We don’t have to be white to be white supremacists

Christine Su
Aug 26, 2017 · 4 min read

Watching the events of Charlottesville in these recent two weeks unfold, from South Africa, has been surreal. Apartheid is in recent living memory here, ending as recently as 1994.

My South African friends here talk differently about race. “White” as a culture and white people are openly discussed, as is colonialism, education barriers, the inevitability of land reform to fix the fact that white farmers still own most of the land, reparations for forced resettlement of black Africans into homelands, challenges of economic development, black empowerment, fighting and overcoming white supremacy . All this, in newspaper editorials, in magazines, in taxis, and pragmatic teatime conversation over rooibos and buttermilk rusks.

It made me nervous. I’m not used to hearing anything beyond vehement disavowal of racism and white supremacy, and end of discussion
I’m certainly not used to calm, pragmatic discourse about how to dismantle white supremacy in economic terms. In the US, that is not a conversation on the table. I didn’t even know it could be. They laugh knowingly. “ Americans have a lot of work to do. You all like to pretend. The KKK is a tiny fringe. They are not the problem behind your broader racial tensions. That’s something the whole of society in your country needs to reckon with.”


Ending apartheid took decades of organized peaceful protests, tens of thousands in the streets, activists physically being arrested, put in concentration camps, and executed. Tens of thousands were killed. It took 27 years of Nelson Mandela being imprisoned and resisting negotiation on the subject of his freedom unless black people were given the vote and apartheid ended. It took the collective writing of an entirely new constitution. It took truth and reconciliation committees, churches, community reckoning of the evils done under the name of apartheid. It continues to require active dismantling of racial inequality. Land reform. Reparations. The magnitude of what these peoples within South Africa have persevered through, and continue to build, is tremendous to behold.

They tell us we have a long way to go, because we don’t openly recognize the magnitude of the problem. We are uncomfortable saying “white” and “white supremacy”. We trip over ourselves to shut it down extreme versions of it with slogans and protests, but aren’t engaging with its enormity in our daily lives.

In the US, white supremacy is something we equate with the KKK or neo-Nazis (easy to disavow), but white supremacists are not just the fringe. White supremacy is the mainstream. You don’t have to be a neo-Nazi to be one. All you have to do is subconsciously think white people are better, safer, kinder, more trustworthy, more comfortable to be around.

  1. I am a white supremacist. I am a racist. How could I not be? I was raised in America, and in Hong Kong during the final British colonial years. Everything I have been exposed in my lifetime supports the narrative that white people conquered the world with superior naval technology, educated native peoples, and continue to be the most powerful and influential people in society. White people dominate our government leaders, the rich elite, the movie stars, the media, the literature. They are by and large the voices of intellectual authority I consume through NPR, the BBC, the New Yorker, and most of the articles I read. I’ve been exposed to hundreds of times more White voices than Black, Native, Latinx, Chinese narratives about the world we live in. This goes deep. De-programming white supremacy in my worldview requires actively seeking out media with more black and brown voices and consuming literature and art by non-white creatives. My perception of white people is shaped by their own narratives; my perception of non-white people should be too. We have to seek out non-white excellence in our daily media and cultural diet.
  2. I don’t have to be white to be a white supremacist, and being a person of color does not absolve me from racism either. In addition, my Asian female privilege affords me the ability to move through white society safely. The multitude of racial slights I’ve experienced as an Asian woman do not negate my own racism against other people and my responsibility for it. Racism is not a tallying scoreboard.

I have definitely been guilty of locking my car doors in a “bad” neighborhood (when it is just lower income) or crossing the street to avoid Black and Latino men. I have my guard down further in majority white poor areas. That’s internalized racism. It’s shameful to admit and I have daily work to do in dismantling racism in my own mind.

I can even be racist against my own race — and so can my family and friends. Closer to home, it is more acceptable for me to bring home a white or Chinese boy, less acceptable to bring home a black or brown boyfriend. I get the part about wanting a culturally similar partner, but what about a white boy makes him culturally more acceptable? That’s racism. That’s white supremacy.

We aren’t just facing off against tiki-torch bearing, hate spewing Confederate nationalists. We’re facing off against ourselves. When I imagined the better angels of our nature, I imagined them as white. Did you?

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Christine Su

Christine is the CEO of PastureMap, a software company helping cattle ranchers make profits building healthy grasslands.

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