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CHAPTER 1

Why Think Like a White Man?

‘Let us take the negro as we find him, as God designed him, not a white man, nor the equal of a white man …’

— Admiral Bedford Pim (1826—1886), a Royal Navy officer, Conservative MP, Arctic explorer, barrister and author (and ardent racist)

In hundreds, if not thousands, of years from now, scholars, historians and tin-foil-hat-wearing crackpot conspiracy theorists (the latter almost certainly able to trace their lineage back to a Trump voter) will research and debate the Barack Obama phenomenon with intense fascination. I can hear the arguments now: it was his oratory, his emotional intelligence, the alarming imbecility of his predecessor or the fact that he was a man of principle and faith, which propelled him to such heights. But they will all be wrong and/or too polite to tell the unspeakable truth.

What propelled Barack Obama to prominence, his superpower, was his key talent: simply, his immense understanding of white people. Without that, he’d probably have peaked as a butler at the White House, a veteran of Ronald Reagan’s war on drugs or a long-distance runner (he is, after all, ‘part Kenyan’ … according to Boris Johnson).

Crucially Barack was part of the tiny, micro-fraction of black people who managed to crack the code of the most important, difficult and powerful of all white people: the White Man. Watching Barack bob, weave and hadoken through white people, feed them sweet lies as opposed to the bitter truth, comfort their fears and soothe their tears all while maintaining the admiration of black people was beautiful to watch. When it came to the White Man, however, that brother was world class. Top five dead or alive.

He knew how to placate the White Man, how to pander to him and how to play him like a fiddle. He even knew how to put a White Man on ice. He mastered the White Man in theory, and then became the White Man’s master in practice.

And if you want to go places, you have to understand white people too. Especially the White Man. It is as straightforward as that. Get your Barack on, or get barracked.

White Men, specifically those of Anglo-Saxon stock from northern Europe (who went on to steal America and other areas of the world), essentially run everything that matters on the face of the Lord God’s green Earth. And whatever they don’t currently run, they are actively plotting and planning to take over. Where the stakes are high enough, they are probably bombing nations (under the unbelievably effective marketing guise of ‘protecting human rights’) in order to do so.

White Men are the emperors, the modern pharaohs, the owners and editors of the dictionary, the purveyors and deniers of credibility and rights. And wrongs. And book deals. And, most pertinently to this book, they are more likely than anyone else to be your boss and to control, as well as define, the corporate environment or institution within which you work and hope to excel.

Fuck what you heard: corporations are not people.¹ They don’t have minds of their own. The actions of corporations are not driven by nature. Or even nurture. Corporations are just entities that reflect the interests and therefore the thinking, cultural norms and practices of their controllers and owners for the benefit of their controllers and owners.

If a corporation is controlled and owned by White Men, which is true of pretty much all major companies worldwide, then it will reflect the interests, thinking, cultural norms and practices of White Men. Which they do.

Nevertheless, in the interests of clarity, readers should be under no illusion: the proverbial White Man is not your enemy, far from it. He is much more than that: he is your owner. He owns all of us.

And I don’t mean ‘owner’ in the Ben Affleck-ancestry² slave-master way – in which you could run up on him, slit his throat, crap in his birthday cake mixture or run away from him. The White Man of today has much more control over all of us than his enslaved African-owning genocidal criminal forebears.

You can’t touch today’s White Man: a drone will tear you limb from limb before you can even dream of getting to his throat or his cake mixture and you certainly can’t run away from him. He is in your company, your algorithm, your cuisine and, most importantly, your head.

Therefore, you have to understand how he thinks and acts in order to understand how to beat him at his own game and truly experience freedom and prosperity. As the old saying goes, ‘If you can’t join them, study them, think like them, act like them and then obliterate them.’

Why White People?

Let’s take a moment to provide a little succour to white fragility: the average white man or woman, Dave the Deplorable, the grime-quoting teacher who tried to ‘save’ you, or your perma-broke weedhead friends Will and Wendy, have little to do with the real White Man. And have little to fear from this book. In fact, they, too, stand to better themselves by reading it.

The average garden-variety white man or woman (especially if they happen to be working class – meaning broke) are, at best, on a slightly better version of the sinking ship black people have been on for a few centuries now. They, too, are sinking, just at a slower rate. They, too, need to fill up the holes and turn the ship around. This book will show them how.

Nevertheless, you cannot understand the White Man and the actions of the White Man if you don’t understand ‘white people’.

So, what do I mean by ‘white people’?

Well, just that. I mean white people. But in the ‘Africa’ sense of the term. This book ‘Africa-ises’ white people, which means: except where absolutely necessary, it describes and chronicles white people in a manner that neither reflects nor cares for the varying complexities, diversity, difference or differences in white people. No nuance, no care, no fucks given. This book just lobs them all together in one absolutely monolithic group. You know, like white people often do with ‘Africa’ or ‘black people’.

Some would argue, with absolute justification, that such a crass use of the term ‘white people’ is lacking in complexity and therefore offensive. They would probably go on to question why this book would do such a thing. Why doesn’t this book just ‘pander to the white woman’ as the great negro writer Marlon James suggested that all writers of colour have to in order to succeed?³ Why alienate the most powerful block of book buyers in the solar system? Was this written, produced and performed exclusively by Lauryn Hill? Does the writer hate white people?

Good lord, no. I, and Lauryn Hill, I presume, don’t harbour the least bit of disdain towards white people. In fact, I, like many a black man who makes a bit of money, love and admire white women (especially the ones who have mainstream publishing in a choke hold). I have a white wife, a white ex-wife and two white stepchildren (whom a white judge has ordered that I pay private school fees for). And, in my working life, I’ve found myself under more mediocre white men than Stormy Daniels. So, I clearly have the right, as well as the authority, to write about white people.

I know white people much better than they know themselves.

To be clear and ethical, I lob white people together and write about white people in a sloppy manner out of absolute laziness and an unwillingness to let facts, complexity and diversity get in the way of a potential bestseller.

The Whytelaw Classification of the Caucasian
Type of white person	Other names	Defining qualities	Interesting fact
White Man – spelt with a capital W and M.	the Man, Da Man, White Daddy, master, massa, the boss, coloniser, enslaver, etc.	Money, absolute power, total authority, absolute impunity.	Runs the world.
White man (‘white man’) – spelt with a lower-case w (unless at the start of a sentence) and a lower-case m.	Lil white man, wannabe White Man, underboss, assistant to White Man, useful idiot, etc.	Some money, some power, some authority, patriarchal power. And pink skin weirdly described as white.	Often mistaken for a White Man, often mistakes himself for a White Man. Paid more than you by default.
White people – an all-encompassing term covering all white people. Where there is a need to differentiate, prefixes are added.	Whitey, YT, Ypipo, oyinbo, crackers, missionary, etc.	Sometimes money, and the sympathy of the police department. And pink skin weirdly described as white.	To varying degrees, they are the key secondary beneficiaries of the practices and malpractices of the White Man.
White Tragedies	(White) working-class masses, white trash, po’ white trash, redneck, hillbilly, slave overseers, the police, prison wardens, etc.	Pink skin weirdly described as white only.	Easily persuaded by the White Man to believe that black people and other ‘non-desirables’ are the source of their brokeness.
Hollywood Villain White People (HVWP)4	Russians, ‘Putin’, Rasputin, Gopnik, Drago, Commie, Rad, etc.	Nuclear weapons. And pink skin weirdly described as white.	They’re in some form of perpetual squabble with the White Man over Lord-knows-what so the White Man will buy your script if you’re slandering the shit out of HVWP.Moves in silence and often outsmarts the White Man.
White people trapped in black skin	See Appendix 1.
White Chocolate	See Appendix 1.

All White Men Are Not Equal

Readers will notice something extremely rare and strange for a book on the black experience: it doesn’t focus exclusively on America. It draws examples, inspiration and wisdom from much further afield. Especially ‘Great Britain’. And there is a reason for that …

If I had to eulogise the American White Man, forbid the precious thought, it would be a fairly swift and straightforward affair: ‘Compared to his British cousin, that devil was an angel.’

And take it from a scholar, everyone in the room – the Chinese man, the Indian man, the Caribbean man, the African man, the Russian, even the freedom fries-loving French man – would give a collective ‘mmm-hmmm’ in complete agreement. The Irish man, his long-term whipping boy, would probably snatch the microphone and yell, ‘Ah, screw yooehr weasel wahrds! Give me de bloody micrahphone, wee lad, and let me tell ya abooeht dat bastard.’

Playing with the British White Man is the very definition of playing with fire. Take the second great white war (popularly known as World War II), for example: the Germans were as tough as nails, high as Cheech and Chong⁵ and, of course, ‘efficient’, yet they couldn’t conquer the British. While the rest of Europe fell like a stripper’s G-string, Britain held off against fantastic odds (with the usually uncredited help of millions of African and Asian people).

The German White Man made the Czechs choke on currywurst, romped through a drunk Poland, slapped the spliff out of the Dutch man’s mouth, and reduced ‘imperial’ France to a glorified social-justice think tank, but he was forced to behave himself when it came to Britain.

Britain stood firm and alone (not really alone, but national folklore has to be upheld) against the Germans until the Americans (including 130,000 African Americans stationed in Britain) and the Russians defeated the Nazis once and for all. And we all lived happily ever after. ‘We’, in this instance, of course didn’t include ‘the blacks’. The blacks had to go home and fight the whites – both those we had just fought alongside as well as those we fought against – for our own freedom and equality. A fight we’re still fighting till this day.

The British White Man is the quintessential White Man. Even the American White Man, gung-ho as he is, knows this only too well. Britain is the architect of much of the world as we know it today, thanks to its conquests and colonies. Britain played (and continues to play) a unique and interesting role in shaping the world. In fact, don’t be shocked if somewhere near the very pinnacle of your firm, wherever it may be but especially in America, there is a British man. There would be no such thing as an American or a Ghanaian or a Pakistani or a Nigerian or a Saudi Arabian without Britain.

The British White Man is the White Daddy of the world. Yet, even in full knowledge of how abusive (and occasionally deadbeat) he has been, he is still loved by much of the world. Amazing. Nevertheless: while you’re gazing at the British White Man romantically thinking, ‘he is so lovely. He reminds me of Mr Bean and Benny Hill’, he is looking at you, thinking, ‘I’m so glad we reserved the right to bomb niggers.’⁶

Once upon a time, not long enough ago, the British White Man would proudly proclaim that his empire, the British Empire, was ‘so vast that the sun never sets on it’ – a phrase originally ascribed to the Spanish Empire, who turned out to be knock-off paella when compared to the British – which in practice means ‘we had slaves toiling like fridges: nonstop.’

With that said, as years have turned to decades and decades to centuries, the British White Man has become much more sophisticated and subtle than his American counterpart. Practice has made perfect.

Case in point: unlike America, Britain never actually enslaved Africans in large numbers to toil the soil in Britain itself. Perhaps because ‘the air of England is too pure for any slave to breathe’ (a quote attributed to the beautiful mind of William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield). Britain opted instead for a more slave-from-home and ‘offshore-outsourced-enslavement’ approach. Popularly known as colonialism. Of course, Britain led/industrialised the great hustle of the day but they preferred to do it in ‘the colonies’ and the Caribbean. Entire nations such as Jamaica and Barbados were built and populated by enslaved Africans for the purpose of making Britain rich. And Britain got paid in full.

Britain’s prosperity was, like that of America and many other ‘developed’ nations, built principally on the enslavement of Africans. Slavery was the fuel of industrialisation.

Another intriguing fact: unlike America, Britain never had segregation or any other explicit white supremacy laws on the books at home, as opposed to the slave quarters (known in sanitised terms as ‘the colonies’). Yet Britain, like America, was and remains a nation deeply segregated along racial (and class) lines.

Perhaps owing in part to these superficial realities, Britain never willingly acknowledges its role in the mass enslavement and debasement of Africans. In fact, if you ask the average British person what role Britain played in the slave trade they are likely to say that Britain ended it, which is the equivalent of a person morbidly obese as a result of over-eating standing in front of the very buffet that enhanced his waistline screaming, ‘NO MORE. THIS IS NOT GOOD AND IT IS NOT GOOD FOR YOU’ to other, slimmer diners. And if you dare to take it any further, don’t be shocked if you’re invited to ‘fuck off back to Bongo-Bongo land’.

The British White Man is a top-shelf Louis Vuitton sneaker to his American cousin’s bargain-bin Nike: quality over quantity. He may lead you to believe that he is a happy Manolo Ribera to America’s Tony Montana but he isn’t. In reality he is Alejandro Sosa to America’s Tony Montana: he’s the boss. Fuck with him at your peril.

To understand how the British White Man thinks is to understand how the White Man thinks, and to beat him at his own game. If you can master how to think and act like a White Man, you, too, can have an empire the sun won’t set on.

1 ‘Mitt Romney says “corporations are people”’, Washington Post, 11 August 2011.

2 ‘Ben Affleck apologises for PBS slavery censorship: “I was embarrassed”’, Variety, 21 April 2015.

3 ‘Marlon James: “Writers of colour pander to the white woman”’, Sian Cain, The Guardian, 30 November 2015.

4 Please note that the white man of Hollywood Villain White People descent is still a White Man. Just not at this moment or historically as strategically full-fat-white (i.e. anti-black) as the White Man who enslaved, colonised us and often let his mistress name and draw the borders of our countries during pillow talk. How many times in your life have you met a black person with a Russian name?

5 ‘High Hitler: how Nazi drug abuse steered the course of history’, The Guardian, 25 September 2016.

6 According to his baby mama, this quote was made by David Lloyd George, at the time he was Leader of the Opposition. It is not clear if he was being sarcastic or serious. Nevertheless, since that statement was made Britain has been, to coin a phrase, getting its David Lloyd George on (i.e. bombing sand, land and swimming niggers).