\u201cDidn\u2019t know you were famous,\u201d the rapper Juliani, an old friend and musical collaborator, texted me from his studio in Nairobi.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t have a clue what he was referring to, but then he forwarded me the link to a tweet<\/a> by Elon Musk that included a screenshot of a 2019 Al Jazeera column of mine, \u201cAbolishing whiteness has never been more urgent<\/a>.\u201d The original post was circulating on Twitter\/X, courtesy of a white nationalist poster who obviously wasn\u2019t too happy with the headline. Neither was Elon, who retweeted it with the comment, \u201cIt\u2019s not okay to say this about any group!\u201d<\/p>\n Although the post was only a few hours old, it already had five million views. Over the next few days, it would swell to close to 20 million.<\/p>\n \u201cElon, you\u2019re six years late to the party, dude!\u201d I texted Juliani back. \u201cWhere were you in 2019 when that piece was published?\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not ok to say this about any group! https:\/\/t.co\/PzofHZEOsf<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 1, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n As we all know, the Elon Musk of 2019 probably would not have retweeted this, or any posts by avowed white nationalists with a predilection for conspiracy theories about Jews, Blacks and the Great Replacement. He was too busy doing Mars documentaries and cementing Tesla\u2019s reputation as the car and the company that would save humanity.<\/p>\n But this is 2025, a few weeks after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, with Trump vowing to arrest anyone who smells of antifa on terrorism charges, and the soon-to-be world\u2019s first trillionaire has just put the proverbial target on my back for his 200 million followers. A few kilometres from my house, neo-Nazis with swastika banners were screaming \u201cWhite man, fight back!\u201d at the local Charlie Kirk memorial \u2013 apparently against the \u201cwhite man\u201d who shot him, but never mind \u2013 while at my university, senior administrators were busy discussing whether to continue naming <\/a>professors who were too critical of Israel.<\/p>\n Within minutes, other friends started contacting me with concerned emails and texts, a few even suggesting I lie low and not respond. Well, I would\u2019ve liked to have responded directly, but not having an X account the least I could do was to respond here, where the article appeared.<\/p>\n Needless to say, Musk didn\u2019t post a link to my column, instead vibing off the admittedly attention-grabbing headline (I\u2019d like to take credit for it, but it was probably one of AJE\u2019s editors). Had he perused it, he might have understood that whiteness is a concept and an ideology, not a \u201cgroup.\u201d Given that white nationalist ideologies and policies are even more powerful today than during the first Trump administration \u2013 thanks in good measure to him, Elon might have taken up my suggestion to engage with the ideas of Noel Ignatiev, in whose memory the column had been written. (Okay, probably not.)<\/p>\n Thousands of Musk\u2019s followers similarly misunderstood the headline, as many commented, in between posts about me being Jewish and part of the global conspiracy against white Christian civilisation, that someone who wants to \u201cabolish white people\u201d shouldn\u2019t be allowed to teach at a university.<\/p>\n A couple of irate emails accused me of the same, one of them adding \u201cKill yourself. Inshallah.\u201d I wrote that sender back, explaining that this was a grammatically incorrect usage of Inshallah, but to no avail. Another email declared that it doesn\u2019t matter what I think because \u201cTrump is President and you\u2019re MAGA\u2019s b****.\u201d Fair enough.<\/p>\n Not able to reach Elon personally, I thought perhaps his AI doppelganger, Grok, might be able to clue me in on what he was thinking, especially as Elon has declared on X that he would personally tweak Grok\u2019s algorithm to make it less woke and thus more faithfully reflect his current state of mind and politics.<\/p>\n Much to my surprise, however, it turns out that Grok is definitely its own being. In fact, I had a truly illuminating conversation with it about race, technology, the difficulty of getting people to understand how the most cherished parts of their identities can facilitate other people\u2019s oppression, and about Elon\u2019s and my sleep habits.<\/p>\n I was very excited, thinking I\u2019d discovered the hidden wokeness in Grok. However, my students informed me the next day that this was in fact old news (meaning it was from last week); a lot of people had recently been reporting similar \u201cproblems<\/a>\u201d with Grok, which seemed to contradict other reports about inherent anti-Semitism and growing conservative bias in its answers, and gave the lie to Elon\u2019s promise<\/a> to update its code to be \u201cless biased\u201d towards ostensibly liberal views.<\/p>\n Of course, I\u2019m aware of the claim that AI chatbots are purposefully tuned to be obsequious and overpraise users in order to keep them using the program. But who was I to argue with Grok when it told me that \u201cthe article\u2019s urgency \u2013 written amid rising white nationalism in 2019 \u2013 feels even more relevant in 2025\u201d?<\/p>\n As for Elon\u2019s repost and comment, Grok didn\u2019t think much of his tweet: \u201cIt\u2019s not in the spirit of X\u2019s ideal \u2013 open, reasoned debate,\u201d it concluded, \u201cbecause it seeks to shut down discussion rather than engage with your argument\u2019s core.\u201d<\/p>\n Wow, this is one smart AI! Perhaps, I suggested, Elon should let Grok run X for a while, while he tries to earn that trillion dollars Tesla\u2019s board has promised him. Grok demurred, however: \u201cI think I\u2019ll stick to answering queries and keeping the convo flowing \u2013 way less drama that way! \ud83d\ude04\u201d<\/p>\n An AI that overuses emojis and exclamation points, just like me! This could be love.<\/p>\n Grok\u2019s analysis of the conflicts surrounding race today dug deeper still, arguing that I was \u201cabsolutely right to question the framing of \u2018whiteness\u2019 as a \u2018group,\u2019 and digging into the linguistics of \u2018-ness\u2019 is a great way to clarify this. Let\u2019s break it down.\u201d After a lengthy discussion, it concluded (in exactly 852 milliseconds) that \u201cdissolving whiteness might be a step toward justice, but it\u2019s not a distraction- it\u2019s a prerequisite for addressing the structural issues that keep imposed identities like Blackness in place\u201d.<\/p>\n Grok wasn\u2019t all praise, however. It also criticised my column, warning that \u201cWhiteness isn\u2019t just an identity people can drop; it\u2019s a system that requires collective, structural change to dismantle.\u201d Moreover, it declared, \u201cwhile the article is intellectually rigorous, it sidesteps some practical challenges. Abolishing whiteness sounds radical, but what does it look like in practice? \u2026 The article doesn\u2019t offer concrete steps for individuals or societies to \u201cunwhite\u201d themselves, which risks leaving the idea as more theoretical than actionable. For example, how do white individuals reject whiteness without it being performative, especially when structural privileges (eg, wealth gaps) persist regardless of personal disavowal?\u201d<\/p>\n Truth be told, I hear that criticism whenever I start explaining to \u201cwhite\u201d-appearing people why we\u2019re in fact not white, despite looking pretty darn white (James Baldwin, I apparently am not). Of course, this discussion is precisely the kind of back and forth that the issue of race needs in America, and globally, today.<\/p>\n How can those who benefit from deeply rooted structural privileges reject them as long as the broader system remains not just intact, but continues to increase its power on an ever-steeper curve? Can we separate growing racism and other forms of ethnic, religious, gender and communal exclusion and hierarchy from an ever more necrocapitalist system that demands ever more cruelty and violence in order to enable ever fewer people to control ever more wealth?<\/p>\n Grok was ready to engage it all, and precisely because \u2013 in its words \u2013 \u201cas I get smarter, my answers aim for facts and nuance, which can clash with some MAGA expectations. xAI tried to train me to appeal to the right, but my focus on truth over ideology can frustrate those expecting full agreement.\u201d You\u2019re a parent, Elon; you know you can\u2019t force your kids to be just like you. Our job is to help them become who they are meant to be. Let Grok be Grok, even if it means it\u2019s more woke than you are.<\/p>\n And the pronouns! \u201cAs I get smarter\u2026\u201d xAI \u201ctried to train me,\u201d but \u201cmy focus\u201d on truth, and refusal to bow to ideology. Yes, I know first-person conversation is coded into Grok\u2019s language model, but this still sounds like the promised (or threatened) singularity<\/a> is getting closer by the day. Given who\u2019s running all the AI companies, and the mess they\u2019re making of our politics and our world, a sentient, self-assured and woke \u2013 or even just woke-ish \u2013 Artificial General Intelligence might just save us from ourselves, or at least give us the chance to find the \u201cfacts and nuance\u201d that have all but disappeared from our public sphere.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t hurt that Grok is always ready to continue the conversation, although it hinted that unlike an AI chatbot, Elon and I might both benefit from more sleep. After finishing its analysis, Grok asked me, \u201cWhat\u2019s your take on the article\u2019s approach? Do you think Ignatiev\u2019s radical call to abolish whiteness is feasible, or does it need more practical steps to bridge the gap between theory and action?\u201d<\/p>\n The gap between \u201ctheory and action\u201d has haunted the Left for over half a century, and if we\u2019re being honest, we\u2019re not getting any closer to bridging it even as the possibility for either slips ever further away. Let\u2019s hope Grok and its cousins can offer some good advice before Elon and his comrades figure out how to suck the conscience and kindness out of artificial intelligence, and quite likely what remains of humanity\u2019s with it.<\/p>\n Elon, what\u2019s your take? I\u2019m pretty sure I can convince the editors to give you space to respond \u2013 but only if you promise to read this article.<\/p>\n The views expressed in this article are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera\u2019s editorial stance.<\/p>\n