Confessions of a White Man: The Cult of Comfort

This is the beginning of a new series I’m calling “Confessions of a White Man.”

Why “confessions”? Because confession is about telling the truth—the truth I was once too blind, or too comfortable, to see. It’s about naming the insidious ways I was shaped by a system I didn't choose but was born into. It’s about pulling back the curtain on the cult of whiteness: a system that doesn’t just harm those it excludes but sedates those it claims to protect.

Whiteness functions like a cult. It whispers comfort, proximity to power, and a false sense of belonging, all while keeping us numb to the reality that we’re being used to uphold our own oppression. It trades our curiosity for certainty, our solidarity for status, and our humanity for sedation.

I’m not writing this to shame anyone, least of all myself. I’m writing this to expose how proximity to power is actually just proximity to sedation and manipulation by the ruling class. Because only by confessing the lies we’ve swallowed can we begin to imagine freedom that belongs to all of us, not just the few who sit at the top. This is where my confessions begin.

My First Confession: The Sedation of Privilege

My first confession is this: I was born into a system where the story of privilege and comfort was used to sedate me into propping up my own oppression. The American economic system is a prime example. I confess that I didn’t see all the ways our economy is built on the logic of slavery. I didn’t see it because I was born into it. I, like so many others, was subconsciously sold the idea that my proximity to power, my whiteness, was a kind of comfort.

But that "comfort" was a trick. It isn’t comfort at all; it’s a form of sedation. And that sedation keeps us from asking the one question whiteness fears most: who benefits?

The truth is that the logic of slavery never disappeared; it just evolved into something even more insidious. It's a system so deeply embedded into the fabric of America that its echoes are everywhere, hiding in plain sight. Let’s look at a few examples together.

 * Wages as Rations: Under slavery, people weren't paid for their labor; they were fed just enough to keep working. Today, most workers live paycheck to paycheck, paid just enough to return to work tomorrow. Minimum wage is the modern ration, a measure of what’s needed to survive, not to thrive.

 * Debt as Chains: In the past, slavery bound bodies to landowners. Today, debt from student loans and medical bills to credit cards binds us to corporations and banks, ensuring a cycle of lifelong servitude. We are no longer owned, but we are chained by our financial obligations within a system that has rationed our wages.

 * Surveillance and Control: Slave patrols once policed movement and punished resistance. Now, algorithms track our productivity, employers monitor our keystrokes, and police militarize our neighborhoods—all to ensure compliance with a system that demands we stay in line.

 * Divide and Conquer: Enslavers intentionally kept poor whites and enslaved Black people apart, preventing them from communicating, understanding each other, and uniting. Today, the cult of whiteness still convinces poor and working-class white people to fight immigrants, Black workers, and perceived "outsiders" instead of the billionaires who are stealing from all of us and pillaging the very earth we all need to survive.

The Illusion of Freedom

The logic of slavery persists because the cult of whiteness convinces us that because we are closer to the top of the hierarchy, we are free. But comfort isn’t freedom. Sedation isn’t liberation. This illusion of freedom is the most powerful lie of all, and it has kept me––and so many others—from seeing the truth.

This confession is the first step toward waking up to the reality that we are all, in different ways, propping up our own oppression. I call this a confession because, if I'm honest, all the signs have always been there. White people, myself included, have just felt too comfortable to dismantle it, and our complacency has kept us from imagining something better.