Russell Fox
Sep 3, 2018 · 2 min read

A powerful piece, Katherine. As I see it, white brokenness and white racism are not only intertwined, but white people in their upbringing have to be broken first — early and repeatedly — before they will accept racism. Sam McKenzie wrote an article entitled Is white supremacy bad for white people too? This was my comment in full:

I think the destructive effect of white supremacy on white people takes place on an even more fundamental level. I believe all humans start out life being equipped to accept everyone as equal and to believe the humanity in all persons. For white children to accept that nonwhites are fundamentally inferior, a fundamental part of their humanity has to get beaten out of them by their upbringing. Decency is beaten out of them by their parents, their neighborhoods, their churches, and their schools. Along with their innate knowledge of our commonality, a whole chunk of their intelligence, creativity, willingness to question, and sense of groundedness in their being is also beaten out of them — early and hard — by the white society they grow up in. This inculcation is at core grounded in physical violence and the constant threat of physical violence large adults can inflict on small, vulnerable children, but through manipulation, shaming, and behavior control. White supremacy is the 2+2=5 that permeates all other thought and feeling.

This leaves white people growing into adulthood unable to access whole swathes of their potential. The inculcation of white supremacy leaves white people emotionally, intellectually and spiritually stunted, locked in the armor of their Better-Than, and only able to express themselves through the tiniest of apertures.

The more racist a place is, the stronger and more overt the white supremacy, the less creative and innovative and happy the white people are.

It looks like you really hit a nerve in confronting many white people with both their prejudice and brokenness. A lot of broken white people have found the need to reply to this article at length, pouring out all their brokenness on the table for all to see. Your words got past their defenses and cannot be ignored.

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