White Supremacy

More Americans have been killed in the US by white male citizens, often white supremacists, than by any other domestic or foreign group.¹ Well-armed with guns and hatred of Jews, Blacks and Muslims, these white Americans fight to regain a white and “christian”² nation.

It is accurate to say that our country was founded on white, male, wealthy, “christian” supremacy. While that foundation still has a strong foothold on almost every aspect of our culture, it is predicted that by mid-century, white skinned people will be in the minority in the US.

I can’t pretend that I am totally separate from these white extremists. They have lit their torches illuminating the fact that our country has long been dominated by whiteness and anti-Semitism. This same system has opened doors for me all my life, as it did for my ancestors. The natural consequence of generation after generation of exclusion has erupted today as hatred directed at non-white and non-Christian people.

My grandfather was an attorney who believed in justice. Yet, in a letter to his fiancé (my grandmother) written in 1923, he spoke about one of the best speeches he’d ever heard: “This Col. Simmons of the KKK made a talk [at the Texas Capitol] to 20,000 people. He has a wonderful personality and is a good speaker. I wonder if you have joined the Klan? Or the Order of Camelia, I should have said.” Years later, my grandfather publically supported the first black female attorney’s nomination to the Wichita Falls, TX bar association. And I loved him.³

In Big Topics at Midnight, I wrote a chapter titled “Did My People Survive Slavery?” After listening to a Sweet Honey in the Rock’s song “I Remember, I Believe,” where black women asked that questions about their own ancestors, it struck me that the same query applied to my ancestors, and I asked myself: What was the moral legacy of families like mine who owned slaves and were moved by a KKK speech?

Unfortunately, we are living that legacy now.

This legacy came through families like mine and through the larger cultural family of Euro-Americans. Unnoticed without confession or repentance, the moral flaws of yesterday erupt now in the growing movement of white supremacists, our nation’s homegrown terrorists. A terrorist is defined as “a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.” Our focus on foreign terrorists is merely a distraction to the real terrorists within.

The signs of this ingrained white supremacy is fully visible for anyone who cares to notice. Can you imagine if the August 11 march on the University of Virginia campus—complete with lit torches, armed men and hateful rhetoric targeted at specific groups—had been as assembly of black skinned rather than white skinned men? Or Jewish? Or Muslim? Can you imagine the uproar if President Obama, a black skinned man, had spoken and acted as disrespectfully as white skinned President Trump has consistently done? Can you imagine what the law enforcement response would have been if the armed men who took over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon had been black skinned? Or Jewish? Or Muslim?

Our national law enforcement and public sentiment response would NOT have been the same.

I’ve spent years unmasking the tendrils of white supremacy that have been part of my nation and my family and my life. Denying that, or white-washing it as merely a historical problem or an isolated issue of extremists, is to personally participate in the movement for white supremacy.

The cry of my heart is directed at others like me—white skinned and Christian. The legacy of racism, patriarchy and religious intolerance that was one part of our nation’s founding is threatening to destroy us all. While we are not responsible for actions of our ancestors, we are living in the toxic legacy of the moral disconnect between values and actions that worked their way into our institutions and systems. We—you and me—are fully responsible for how we live today.

Being quiet and disconnected is no longer an option.

My prayer is that our nation is going through the last gasp of what has been and is still a dangerous and hateful legacy. For that to be true, however, all of us need to step up and embody justice for all. Each in our unique way.

The steps forward to constructive change are ancient and outlined in many of our faith traditions: open your eyes and heart to see; confess where you as an individual and where you as part of the national collective have participated in injustice and inequity; repent—a transformative change of heart; and then take action that flows from your new, wide-open heart.

Our nation’s racism and anti-Semitism runs deep. The call of my heart to our beloved nation is to wake up and repent, remembering these self-evident truths: that all are created equal; that all are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of a union with the good spirit (named as “happiness”).

¹Article with links to more primary sources

²A side note: I can’t help putting christian (with a little c) in quotes. There is no relationship between the heart of Christianity and white supremacy’s christianity. Unfortunately, far too much of CHRISTIANITY as a institutional church has become infected by the sin of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Likewise, it is also true that white-skinned people and male people have too often been culturally infected by a sense of power-over superiority inherent in racism and patriarchy (among other things), and perhaps should also be noted with quotation marks. This cultural sin has a wide and deep legacy.

³Individuals (such as my grandfather) like nations are complex and paradoxical, full of wisdom and generosity and prejudice and hatred. I am hopeful that seeing our own shadow will give us greater compassion as we support each other on the journey back to the just and equitable essence that is our birth right. We need each other as we unhook from the toxic parts of our national legacy.

A viewer answered my YouTube video’s title“What it Means to be White” with a direct answer: “It means to be a white supremacist (racist)!”

In the past, his words would have cut me to the core. As it was, I merely gasped for a moment. Well aware of individual and systemic racism, my emotions would once have boiled at the assumption that I, one who has worked so hard for justice, was a “white supremacist.” Back then, in my offended state, fruitful exploration of his analysis would have been impossible.

I am grateful that I’ve done enough work with racism, mine and the culture’s, to be able to step back and carefully read what he had to say.

There is some truth in his accusation. As a Euro-American, I was born, raised and now live in a culture where white skin is considered normative. The vast majority of those with historical and current power in our culture are white skinned. Therefore, collective societal experience and perception is inevitably biased toward whiteness.

In short, ours is a culture where white is considered supreme, even though few would articulate it so bluntly. This bias has been part of the American and European fabric of life for so long that the belief in the superiority of the white race, especially in matters of intelligence and culture, is woven into the unconsciousness of individuals and institutions.

I’ve had my own journey waking up to racism. Sitting in a diverse group of participants in a Be Present, Inc. Training on the Issues of Race, Gender Power & Class, I listened intently as Cynthia told the story of her mother, Pat.* In 1965, shortly after moving from the west coast to Dallas, Texas, Pat was confused by a “Whites Only” sign in the laundromat window. Not sure why they wanted her to wash only white clothes, she’d entered and proceeded to finish all of her laundry, whites and colors. Later, at home, she’d realized that “white” had referred to her skin color, not her laundry. Listening to Pat’s story forty years later, I realized that I’d never seen signs such as these in any Texas business of my childhood. Blinded by a racism I didn’t even know existed at nine years of age, I’d not seen what was all around me. Waking up to racism happened in stages beginning in my teen years. Since then, every new insight has propelled me to wake up and change.

I am a white supremacist by default, because the culture’s shards of racism are lodged within me deeply as they are within any child of this society. Likewise, I work and live in the midst of diversity where collaboratively we seek justice and equity. We humans are paradoxical by nature. Denial merely pushes the parts deemed shameful into our shadow where they can do the most harm.

I am, however, uninterested in keeping silent about race nor about constraining racial conversations within the dualities of oppressor and oppressed, white supremacist and victim.

Instead, I want radical, root-level transformation. To do that we must build partnerships across our differences: Black and white. Red and yellow. Young and old. Rich and poor. Women and men. We must be able to listen to each other outside of our own personal experiences and our cherished social analysis.

Waking up to the presence of the culture’s injustice within and around us is a demanding process. Our deeply divided world cries out for justice, and the spirit of our response matters in spite of our differences.

How do we best support each other to see and shift behaviors that are out of alignment with our longing for justice and equity? We can no longer ignore disrespectful and unjust behavior. We must take the risk and step into the middle of difficult conversations.

Labels such as “white supremacist” may be short hand and direct, but I prefer the longer road of initiating conversations that open the possibility for long-term personal and social change.

*Story told in my social change memoir Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself

Tag: White Supremacy

Homegrown Terrorism is the Battle Cry for Repentance

White Supremacist