The Audacity of Whiteness
A constructed reality based on a fallacy
Our self-proclaimed “great” nation feels as if it has been slowly imploding, violently collapsing in on itself, causing chaos and destruction in its wake. The previous four years of Donald Trump’s politics of hate have exacerbated the civil unrest at an exponential rate, fueled by his racist alt-right MAGA rhetoric, steeped in white supremacy and white nationalism.
White Supremacy and White Nationalism
While white supremacy is an ideology that created the racial superiority/inferiority dichotomy, falsely claiming the superiority of whiteness above all others, white nationalism is an ideology that believes that American identity should be centered around white people.
As explained by Amanda Taub in the New York Times,
White nationalism… is the belief that national identity should be built around white ethnicity, and that white people should therefore maintain both a demographic majority and dominance of the nation’s culture and public life.
So, like white supremacy, white nationalism places the interests of white people over those of other racial groups. White supremacists and white nationalists both believe that racial discrimination should be incorporated into law and policy.
