Getting comfortable with "white supremacy"
In order to confront and dismantle that system, however, white people desperately need to get comfortable with “white supremacy” as a concept. This toxic phrase far more accurately describes the racialized power structures that govern American life than the more popular “white privilege.”
The importance of this task was made apparent by journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates in a recent conversation with The Daily Beast (Felice León, “Ta-Nehisi Coates on Why Whites Like His Writing,” 10/25/15).
“[White privilege],” Coates observed, “is a word that we have created to make white people comfortable [instead of] talk[ing] about racism, and white supremacy, which is much more uncomfortable for folks because it names things and it’s very, very direct.”
I agree with Coates. These thoughts are the key to figuring out how to get white people to own racism and find a way through it for ourselves.
As we have seen recently, even white “privilege” is hard for many whites to accept: some of us hear the phrase for its well-intentioned effort to make visible the set of often subtle, unspoken advantages people with pale skin enjoy in the social and political life of our culture. Others immediately ask “where's my privilege?” by referencing personal hardships and injustices they've encountered even though they're white.
The point that many patient people of color and some white commentators make in response is to distinguish between individual circumstances (which will always vary) and systemic tendencies. The whole notion of white privilege is a pretty nuanced idea that is not immediately clear the first time many white people encounter it, particularly if it is only explained anecdotally or with a hashtag.
“White supremacy” is loaded, too, but with a long and troubling history with which white people are even more uncomfortable. While “privilege” makes us think of an uneven playing field or some kind of “bump” in opportunities, “supremacy” brings to mind skinheads, white hoods, burning crosses, and murder. If I have trouble admitting that my light skin might afford me some kind of unspoken advantage in job-hunting or getting a home loan, I definitely won't make the leap to find the connections between myself and “hard core” racists. But that's the connection I need to make in order to own my racism, however “mildly” I express it in my daily life.
White supremacy is the idea that white people are better than everyone else, whether biologically, genetically, socially, intellectually, spiritually, whatever. It's pretty easy for white people like me to write off nut jobs with swastika tattoos. In fact, I enjoy a warm feeling of righteousness when I condemn such expressions of hate.
But it requires nothing of me to denounce neo-Nazis. There is absolutely nothing at stake for me if I publicly distance myself from such extremism—it's what every thinking person would (and should) do. And since it requires no expenditure of social, political, or interpersonal capital for me to be anti-Nazi in my cultural context, such a stance has no meaning when I take it. It demands nothing and it produces nothing, apart from that warm feeling.
Harder is the act of taking a stance that is local, interpersonal, and specific to my context. I don't live among skinheads, but I do live among white people who instinctively clutch their possessions when they see a young black male walking toward them. I live among white people who are concerned that an elementary school with too many brown faces will not “challenge” their child. I live among white people who believe they know how best to help brown people out, without bothering to ask those people what help they may want or need.
In each of these instances, there is white supremacy at work. The beliefs, buried deep or not, are that young white men are less likely to steal than young brown men, all other things being equal; that the presence of non-white children or their parents drags down the quality of education; that white people are unbiased by their own experiences, and will be the most objective in planning the distribution of private or public assistance.
Each of these perspectives depends on the basic understanding that white is, in general, better. When I operate with these assumptions or witness them at work in other white people, I am choosing white supremacy if I do not question my thinking.
“White privilege,” so far as it goes, is probably a useful concept for describing the countless “small” ways that white supremacy operates on a daily basis. But it seems likely that “privilege” is to “supremacy” what “paternalism” is to “patriarchy,” or what “enhanced interrogation” is to “torture.” It is a distinction in degree that acts to hide the underlying injustice from view.
White people need to get over the idea that being a little bit racist is better than being a lot racist; we either believe that white is better or we don't. The work white people like me need to dig into is not measuring the distance between ourselves and neo-Nazis, but the distance between our inaction and active anti-racism.
Chris Hayashida-Knight is a PhD candidate in US History and Women’s Studies at Penn State University.
Twitter: @chhknight