White Supremacy

This country is founded on white supremacy. It is deeply rooted in our past and present. I really enjoyed listening to Mark Charles’s TedTalk, “We the People”. He did an excellent job breaking down and exposing how our foundation “fuels racism and sexism”. As stated in “Racism, Colonialism, Imperialism”, “there can be no justice under capitalism” and “racism operates systematically and at every level of life”. Something we discussed in my Anthropology class is that white is the unspoken race. The existence of this proves the dominance of white people. When having a conversation many people feel the need to describe someone based on their race and gender. Although, it’s common for the white race to go without being said during a conversation. It’s almost as if white shouldn’t have to be specified but anything other than white should be. Some white supremacy pillars include orientalism/war/empire, slavery/capitalism/settler colonialism/genocide, and anti-blackness. For example, the Declaration of Independence is a “systematically racist document” by which our country still abides by to this day. Until we strip America down to its foundation and start fixing the problem from where it started, we will just continue to put a Band-Aid on a bullet hole. Another example of how White Supremacy is still alive in America is the celebration of “Columbus Day”. Mark explains this “proves the implicit racial bias of the nation”. Columbus was a colonizer who is still recognized and even celebrated as the man who “discovered” the New World. Although, it is clear he came across land that was already inhabited by Indigenous Peoples. With this, you may ask, why do people refuse to acknowledge the darker parts of history? Why don’t we use our past to make a better future?