White Supremacy: A System Invisible
What is White Supremacy? From Frank Chins Racist Love — Frank Chin’s seminal article Racist Love was written in 1972, long before modern day science would actually prove that everything he wrote was terrifyingly accurate.
“White Supremacy is a vision of reality in which only White people are human beings and colored minorities exist solely as one of two stereotypes: the “acceptable” and the “unacceptable”. The White power structure is the web of legal, institutional, and cultural forces designed to force colored minorities to conform to their “acceptable” stereotype to uphold the vision of White Supremacy and set White people free.”
Purpose
What is the purpose of White Supremacy? White supremacy really refers to the specific dimensions of racism that serve to elevate white people over people of color. Is there really such a deep, insidious conspiracy to force colored minorities to uphold this vision of White supremacy? Why does white supremacy exist? White supremacy exists because White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This environment build racial comfort for whites, while lowering their ability to tolerate even a little racial stress — white people do not know how to talk about race, because race is not something that they are made aware in their lives. As minorities, however, we are made aware of our races, day in, day out. This is known as White Fragility.
“I am a white woman. I am standing beside a black woman. We are facing a group of white people who are seated in front of us. We are in their workplace, and have been hired by their employer to lead them in a dialogue about race. The room is filled with tension and charged with hostility. I have just presented a definition of racism that includes the acknowledgment that whites hold social and institutional power over people of color. A white man is pounding his fist on the table. His face is red and he is furious. As he pounds he yells, “White people have been discriminated against for 25 years! A white person can’t get a job anymore!” I look around the room and see 40 employed people, all white. There are no people of color in this workplace. Something is happening here, and it isn’t based in the racial reality of the workplace. I am feeling unnerved by this man’s disconnection with that reality, and his lack of sensitivity to the impact this is having on my cofacilitator, the only person of color in the room. Why is this white man so angry? Why is he being so careless about the impact of his anger? Why are all the other white people either sitting in silent agreement with him or tuning out? We have, after all, only articulated a definition of racism. “From White Fragility, Robin Diangelo , International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, Vol 3 (3) (2011) pp 54–70”
White Fragility
This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort, but at the same time, lowers their ability to tolerate any racial stress. But what racial stress? What kind of racial stress do whites experience? What the fuck are you talking about, Whites experience racial stress? Yes, when it challenges white supremacy. It is of no doubt that being white accrues one privilege and status, in addition to being surrounded by protective pillows of resources and benefits of the doubt, demanding dignity instead of gossip and voyeurism. You can see this stuff on the street in the form of racial profiling. Why do men of (black) color get racially profiled, e.g.) accusal of criminal activity, much more often, then say if the person was of similar status, but only white? Whites are rarely without these “protective pillows,” and when they are, it is usually temporary and by choice.
This insulated environment of racial privilege builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress. Lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress, is what is referred to as White Fragility. White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium.
Racial Stress
Racial stress results from an interruption to what is racially familiar. These interruptions can take a variety of forms and come from a range of sources, including:
- Suggesting that a white person’s viewpoint comes from a racialized frame of reference (challenge to objectivity). e.g.) Suggesting that they are racist.
- People of color talking directly about their racial perspectives (challenge to white racial codes).
- People of color choosing not to protect the racial feelings of white people in regards to race (challenge to white racial expectations and need/entitlement to racial comfort);
- People of color not being willing to tell their stories or answer questions about their racial experiences (challenge to colonialist relations);
- A fellow white not providing agreement with one’s interpretations (challenge to white solidarity);
- Receiving feedback that one’s behavior had a racist impact (challenge to white liberalism);
- Suggesting that group membership is significant (challenge to individualism);
- An acknowledgment that access is unequal between racial groups (challenge to meritocracy). e.g.) Saying that African Americans are more often in prisons because of the social inequality imposed on them.
- Being presented with a person of color in a position of leadership (challenge to white authority).
- Being presented with information about other racial groups through, for example, movies in which people of color drive the action but are not in stereotypical roles, or multicultural education (challenge to white centrality). e.g.) Black men that is not a criminal. Asian Men that is not a nerd.
Notice that these are all: challenging white liberalism, solidarity, individualism, authority centrality, objectivity (suggesting that the white viewpoint does not come from a place of racism, but objectiveness), racial codes, entitlement ……… or simply, anything that challenges white supremacy is something that places racial stress on whites.
How Accepting are they really?
Whites are mentally fragile and cannot abide the stress of being confronted over issues of race, which is why they prefer to squat in their White enclaves ( (at least 75% of white American’s have entirely white social networks without any minority presence ; this just goes to show how accepting white people are of people of color) and talk shit about colored minorities from the comfort of their “safe spaces” , which they’ve set up everywhere.
Just witness the constant stream of racist ass comments that are casually thrown around in: every mainstream arena of society or in every disgusting whitewashed spiderhole on the internet (mainstream reddit, Bodybuilding Misc, 4chan, YouTube comments section, etc.). A lot of otherwise pretty smart people protest and state that , that’s just how people act online or in virtual spaces and that this does not reflect society at large, but they are dead fucking wrong: Millennials are just about as racist as their parents — white millennials are not much different from their parents , and hold similar racial attitudes to their parents in the baby boomer generation.
How fucked up are white people? Take the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments. If you think they were just made up (Clinical studies done on blacks to study the progression of untreated syphilis in rural African American men in Alabama, under the reason of “free health care” ), then think again. Benjamin Roy, in an article published in 1995 in the Journal of the National Medical Association, made an argument that the study was administered for the:
“Economic exploitation of humans as a natural resource of a disease that could not be cultivated in culture or animals to establish and sustain U.S. superiority in patented commercial biotechnology.”
More ever, they were really screwed up.
The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, also known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study or Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment was an infamous clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the U.S. Public Health Service studying the natural progression of untreated syphilis in rural African-American men in Alabama under the auspices of receiving free health care from the United States government. Wikipedia.
Or if you think that anti-miscegenation laws/war brides or the beating of Vincent Chin (a Chinese American man who was severely beaten in the Detroit suburb of Highland Park, Michigan in June of 1982 , of the perpetrators of this beating that lead to death — a second degree murder, were given an extremely lenient sentence , and served no jail time , given only three years probation , and were only fined 3000$) were stories of lone gone racism, then you should wake up. These heinous crimes have been done in the last 100 years. If you think that white supremacy is a conspiracy theory, it is REALITY.
Individualism and White Distancing
Individualism erases history and hides the ways in which wealth has been distributed and accumulated over generations to benefit whites today. It allows whites to view themselves as unique and original, outside of socialization and unaffected by the relentless racial messages in the culture. Individualism also allows whites to distance themselves from the actions of their racial group and demand to be granted the benefit of the doubt, as individuals, in all cases. A corollary to this unracialized identity is the ability to recognize Whiteness as something that is significant and that operates in society, but to not see how it relates to one’s own life. In this form, a white person recognizes Whiteness as real, but as the individual problem of other “bad” white people (DiAngelo, 2010a)
Example:
This is ridiculous and quite frankly taking this racism thing too far. You’re dredging up racist mentalities from 500 years ago, as the world has made no progress at all in that period. You conveniently forget all the progress that was made in the Civil Rights Movement. Face, it, most of America isn’t racist today. Does it still exist? Yes. Do we still need to talk about it to remind each other the evils that come from racism? Sure. But it clearly doesn’t warrant treating “the white man” like they’re all members of the KKK. That’s like if you treated Germans today as if they’re all Nazis. Germans are incredibly racially sensitive and are some of the least nationalistic people today. It’d be utterly insane to judge an entire country on something they did in the past when they’ve clearly admitted how wrong it was. That’s essentially what you’re doing in this thread.
Furthermore, to lump an entire race of people as evil racists is the same mentality as racists themselves — prejudice. To talk about all white people as if they’re all racists is no better than racists talking about a race being a certain way. It’s the same kind of reasoning — the generalization of an entire race of people. To fight racism, we should be judging an individual for their worth and not judging someone because they’re white. It makes me ashamed that my Asian brothers have become racist fucks.
Whitesplaining or entitlement to Racial Comfort
Since whites are in the dominant position, they are almost always racially comfortable, and thus are unchallenged. Therefore, when there is something wrong, or when they have committed this wrongdoing, they blame the person or event that triggered the discomfort. This blame results in a socially-sanctioned array of counter-moves against the perceived source of the discomfort, including: penalization; retaliation; isolation; ostracization; and refusal to continue engagement. White insistence on racial comfort ensures that racism will not be faced by whites themselves. Because white image is strongly positive, compared to those of minorities which have been slandered by negative images (Think stereotypes) this basically leads them into believing that their financial and professional successes are the result of their own efforts while ignoring the fact their successes are benefitted by white privilege. Whites generally feel free to dismiss these informed perspectives rather than have the humility to acknowledge that they are unfamiliar, reflect on them further, or seek more information his intelligence and expertise are often trivialized and countered with simplistic platitudes (i.e. “People just need to…”), or in our case …. Asian Men just need to….)
