The MYTH of White Supremacy
Part I
Wow! During the first night of the 2020 Presidential Debates, President Donald Trump would not condemn white supremacists, telling the all - white male group the "Proud Boys," to "stand back and stand by," although he reluctantly retracted it, claiming "I don't know who the Proud Boys are. You'll have to give me a definition, because I really don't know who they are. I can only say they have to stand down."
For the African American community, this call to action harkens back to a time of extreme unsafety. This issue has also been brought home by the police killings of 2020.
White supremacy is defined as a "historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations, and peoples of color by white peoples and nations of the European continent, for the purpose of maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power, and privilege."
Psychologist Na'im Akbar described how we live in a society where white always has been, and still is the norm: "The inescapable reality is that we have lived as African people in a white supremacist, Eurocentric culture. That is that we live in a culture that has been established to affirm the acquisition of the highest human potential of people of European descent. The culture's been structured that way.
"That is that access to education, the definition of heroines and heroes, the definition of competence and power builds on the way to help European Americans continue to excel in world leadership and in… achieving excellence for their humanity.
"Our history in the Western world has not been geared towards the acquisition of those things. So whereas every white child learns their story of America as being the place that [Christopher] Columbus discovered is a very strategic way to build a kind of sense of psychological ownership of Europeans of America… The fact that there is no place where African Americans learn their connection with America means then that we never get that kind of ownership."
Lawyer and civic activist Adjoa Aiyetoro pointed out that this system of white dominance became structural in order to preserve it over time: "This badge of inferiority… and this myth of white supremacy… people know are false so that they develop structural impediments to keep the myths alive… it was a crime to free enslaved Africans and give them nothing… the crime was compounded by the continuing impediments that were placed on us… They continued to keep us back. And, then the argument then becomes, you're there because of your own fault."[3]
Educator Barbara A. Sizemore (1927 – 2004), explained: "It's two sides of the same coin… white supremacy is one side, imputation of black inferiorities is the other. They work hand in hand. They go together. When you find one, you find the other."
Minister Louis Farrakhan provided an instance of this in his own childhood, where a white teacher, raised in privilege, made baseless, racist assumptions: "We are ego starved… That's the sickness of what happens under the white supremacy. It produces in its wake, black inferiority. And so when I found out that I could play the violin and my friends in school admired me and my teachers admired me – and I never will forget this… in the sixth grade [at the Sherwin School, Boston, Massachusetts], my teacher asked me, 'Louis, what would you like to be when you grow up?' I said, 'You know, I would like to be a doctor.' She said, 'Oh, Louis… if you became a doctor, my people would never come to you for treatment, and your own people would not trust your ability, but you play the violin beautifully…' You go read the autobiography of Brother Malcolm ['The Autobiography of Malcolm X,' Malcolm X and Alex Haley]. He's growing up in Lansing, Michigan, and he's in the eighth grade. And his teacher asks him, 'Malcolm, what would you like to be when you grow up?' He said, 'I wanna be a lawyer.' And the same thing that my teacher said to me in the sixth grade, his white teacher said to him in the eighth grade. That's not an accident. That's a conspiracy to keep young, black men from ever being in any discipline that could threaten white supremacy."
Sociologist Iva Carruthers remembered her experience at a predominantly white junior high school, where white supremacy showed itself through an ignorant school nurse: "I excelled, and in the process of getting ready to graduate, I was one of the high honor students, and I was practicing for the ceremony, and I started having heart palpitations; as a result of that, the school nurse determined that I was probably on drugs… because you know, a black child just couldn't have heart palpitations out of anxiety or nervousness; that wouldn't fit. And so… she advised the principal that that was her suspicion. Needless to say, my parents got her fired, and it was a clear call to me, though, about… the systemic nature of racism and white supremacy in this country."
Scholar and activist Angela Davis was lucky enough to have teachers that helped dispel the idea of white supremacy as opposed to ingraining it: "I think that this emphasis on the accomplishments of black people… I see it as a survival mechanism. It was so important for us to learn that we, as black children… were much more than what the prevailing authorities represented black people as being; mainly inferior. We were barred from the white schools, we were barred from most aspects of society in Birmingham, so that I utterly appreciate the fact that so many of my teachers must have been thinking very consciously about subverting that sense of inferiority that might well have become entrenched."
Yet, the idea of white supremacy is instilled from very early on, both inside and outside of school, resulting in white privilege becoming a subconscious belief within white people.
Political activist and dentist Dr. John Cashin (1928 – 2011) remembered the end of friendships with two white boys while growing up in Huntsville, Alabama: "The white members of our gang [of friends] were sorely deficient so far as education is concerned. As a matter of fact, Herschel [a friend, Herschel Cashin] and I used to wait on them to come home from school 'cause Herschel and I would do their homework for them… Dick McCullough [Richard McCullough], who was the son… of the grocer on the corner. The other, James Euclid [ph.], we called him Squirt… at age twelve Herschel [Herschel Cashin] and I were confronted with this racist image that they were white and we were black and if we're going to keep this thing together, we gonna have to call… Dick and Squirt mister… that announcement was made by Shelby McCullough [Dick's father]… These idiots couldn't draw a straight line without referring to me and Herschel and here we have to call them mister. Where did they get this from? Heck, the only place they could get it from was from the white supremacists… And these people actually believed that crap (laughter)."
Civil rights activist Reverend B. Herbert Martin, Sr. similarly recalled in his 2003 interview how he saw the Ku Klux Klan indoctrinate children in Mississippi: "My playmate… was a white boy on the plantation… little William Peacock. We played together, all right. But then I happened to stumble up one day on a Klan rally… taking place in the woods. And little William Peacock, along with the rest of the white boys who were being initiated into the Klan. That was an awesome moment to me… I went back to Mississippi as an adult, about five or six years ago, William Peacock was running for the [Mississippi] State Senate… Now, as to whether he kept his connection with the Klan or not, I'm not sure."
Social activist and comedian Dick Gregory (1932 – 2017) pointed out: "Most white folks don't understand white supremacy. And few black folks understand it. See, I heard my mama [Lucille Gregory] say to me, if it wasn't for these redneck, nigger hating potbelly, snuff dipping southern white crackers and one day it dawned on me, they don't determine public policy;" it is people like William Peacock—or President Trump, for example—who grow up in a world where they are told they are better because of their skin color, and later hold influential, decision-making positions in society.
The Honorable Andrew Young, former mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, remembered his father explaining to him and his brother how to navigate living in a white world: "[He explained] Nazism to me and to refute white supremacy… and my daddy used to say… 'Don't get mad, get smart.' 'You can't be just as good.' If you and the white boy are just as good, he's gon' get the job. You gotta be so much better that there's no question that nobody can do the job as well as you can."
Judge Teri L. Jackson recalled the steps her father took to protect her and her sister in San Francisco, California: "The reason my father worked at night is because he did not want my sister and me to walk home 'cause he was frightened the kids would jump us, particularly teenagers. So he wanted to pick us up from school, drive us home and he just wanted to make sure that we were within earshot if there was any problem."[12]
On a lighter note, civil rights lawyer Gary Gayton laughed jokingly with the memory of his being assigned the defense of a white militia group, the Minutemen, in the eastern part of the state of Washington: "They were… right of the Ku Klux Klan… they hated their mothers, Catholics, blacks, everybody (laughter)… they were stashing weapons and all that… they asked the marshal's office who should we get to represent us. And he said, 'Well, I'd get Gary Gayton, one of the marshals.' And so they came in. And I charged 'em double what I normally would charge everyone else 'cause I didn't really wanna represent 'em. And anyway, we went to court and they were found guilty. And so in their paper, in east Washington, came out, 'Nigger Attorney Turns Against' (laughter). But what was so funny, prior to that… one of the Black Panthers sitting in the office, saw the guy. And he came in the office. He said, 'Hey, Gayton, you know that guy's the head of the Minutemen. How do, how come you, how can you represent him?' I said, 'He pays better than you guys' (laughter)."
Continued Next Week
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