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White supremacy

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The Good Citizen 1926, published by Pillar of Fire International
Amin Husain, an artist and organizer with Decolonize This Place, said they had been working on Monday’s protest for about three weeks. He said it was important to debunk what was being shown in the museum. “This is the most coveted museum,” said Husain. “I think that people are ignorant. It’s a white supremacist society. It doesn’t seem like it’s important [renaming the day] but it is super important” for oppressed people. ~ Mazin Sidahmed

White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to people of other races and should therefore be dominant over them.

Quotes

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  • We should recognize that white male supremacy is a deep current in American history. It’s not gonna go away immediately. But there have been dents, significant ones. So for example, even in the mainstream, when the New York Times ran the 1619 Project, it couldn’t have happened a couple of years earlier. And it’s because of changes in general consciousness and awareness. Of course, there was an immediate backlash, strong backlash, and you’re gonna expect that, white male supremacy is a deep part of American history and culture. To extirpate it is not gonna be easy. And, but there are, there’s very significant progress. Plenty of conflict coming. It’s not gonna be an easy struggle.
  • What is so intertwined in this discussion is that this is not just also about open critiques of capitalism, but also open critiques of white supremacy. And it’s in greater understanding of white supremacy, not as just, you know, these social, these racist, social clubs of people dawning hoods, but actually as a system and a systems understanding of how white supremacy has interacted with the development of the United States.
  • Yet it is the day-to-day workings of white supremacy that we must fight most vigorously. We cannot remain ignorant or indifferent to the workings of race and class under this system, so that oppressed workers remain victimized. For years, Blacks have been "first hired, first fired" by Capitalist industry. Further, seniority systems have engaged in open racial discrimination, and are little more than white job trusts. Blacks have even been driven out of whole industries, such as coal mining. Yet the white labor bosses have never objected or intervened on behalf of their class brothers, nor will they if not pressed up against the wall by white workers.
  • In the 18th century, the pioneering archaeologist and art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann chose to view the bare stone figures as pure—if you will, Platonic—forms, all the loftier for their austerity. "The whiter the body is, the more beautiful it is as well," he wrote. "Colour contributes to beauty, but it is not beauty. Colour should have a minor part in the consideration of beauty, because it is not [colour] but structure that constitutes its essence." Against growing evidence to the contrary, Winckelmann's view prevailed. For centuries to come, antiquarians who envisioned the statues in color were dismissed as eccentrics, and such challenges as they mounted went ignored.
  • Empire is the expression of white supremacy beyond our borders... into the Middle East... into Vietnam, Latin America, the Philippines ... and steal natural resources and exploit cheap labour in the name of white supremacy. And of course, we have an American society built on chattel slavery and genocide against indigenous peoples. ... White supremacy hurts white folks. There are so many examples of this, from the way that federal and state resources are spent putting Black and brown people in prison in disproportionate numbers to how white racism hurts the overall economy. The police in Buffalo intentionally knocking down that older white man, who lay there bleeding from the head while the police walked over him ... was such a profound metaphor for how racism hurts white people. With the George Floyd protests and people's uprising, white folks are seeing, again, that what Black and brown folks have been saying about police thuggery is true. Now the police are brutalizing white people. ... People of color always, throughout American history, suffer first. They are the first to suffer — and they suffer disproportionately. But de-industrialization has now hit the white working class. The tools of control are now being used against them. Overall, I don't so much fault the white racists. They are what they are. I fault the white liberals who really did not pay attention to what was happening to primarily poor people of colour in urban areas.
  • Even as the United States was experiencing the first stirrings of labor-related violence in the 1860s, an even greater source of terror – white supremacy – was emerging from the ashes of the American Civil War. What followed was an unprecedented wave of American domestic terrorism primarily carried out by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and directed against former slaves and their allies. While Russian populists lay claim to being the first to extensively develop the justification, strategic vision, and conspiratorial methods of modern terrorism, American white supremacists were the first to mount a massive – although decentralized and rarely self-conscious – campaign of terrorist violence.
    • Randall D. Law, Terrorism: A History (2016), p. 121
  • white supremacy is like a horrible, dangerous cult, and like an infection. And it doesn’t just harm — I mean, it harms people of color definitely. Certainly African American people, Latinos, when somebody tries to hurt them, they are the most harmed. But I think it also harms the white people within. It’s a dangerous kind of place, I think, white supremacy. And if you get into it, you really start losing touch with reality, and it’s almost like you’re the member of a suicidal cult to me.
  • Black folks are descendants of slaves that were imported, quote-unquote by slave owners, to the United States for the explicit purpose of cultivating crops. And it was predicated on white supremacy and racial superiority, but we have to understand that white supremacy exists for a reason , and they exist for a very specific cultural and economic reasons. And LBJ talked about this — like, if you can convince a poor white man that he’s superior to a black man or Chinese man, he'll empty his pockets for you.
    And so it’s not just economic reasons why racism exists but there are economic reasons why racism is perpetuated and incentivized. More of that's housing, income, et cetera. And like I said on Monday with Ta-Nehisi, until America tells the truth about itself we’re never going to heal.
    And this — it’s like this thing that as a culture we hide... it's like this big wound with a big ugly scab on it, and it’s just going to stay this itchy thing that we keep going back to until we just deal with it.... Acknowledging racism is a really big step... but... it’s nowhere near enough.... the idea that you can be poor and benefit from the colour of your skin does not compute for a lot of people... And going through that realization is very painful... for people that are that were born with silver spoons, it’s very painful to admit that you had advantages...
  • This is the story of Venezuela in black and white, the story not told in The New York Times or the rest of our establishment media. This year’s so-called popular uprising is, at its heart, a furious backlash of the whiter (and wealthier) Venezuelans against their replacement by the larger Mestizo (mixed-race) poor... Four centuries of white supremacy in Venezuela by those who identify their ancestors as European came to an end with the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez, who won with the overwhelming support of the Mestizo majority.
The conquest of a nation of inferior race by a superior race, which establishes itself as the ruler, has nothing shocking about it. ~ Ernest Renan
The man of the people, in our countries, is always a fallen aristocrat; his hands are made to handle the sword rather than the laborer's tools. He prefers warring to working, that is, he returns to his original calling. ~ Ernest Renan
  • While Jefferson Davis was historically correct when he said that the 'people' in 1776 referred exclusively to free white men, that needed correction. African Americans, women, and diverse minorities had to be included if the promise of the revolution was to be realized. Inclusionary moves inevitably triggered reactionary responses. After the Civil War, when former slaves were granted citizenship andimmigrants flooded into the United States from southern and eastern Europe, lineage societies such as the Sons of the American Revolution and the Daughters of the American Revolution set a standard for the true American: revolution pedigree and white. In the mid-20th century, when African Americans tried to cash in on promises of equality that remained unfulfilled, they met a fierce backlash that evolved, with time, into "Make America Great Again" as proclaimed by Donald Trump.
    • Ray Raphael, "The American Revolution, 1776-1788," in Revolutions: How They Changed History and What They Mean Today (2020), ed. by Peter Furtado, p. 36
  • La colonisation en grand est une nécessité politique tout à fait de premier ordre . Une nation qui ne colonise pas est irrévocablement vouée au socialisme , à la guerre du riche et du pauvre. La conquête d'un pays de race inférieure par une race supérieure , qui s'y établit pour le gouverner, n'a rien de choquant.
    • Colonization on a grand scale is a political necessity of absolutely the first order. A nation that doesn't colonize is irrevocably vowed to socialism, to war between rich and poor. The conquest of a nation of inferior race by a superior race, which establishes itself as the ruler, has nothing shocking about it.
      • Ernest Renan, The Intellectual and Moral Reform of France (1871)
La réforme intellectuelle et morale de la France (1871), in La réforme intellectuelle et morale, 2nd edition (1872)
  • We aspire not to equality but to domination. Countries inhabited by foreign races must become again countries of serfs, farm laborers, and factory workers. The goal is not to suppress inequities, but, rather, to amplify them and to make of them a matter of course.
    • Ernest Renan, The Intellectual and Moral Reform of France (1871), as translated by Asselin Charles, in "Colonial Discourse Since Christopher Columbus," Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 (November 1995), p. 147
  • La régénération des races inférieures ou abâtardies par les races supérieures est dans l'ordre providentiel de l'humanité. L'homme du peuple est presque toujours chez nous un noble déclassé ; sa lourde main est bien mieux faite pour manier l'épée que l'outil servile. Plutôt que de travailler, il choisit de se battre, c'est- à-dire qu'il revient à son premier état.
    • The regeneration of the inferior or bastard races by the superior ones is consistent with God's plans for humanity. The man of the people, in our countries, is always a fallen aristocrat; his hands are made to handle the sword rather than the laborer's tools. He prefers warring to working, that is, he returns to his original calling.
      • Ernest Renan, The Intellectual and Moral Reform of France (1871), as translated by Asselin Charles, in "Colonial Discourse Since Christopher Columbus," Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 (November 1995), 147
  • Regere imperio populos, voilà notre vocation .
    • To rule the imperial population, behold our vocation.
      • Ernest Renan, The Intellectual and Moral Reform of France (1871)
  • La nature a fait une race d'ouvriers ; c'est la race chinoise, d'une dextérité de main merveilleuse sans presque aucun sentiment d'honneur; gouvernez-la avec justice , en prélevant d'elle pour le bienfait d'un tel gouvernement un ample douaire au profit de la race conquérante , elle sera satisfaite ; une race de travailleurs de la terre, c'est le nègre ; soyez pour lui bon et humain , et tout sera dans l'ordre; - une race de maîtres et de soldats , c'est la race européenne .
    • Nature has made a race of workers; that is the Chinese race, with a marvelous dexterity of hand and hardly any feeling of honor; govern this race with justice by exacting from them through the competence of such government an ample dowry to the conquering race; the subordinate race will be satisfied; a race of workers of the earth, such is the Negro; let us be for him good and human, and everything will be in order -- a race of masters and soldiers, that is the European race.
      • Ernest Renan, The Intellectual and Moral Reform of France (1871)
    • white supremacy in America is a history of conspiracies. The Middle Passage was a conspiracy to use black people as forced labor; the Confederacy was a conspiracy to keep black people as chattel; the end of Reconstruction was a conspiracy to overturn black citizenship; Jim Crow was a conspiracy to maintain black people as a subservient labor caste; the Tuskegee medical experiment on black men was a conspiracy; redlining was a conspiracy; the exclusion of most black people from many of the benefits of the New Deal was the result of a conspiracy; the theft of Henrietta Lacks's cells was a conspiracy; lending discrimination is a conspiracy; and so on and so forth. And for the most part, black Americans must go about their lives every day with knowledge of such conspiracies as most white Americans deny they exist, or that they have been of any significance in shaping modern life whatsoever. (p 163)
    • Adam Serwer The Cruelty is the Point (2021)
  • If ... the tax scheme allows enormous intergenerational wealth transfers within families, some families will maintain considerable socioeconomic advantages over others, which allows them to provide better educations and better environments (both residential and familial) for their children, and their children's children. ... Even in a constitutional democracy in which each citizen has a publicly recognized claim to all the basic political and civil liberties, these socioeconomic inequalities would create an informal social hierarchy by birth: some would be born into great wealth and other social and political advantages while others would be born into poverty and its associated disadvantages. ... If, because a social scheme had the characteristics described above, the life prospects of some children were vastly inferior to those of others, it would be reasonable to regard these disadvantaged children as members of the lowest stratum in a descent-based social hierarchy. When such a hierarchy is, and has long been, marked by racial distinctions, equal citizenship, in any meaningful sense, does not obtain. In a society with an established democratic tradition, such a quasi-feudal order does not warrant the allegiance of its most disadvantaged members, especially when these persons are racially stigmatized. Indeed, the existence of such an order creates the suspicion that, despite the society's ostensible commitment to equal civil rights, white supremacy has simply taken a new form.
  • Amin Husain, an artist and organizer with Decolonize This Place, said they had been working on Monday’s protest for about three weeks. He said it was important to debunk what was being shown in the museum. “This is the most coveted museum,” said Husain. “I think that people are ignorant. It’s a white supremacist society. It doesn’t seem like it’s important [renaming the day] but it is super important” for oppressed people.
    The group started with a 10-stop tour of the museum in which they highlighted a variety of exhibits they felt were racist and misrepresentative, which ranged from how the representation of Africans reinforces negative stereotypes to the exoticizing of Islam in the Hall of Islam exhibit. “Where is the Hall of Christendom?” one of the tour guides asked.
    “It’s just to echo what this is, it’s really a hall of white supremacy, that’s what this is,” said Nitasha Dhillon, one of the organizers.
    At the end of the tour in the hall, activists began chanting, “Respect! Remove! Rename!” before swarming around the large dinosaur skeletons in the lobby with signs that read, “DECOLONIZE THIS MUSEUM”, “ABOLISH WHITE SUPREMACY” and “BLACK LIVES MATTER”.
    “Teddy Roosevelt’s nature was not empty wilderness. It was and is Indigenous land,” one reader said as the organizers took turns reading from a speech. “Taken through violence. Just like Columbus who came to enslave. To take their gold and their bodies and their souls.”
  • During the 1870s, Black political participation was the primary motivation for White supremacist violence. Black political participation accounted for 83 percent of the recorded mob violence of the period. The federal government allowed its southern adversaries back into the union through the violence, terror, and disenfranchisement of people of African descent. The U.S. government and national Republican Party proved unreliable allies as valiant men like Caldwell were assassinated, Black political officials were deposed, and the Black masses were forced into agrarian peonage. With the Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1877, any pretense of federal intervention in Mississippi and the former Confederacy was dropped for decades. A war was waged in the South to place emancipated Blacks, in the words of Du Bois, "back towards slavery." Terrorist violence was unleashed to secure the White planter elite in power and to perpetuate a system based on White supremacy. The specter of violence remained as a means of intimidation and social control. In the decades following Reconstruction, lynching became common in the state. Between 1882 and 1940, 534 Black people were lynched in Mississippi—the highest total in the United States during that period. The federal government ignored terrorism waged against Black people: "Congress and the president took no action to prevent lynching, and the federal government did not prosecute the perpetrators, even when the event was publicized at least a day in advance." With White supremacist violence as a major vehicle used to intimidate and suppress, within decades Blacks were excluded from representation and participation in electoral politics and apartheid was institutionalized in civil society.

See also

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