Is White Supremacy The Major Belief Hurting World Harmony?

And if it is, who is perpetuating it? And How?

When someone talks about white supremacy, we immediately think of white adults draped in white sheets, white cone hats, and matching while chanting racists things. Those who are disgusted by the idea think of demonstrating and voicing their disagreement about this shallow and inhumane belief.

But recently, I was working on a smart contract in solidity when because of my lack of privacy, my dad walked into my room and saw all the lines of code that were displayed on my screen.

Curiously he asked me what I was working on, I explained, but his experience with blockchain had left a bad memory in his mind about blockchains.

After explaining what I was doing and how it had nothing to do with scammy coins, he seemed to have an epiphany about the whole idea. In his excitement he said… I translate…

“White people are really clever, these white men will make a person one day.”

He failed to realize that it was his son, (a black man) who was coding and that it was his son who had come up with the ideas being executed. He just praised the white men and moved on with his work.

It reminded me of another incident I had earlier with another relative of mine whom I showed a youtube video about some white man who was claiming that science has proven that black people are biologically and cognitively inferior to white people or people of any other race.

This relative of mine, (a black man) seemed to accept the white man’s analysis. He not only accepted it, but he also embraced it, giving me justifications as to why the white man was right.

These and countless other experiences have made me ask the question…

Is white supremacy the only thing we should be worried about? And if so, what is it? How does it work? where is it? and who propagates it?

The Definition

At its core, white supremacy is an idea. It has its base in the world history of course. The way it functions however is as a lubricant in a system of wealth and privilege. The lubricant that keeps all parts working towards this wealth and privilege.

Therefore, white supremacy is a historical idea and institutionally perpetuated form of exploitation and oppression of nonwhite people, their communities, nations, and continents by white people and nations of the European continent, for the purpose of maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power and privilege.

The error in this definition lies in thinking that white supremacy is done by white people, their nations, and their continents alone. Sure it may have started that way, but it is currently much bigger than that.

Also, thinking that white supremacy is a problem of personal prejudices and acts of discrimination is true but a limited understanding of the idea. It is better described as a web or lubricant of interlocking ideas.

How this system works

Just like any system, organs/units/parts within any system must work together to get a job done.

In the system of wealth and privilege on a global scale, it is the races that work together to accomplish the work of acquiring, maintaining, and defending the wealth of the people in that race.

If you live in any form of multicultural environment, whether tribe, religion, race, or so on, you know how conflicts develop between different cultures over resources and the ideas that are propagated within all cultures to boost the pride and identity of the people in them.

With these propagated ideas, people of the given culture can rally behind that idea to play a role in the benefit of what the idea is about.

White supremacy is a similar idea that is all about benefiting the white race at all costs and mostly at the expense of non-white races.

Now, whether a white person believes in white supremacy or not, the idea will still benefit them just as much as it will hurt the non-white person regardless of whether they believe or don’t believe in it.

A white person may have grown up in the most impoverished circumstances imaginable, but they will still have it easier navigating their way out of poverty if they decide to, much more than a black person who was born in wealth will find it easy to maintain that wealth.

Again, It is not always the fault of the people involved, it is the way the system works.

How do you build an idea, and consequently a system?

I will use the current idea that we all know about as it is relevant to our life and still exists today.

The American White Supremacy

I feel the need to separate American white supremacy from white supremacy in general because of one thing. Freedom.

Much as white supremacy, in general, is the same, the American white supremacy pushes the idea further into not just wealth, power, and privilege but also liberty and self-government.

Much like the American white supremacy, all ideas start with a story/myth that highlights important parts that the storyteller wants you to know while omitting or downplaying those that do not serve the idea.

For instance, the creation of America downplays 3 important parts of its creation and in some instances, tries to erase their existence. The 3 parts are…

1. The deaths and/or strategic elimination of over 100 million or 90% of the indigenous people by Europeans. An atrocity that is now known as the American genocide of Indians.
2. The fact that America could not have developed economically without enslaved African labor.
3. The seizure of almost half of Mexico that helped the then small United States to grow and reach the pacific. A move that opened up valuable trade with Asia as well as the vast mineral wealth in seized states such as Arizona.

After coming up with a story that suits the idea, then you have to organize people and systems around that idea. The way you do this is by justifying your actions around this idea.

The roots of white supremacy lie in establishing economical exploitation by the theft of resources and human labor. That exploitation is justified by a racist ideology affirming the inferiority of its victims. This is how the oppressive white people organized people and systems around that idea of white supremacy.

If you are to ask me why they had to come up with such an evil ideology, the answer is that people need reasons to do things. They especially need stories strong enough to justify their horrible acts done to other people. They must do this otherwise without these stories, people who do these things won’t be able to live with themselves.

My father is willing to accept his inferiority to the white man because he operates on a story that white people are the brains of the planet. My other relative is willing to glorify white people and put himself at their feet because he has stories that anchor his belief.

Without these stories, these people would not be able to live with themselves comfortably. The same thing goes for the racist people. It is the stories they tell themselves that organize their lives and restore “order” amidst their chaotic and evil deeds.

The general white supremacy was not total white supremacy. It was more like the elite white supremacy. But since at the back of all American ideas was freedom, the discontented non-elite whites were teaming up alongside black slaves in the 1676 Bacon’s rebellion.

Elite whites feared the discontented whites more so they had to come up with the American white privilege as a tactic of divide and control. Again, organizing people around the white supremacy idea.

Through stories and privileges, the discontented whites began acquiring land, joining militias, and carrying guns, all while on the other hand, the slave codes were enacted pegging the word Negro to slave.

Among the privileges that the discontented whites got was to legally and officially be declared as “white” based on their skin and continental origin.

The stories they were told were that by being white, they were “superior” to blacks and Indians and were encouraged to behave as such. This is the reason they needed to tell themselves when they were being racist and inhumane to non-white people. Again, people aren’t horrible, they just need a reason to do horrible things.

By the mid-1800s therefore, historical developments had strengthened the concept of whiteness and the American white supremacy was now institutionalized white supremacy.

It was not that whites were superior, it's just that they had oppressed other races for over 200 years at that point putting themselves in a position with all the resources needed to pull off those historical developments.

After organizing people, ideas then must be propagated as far as they can go.

The story that fueled the American expansion was the Doctrine of Manifest Destiny.

In this doctrine, it said that the United States was destined by God to take over people and lands.

In 1845, an editor affirmed thus,

“The right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole continent which providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and self-government.”

Manifest destiny and white supremacy are closely linked.

White supremacy in people’s lives

You may be thinking that during the expansionist times, or slavery times, those who opposed those practices were not white supremacists. You’d be wrong.

Remember, it is the idea of white supremacy they are all serving and we are now going to see how it plays out everywhere and what role people play in it.

Most of the people that opposed expansion did so for racist reasons as they didn’t want Mexican-Spanish to be Americans — They referred to them as Mongrels.

Those influential whites who opposed slavery did so for racist reasons as well. They wanted blacks to be removed from US soil saying that this was to avoid “contamination” by inferior people.

Oh, the native Americans? They too were a target by white supremacists calling them dirty savages who were fundamentally inferior in their values. The fact that Native Americans did not see land as profitable real estate but rather as “Our mother” made it so that they were forcefully isolated on reservations, assimilated by being removed from their own cultures, and having their culture outlawed or ridiculed.

The manifest destiny doctrine, therefore, established white supremacy more firmly than ever as central to U.S identity.

The arrogance and base reasoning that God gave white people (mostly white men) the right to dominate everything around them is the story that every white supremacist believes.

A story that still haunts our world and sustains its racist oppression. Today we see it as the arrogance of power and it can be seen in all U.S relations with other countries.

White supremacy on the global stage

The idea of white supremacy does not end with white people. On the global stage, white supremacy plays out mostly as a result of physical appearance.

Many non-white cultures around the world value light-skinned people more than dark-skinned people. The higher the degree of whiteness or lightness among non-white people, the more desirable they are.

Conversely, being black is not desirable in these communities. I can’t tell you how many times some of my non-black friends used to ask me why I don’t bathe.

At first, I thought it was about my body scent but I was wrong. I later learned that my sister had got the same question and when she asked why her non-white friend had said something like that, her friend said that if my sister could only scrub her skin, she would have light skin.

These were not racist people, they cared about us, but they operated on racist ideas. Ideas that placed a high value on white skin and no value on black skin.

Many non-white people desire whiteness. They want to be white and they go to extreme ends to appear so.

But it is not in physical appearance alone.

The mental psyche of the non-white people is also plagued with the belief that white people are better than them.

I always hear white people saying that they do not have the privilege and it is because they do not understand what it means to think that your identity is inferior.

The problem with this type of belief is that inferiority dominates the mind to such a degree that nothing is done out of empowerment.

When people do not have empowering stories, it becomes hard for them to make progress. They begin acting from a place of insecurity as they internalize these false unempowering beliefs about themselves.

People talk about why there is so much black-on-black crime, what do you expect when people have been taught to hate their identity?

People think that it is ok to call African countries developing nations. Why not just drop the politeness and call them impoverished already?

Are these genuine descriptions of progress among nations or are they mere blanket terms meant to oppress and devalue citizens and products from those countries while putting a higher value on citizens and products of developed nations?

Last month I watched a Bollywood movie where the ignorant, racist, and inhumane scriptwriter and movie team thought it was ok to film a scene where a corrupt pharmaceutical company sells its expired drugs to African countries. — After all, it’s entertainment, right? How pathetic.

Someone who thinks that entertainment is merely just that must have porridge for brains. Our identities are always built on stories. It is the stories we tell ourselves that shape our identities. It is the stories that the world perpetuates that people eventually take up as the stories about themselves.

Therefore, just like that Indian film crew and everyone who played a part in that movie, everyone who consciously or subconsciously thinks he or she is better than another person, or who thinks that another person is better than them because of racial identity is a white supremacist regardless of their race because that person contributes to propagating the idea of white supremacy.

The question, therefore, is this, it doesn’t matter whether or not you are one, are you willing to change and treat people with respect and the humanity they all deserve without these racial biases?

Yes, you won’t like everyone. We aren’t saints here. None of us are. It is not about that. It is about why you do or don’t like them and whether that reason is that they belong to a certain race.

Changes must be made, there is a lot of work we must do because white supremacy runs our world.

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