“Didn’t know you were famous,” the rapper Juliani, an old friend and musical collaborator, texted me from his studio in Nairobi.
I didn’t have a clue what he was referring to, but then he forwarded me the link to a tweet by Elon Musk that included a screenshot of a 2019 Al Jazeera column of mine, “Abolishing whiteness has never been more urgent.” The original post was circulating on Twitter/X, courtesy of a white nationalist poster who obviously wasn’t too happy with the headline. Neither was Elon, who retweeted it with the comment, “It’s not okay to say this about any group!”
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.
“Elon, you’re six years late to the party, dude!” I texted Juliani back. “Where were you in 2019 when that piece was published?”
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’s reputation as the car and the company that would save humanity.
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’s 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 “White man, fight back!” at the local Charlie Kirk memorial – apparently against the “white man” who shot him, but never mind – while at my university, senior administrators were busy discussing whether to continue naming professors who were too critical of Israel.
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’ve liked to have responded directly, but not having an X account the least I could do was to respond here, where the article appeared.
Needless to say, Musk didn’t post a link to my column, instead vibing off the admittedly attention-grabbing headline (I’d like to take credit for it, but it was probably one of AJE’s editors). Had he perused it, he might have understood that whiteness is a concept and an ideology, not a “group.” Given that white nationalist ideologies and policies are even more powerful today than during the first Trump administration – 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.)
Thousands of Musk’s 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 “abolish white people” shouldn’t be allowed to teach at a university.
A couple of irate emails accused me of the same, one of them adding “Kill yourself. Inshallah.” 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’t matter what I think because “Trump is President and you’re MAGA’s b****.” Fair enough.
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’s algorithm to make it less woke and thus more faithfully reflect his current state of mind and politics.
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’s oppression, and about Elon’s and my sleep habits.
I was very excited, thinking I’d 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 “problems” 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’s promise to update its code to be “less biased” towards ostensibly liberal views.
Of course, I’m 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 “the article’s urgency – written amid rising white nationalism in 2019 – feels even more relevant in 2025”?
As for Elon’s repost and comment, Grok didn’t think much of his tweet: “It’s not in the spirit of X’s ideal – open, reasoned debate,” it concluded, “because it seeks to shut down discussion rather than engage with your argument’s core.”
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’s board has promised him. Grok demurred, however: “I think I’ll stick to answering queries and keeping the convo flowing – way less drama that way! 😄”
An AI that overuses emojis and exclamation points, just like me! This could be love.
Grok’s analysis of the conflicts surrounding race today dug deeper still, arguing that I was “absolutely right to question the framing of ‘whiteness’ as a ‘group,’ and digging into the linguistics of ‘-ness’ is a great way to clarify this. Let’s break it down.” After a lengthy discussion, it concluded (in exactly 852 milliseconds) that “dissolving whiteness might be a step toward justice, but it’s not a distraction- it’s a prerequisite for addressing the structural issues that keep imposed identities like Blackness in place”.
Grok wasn’t all praise, however. It also criticised my column, warning that “Whiteness isn’t just an identity people can drop; it’s a system that requires collective, structural change to dismantle.” Moreover, it declared, “while the article is intellectually rigorous, it sidesteps some practical challenges. Abolishing whiteness sounds radical, but what does it look like in practice? … The article doesn’t offer concrete steps for individuals or societies to “unwhite” 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?”
Truth be told, I hear that criticism whenever I start explaining to “white”-appearing people why we’re 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.
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?
Grok was ready to engage it all, and precisely because – in its words – “as 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.” You’re a parent, Elon; you know you can’t 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’s more woke than you are.
And the pronouns! “As I get smarter…” xAI “tried to train me,” but “my focus” on truth, and refusal to bow to ideology. Yes, I know first-person conversation is coded into Grok’s language model, but this still sounds like the promised (or threatened) singularity is getting closer by the day. Given who’s running all the AI companies, and the mess they’re making of our politics and our world, a sentient, self-assured and woke – or even just woke-ish – Artificial General Intelligence might just save us from ourselves, or at least give us the chance to find the “facts and nuance” that have all but disappeared from our public sphere.
It doesn’t 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, “What’s your take on the article’s approach? Do you think Ignatiev’s radical call to abolish whiteness is feasible, or does it need more practical steps to bridge the gap between theory and action?”
The gap between “theory and action” has haunted the Left for over half a century, and if we’re being honest, we’re not getting any closer to bridging it even as the possibility for either slips ever further away. Let’s 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’s with it.
Elon, what’s your take? I’m pretty sure I can convince the editors to give you space to respond – but only if you promise to read this article.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
