. Risking his life as a scout during the Battle of Arno Line, Italy in 1944 didn’t buy him any respect from his white superiors who quickly tore off the regiment’s Buffalo Soldier insignia once they returned to Norfolk, Virginia after the war. For Dad, fighting for freedom while denied it at home seemed like a mix between a rollercoaster ride and a horror movie. Entertaining indeed.
White Americans fear, resent, and sometimes violently resist Black advancement, Black culture, Black excellence, and Black creativity — powerful forces that shape and propel the entire country forward and resonate around the world. They decry “woke” culture (read: Black culture) while consuming and profiting off Black music, Black fashion, Black slang, Black dance, and Black ingenuity. Their deranged rage against DEI initiatives belies the fact that white American workplaces, entertainment, and even kitchens are richer for the influence of Black America.
Embedded in the Black American DNA is a cunning and relentless push to overcome barriers while dragging the rest of American culture toward the ideals of the founding fathers, who never saw us coming, yet feared our rise. Black culture does not merely survive — it thrives. Through it all, Black America continues to embody the ideals that White America claims to hold dear: innovation, creativity, entrepreneurialism, and democracy. The Typhoid Mary of DEI Derangement Syndrome, President Donald J. Trump, publicly admitted Black America’s role in making the United States a reality while still waiting to get the credit for making the country a success.
“African Americans built this nation. You built this nation. You know you’re just starting to get real credit for that. Ok, I don’t know if you know that. We all built it, but you were such a massive part of it, bigger than you were given credit for.” — Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States.
One of my protégés summed it perfectly as we advocated hiring more Black Americans in an advertising agency where we both worked. While the agency freely used elements of Black Culture, they rarely felt the need to include Black talent behind the scenes, especially at the top. Using another of Black America’s favorite adages, he said, “They hate us ’cause they ain’t us.”
This blunt but insightful observation cuts to the heart of the contradiction. White resentment isn’t merely about race; it’s about the juxtaposition of white rage and Black ebullience. It’s about the cognitive dissonance that comes from centuries of telling Black people they are lesser, only to watch them rise, again and again, to undeniable heights of cultural and intellectual achievement. It is about witnessing a people who, despite every historical justification for bitterness, nihilism, and violence, choose instead to create, innovate, and persevere. It is about an indomitable spirit that slavery, segregation, lynching, and mass incarceration have failed to crush. That kind of resilience breeds both admiration and, for those who feel their foundations cracking, deep and abiding resentment.
The fear of Black America is not rooted in the actual potential to harm. Despite centuries of systemic oppression, despite suffering more injustices than almost any other group in this country, Black Americans have never collectively turned to terrorism, insurrection, or political violence as a means of revenge. We have seen countless groups across the globe resort to blunt instruments of destruction when they feel disenfranchised — white supremacists, militant religious factions, and violent nationalist movements. But Black America? Our power is rooted in something far more radical, subversive, and successful: joy, defiance, and the organic strength of community struggle. We take our pain and turn it into music, literature, and art. We take our exclusion and build our own institutions, economies, and pathways. We refuse to be defined by the limitations others place on us.
And therein lies the real lesson for white America. Fear, nihilism, and resentment will kill white Americans in the end. It’s not Black people who are burning themselves out with paranoia and rage; it’s the white Americans who spend their days ranting about the “decline” of “their culture” while standing in a world built, at least in part, by Black hands. The refusal to acknowledge that contribution — to recognize that the very things they celebrate about America exist because of, not despite, Black people — only serves to deepen their existential dread.
They don’t have to live like this. They choose to. White Americans have a choice to learn from Black America’s example. They can embrace resilience instead of victimhood, joy instead of rage, and creativity instead of destruction. They can let go of the fear that granting Black people full equality means losing something themselves. They can finally understand that this country has only ever truly moved forward when Black people have led the way.
Still, as Black Americans, we have work to do, too. The barriers are still there — economic, social, and structural. The fight for justice is not over, and the weight of systemic oppression is not something that can be wished away. We need to work on shoring up our own neighborhoods and communities. We need to do better by our children and keep them from falling into the nihilism that plagues the white majority. But we know how to move through the fire. We know how to turn struggle into strength. We have always understood that the American ideals of freedom and democracy are not theoretical — they are lived experiences refined and sharpened by the communities who have had to fight the hardest for credit, recognition, and respect.
So, let white America wrestle with its demons. Let them rage against the tide. Let them scream about “woke” and DEI while wearing sneakers designed by Black creatives, streaming music born from Black genius, and prospering from the technology and medical advances invented by Black minds. Let them clutch their fear, resentment, and misplaced nostalgia for a world that never truly existed. Meanwhile, Black America will continue to do what it has always done: push forward, innovate, create, and, in doing so, redefine what it means to be American.
The truth is, white people don’t hate us because they ain’t us. They hate us because they owe us.
