The Black Identity Crisis: The Addiction to Whiteness and Why I Am Now Questioning My Blackness

Introduction: The Dilemma of Identity

I never thought I would arrive at this place. I have always taken pride in my Blackness—pride in the resilience, the beauty, the culture, the unshakable history of resistance and survival against overwhelming odds. And yet, I now find myself at a crossroads, questioning whether the very act of identifying as “Black” has become a psychological snare. Not from shame, not from self-disgust, but because of the twisted ways anti-Blackness functions as a global language that poisons our relationships with each other and with ourselves.

The paradox is brutal: Blackness as an identity is both the source of profound power and the ground of perpetual degradation. Across the globe, almost all African-descended peoples have been colonized, enslaved, or subjugated by European empires. And because of that colonization, our definitions of success, beauty, respectability, and excellence are often tethered to Eurocentric and white supremacist standards. Even when we proclaim Black pride, we are too often doing so through the rubrics of whiteness.

This crisis has become so severe that I sometimes wonder if relinquishing my “Blackness” as a political category is the only way forward—not because I do not love my people, but because I am unsure who among us has not been co-opted into becoming a gatekeeper for the very system that destroys us.

Anti-Blackness as a Global Logic

Psychologists and historians alike have documented that anti-Blackness is not confined to the borders of the United States. In Diagnosing Whiteness & Anti-Blackness: White Psychopathology, Collective Psychosis, and Trauma in America, I wrote:

“Anti-Blackness functions as the psychic cement of the Western world. It binds together not only the logic of whiteness, but also the aspirations of every group who measures their humanity against the degradation of the African.”

This explains why Black Nigerians can look down on Black Americans, and why Black Americans often project disdain back onto Black Nigerians. Each group, colonized by a different European empire, carries its own version of internalized white supremacy. We do not simply suffer racism from the outside; we weaponize it against each other, becoming enforcers of Eurocentric hierarchies within our own communities.

Dr. Bobby E. Wright described this psychological warfare as Mentacide:

“Mentacide is an organized, systematic, and deliberate process to break down the minds of a people and program them to participate willingly in their own oppression and eventual destruction.” (The Psychopathic Racial Personality and Other Essays)

To be Black in a white supremacist world, Wright argued, is to be constantly at risk of annihilation—not only by external forces, but by our own internalized drive toward self-destruction.

The Trap of Valorization and Valuelessness

Sociologist Claire Jean Kim, in Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World, describes a racial “valorization” process, whereby certain groups (in her study, Asian Americans) are bestowed more social value than Black people. America’s racial ladder places Blackness at the absolute bottom, the site of ultimate “valuelessness.”

What does this mean? It means Black identity in the United States is not merely cultural; it is juridical and political. It is a legal category invented to ensure our perpetual dehumanization. And if Blackness is constructed to signify the least value, then all other groups—including many Black people themselves—derive a sense of value through their distance from it.

This is why, when I hear the refrain, “Black people are not a monolith,” I grow uneasy. The very need to assert non-monolithic identity reflects the depths of anti-Black logic. As I argue in my book:

“White people never defend themselves against being a monolith, because they implicitly assume infinite value, infinite individuality. Black people, tethered to a status of social nothingness, must constantly protest their sameness in order to escape the masses of Blackness that white supremacy defines as worthless.”

Dr. E. Franklin Frazier captured this brilliantly in Black Bourgeoisie when he wrote:

“The black bourgeoisie is constantly attempting to escape from identification with the masses of Negroes, because the masses represent the stigma of color and the badge of slavery.”

That escape is still underway today, often disguised as individual achievement or professional success, but always tethered to distancing oneself from “ordinary” Black people.

Gatekeepers of Whiteness

This is the heart of my crisis: I no longer know if the Black person standing in front of me is a comrade in struggle, or a gatekeeper for white supremacy. Too many of us, consciously or unconsciously, have become enforcers of whiteness.

Some wear it openly, like Byron Donalds, Ben Carson, or Clarence Thomas—men whose careers have been built on validating the lie that Black inferiority is real and permanent. Others wear it invisibly, like the “respectable” figures who posture as progressive while still reinforcing the boundaries of white supremacy—those Steven A. Smiths, Al Sharptons, or even academics like Ibram Kendi or Eddie Glaude.

And then there are the rest of us—myself included—who at various points have played the role of gatekeeper, reinforcing white norms even as we claimed to resist them. In Addicted to White: The Oppressed in League with the Oppressor, Dr. Jerome Fox describes this as:

“The psychological and behavioral dependency of Black people on whiteness, in which liberation is imagined as proximity to or imitation of the oppressor rather than freedom from them.”

Dr. Amos Wilson warned that this addiction ultimately serves Black annihilation. He wrote:

“When we don’t control the definitions, the values, the educational and socialization processes, we will inevitably turn inward and destroy ourselves in the service of those who do.” (Blueprint for Black Power)

This annihilation is not accidental; it is the predictable outcome of anti-Black systems that make collaboration with whiteness more rewarding than solidarity with each other.

Color, Passing, and the Escape from Blackness

One of the cruelest tricks of anti-Blackness is how it weaponizes skin tone against us, creating hierarchies within Blackness itself. I have witnessed, time and again, people of my own hue and complexion attempt to escape their Blackness by claiming alternative identities—Indigenous, biracial, even Latino (not Afro-Latino). This is not new; it is part of the long genealogy of what was once called the “tragic mulatto” syndrome, what I might call the famed “mut” syndrome today.

As much as I have critiqued the ills and demonic forces behind whiteness, I have had to turn my lens inward, toward Blackness itself, and ask: What is Blackness?

Dr. Frances Cress Welsing insisted that there is a real difference in the psychological functioning of lighter-skinned Black people compared to darker-skinned Black people:

“Because of the relative closeness of light-skinned Black people to white genetic material, there exists a distinct psychological dynamic where the escape from Blackness and the pursuit of whiteness becomes more accessible, and in many cases, more desirable.” (The Isis Papers)

The lighter the skin, the closer the association to whiteness, and thus the more accessible the psychological escape route. That escape route is not simply about personal identity—it is about survival in a system where proximity to whiteness is rewarded with protection, opportunity, and perceived value.

But this strategy of escape, while individually rational, is collectively devastating. It reinforces the very anti-Black structure it seeks to avoid. Every time someone disidentifies with Blackness, they affirm the position that Blackness is the lowest rung of human existence, the thing to flee. And yet, who can blame them, when Blackness is made synonymous with infinite valuelessness?

This too is part of my crisis. Not only do I question whether I can trust my community ideologically, I also wrestle with the fact that skin tone hierarchies have turned Blackness itself into an unstable and contested category. For some, it is a badge of pride. For others, it is a burden to be discarded. For all of us, it is a trap designed by whiteness but reinforced, tragically, by our own hands.

The Market of Betrayal

The American empire is diabolically efficient at ensuring everyone has a price. Politicians, preachers, professors, athletes, artists—everyone is available for purchase if the price is right. The empire makes Black betrayal profitable, rewarding those who reinforce the mythologies of whiteness, while punishing or silencing those who dare to speak truths like Frances Cress Welsing, James Baldwin, Albert Cleage, Bobby Wright, or Amos Wilson.

James Baldwin once declared:

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”

And in another context:

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”

Those who dared to tell these truths were often marginalized, erased, or bought off by an empire that thrives on silence and complicity.

This is why I sometimes feel surrounded by invisible Ku Klux Klan hoods—even among my own. I know that any given Black politician, lawyer, doctor, or even childhood friend could one day sell me out, whether for a promotion, a contract, or a fleeting taste of proximity to whiteness. The logic of anti-Blackness ensures betrayal is not only possible but expected.

Where Has My Community Gone?

So I ask: Where is my community? Where is the village of thinkers, freedom fighters, and visionaries who grounded their work not in personal gain but in collective liberation?

The absence feels glaring. My “community” is fragmented, seduced, or disillusioned. And I am left in a fog of reckoning—questioning whether clinging to “Blackness” as an identity traps me in a structure designed to erase me.

But perhaps the reckoning itself is the answer. Perhaps naming this crisis—calling out the contradictions and betrayals—is an act of survival in itself.

Conclusion: A Crisis Without Resolution

I am not resolved. I may never be. But I know this: the crisis of Black identity is real, and it is global. It is the psychological warfare of anti-Blackness that convinces us to devalue each other, to escape the masses, to serve as gatekeepers rather than liberators.

And until we confront the internalized structures of Mentacide, addiction to whiteness, and self-destruction, we will remain unsafe even with one another.

The question is not simply, What does it mean to be Black? The question is, Can Blackness be reclaimed from its function as a tool of eternal degradation?

That is the struggle before us. And it is why I find myself, with a heavy heart, standing at the edge of relinquishing my Blackness—not because I despise it, but because I love it too much to see it continually annihilated, betrayed, and sold for scraps.