Note: This is my take on “Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy” (2010) by Andrea Smith. I changed things up a bit:
American White supremacy in built on at least three pillars:
Pillar #1: Anti-Black racism
- need: labour;
- policy: slavery, by whatever name;
- reaction: fight for civil rights (abolitionists, NAACP, etc);
- anti-racist ideas: institutional racism, white privilege, people of colour, racial groups, critical race theory.
From legalized slavery to sharecropping to the prison industrial complex, Black forced labour is as American as apple pie. Blacks, on their own, are “lazy”, not given to honest work – thus the stereotypes about Blacks as drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes, thieves and welfare queens.
The rich Whites who run things seem like they “know what they are doing” because no matter how bad things get they have non-Blacks telling themselves, “At least I’m not Black!”
Blacks see themselves as lacking equal rights. But fighting for them can only go so far: White institutions – the government, police, courts, etc – were shaped during slave times, so anti-Black racism is baked right in. Injustice comes standard. Slave-owner “democracy” has not delivered equality.
Unlike Natives, most Black thinkers and their allies take the White settler state called “America” as a given:
Pillar #2: Anti-Native racism
- need: land;
- policy: genocide, broken treaties, land theft;
- reaction: fight for sovereignty;
- anti-racist ideas: settler colonialism.
“America” is based on the disappearance of Natives – physically, culturally, genetically. That is why Natives are pictured as mainly being in the past, like in “Dances with Wolves”.
Natives see themselves as lacking sovereignty – control over their land, culture, society, even children (boarding school, foster care, adoption, dying languages).
They fight for sovereignty in White settler courts. Unlike Blacks, says Smith, they often do not understand how profoundly racist those courts are.
White liberal ideas of racial progress, like marriage to Whites and assimilating into White culture, favour White settler land claims.
So do Black ideas about racism: they tend to see Natives as just another racial group in need of equal rights, a mindset that would leave Natives as landless and dependent on White institutions as Blacks are.
Pillar #3: Anti-Brown racism
- need: war economy;
- policy: permanent war, regime change (aka imperialism), immigration policy;
- reaction: revolution, guerrilla warfare, “terrorism”;
- anti-racist ideas: Orientalism.
Browns are “civilized” Others from Latin America, East Asia and the Muslim world. Differences from Whites are read as “alien” and threatening: Muslims are “too” religious, East Asians do “too well” at school, Mexicans have “too many” children.
Browns are bent on the destruction of America As We Know It: Islamic terrorism, the Mexican Reconquista, the Yellow Peril.
Even having their own governments in their own countries is seen as a threat to “American security”, like in Vietnam, Nicaragua and Iraq. Thus the demonization of Cuba, North Korea and Iran.
To keep capitalism going, America depends on a war economy. Thus the ground wars and air wars and drone wars and contra wars and cold wars and wars against subjective abstractions like “terrorism”.
Thus Republicans cannot find enough money to help feed poor children in America, but they can always find money for a war machine twice the size of those of Russia, China and India combined.
See also: Much of this blog, but off the top of my head:
- The five walls and four frames of White colour-blind racism
- The diseased host model of American society
- Non-Westerners in National Geographic
- Linda Tuhiwai Smith on history
- Bowling for Columbine
- Martin Luther King, Jr’s Riverside speech against the Vietnam War
- Pillar #1
- Pillar #2
- Pillar #3
Abagond 
This post is…just mindblowing. I was just discussing this with someone the other day. What brought this on Abagond?
LikeLike
Right now, I wish all three of those pillars would fall down and bubble into a pus-filled ooze and drain into the bowels of hell.
I’m sorry if this sounds graphic.
LikeLike
Yeah, an insightful way of looking at the process by diving into 3 themes.
1. Labour
2. Land
3. War and Imperialism
I think that the categories are not 100% rigid, but somewhat fluid, but the idea of 3 themes is still valid. And maybe THIS is what makes White Supremacy different in America vs. the other places.
For example, from mid-19th Century to early 20th century, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos were imported as cheap, if not forced compulsory labour (slavery). After mid-20th century, it was more about war and imperialism (adding Koreans and Vietnamese and Hmong). In 19th century, for Mexican-Americans it was more about their land. Today, it is more about their cheap labour.
For blacks it has always been about cheap / free labour, but could it ever become one of, say, war and imperialism? USA has always focused on East and SE Asia, Middle East and Latin America for War and Imperialism, not Africa.
LikeLike
Sent from my iPhone
LikeLike
Abagond-
Just a question-
You see America as a ” white settler state,” view marriage between Indians and whites as a negative ( or at least you seem to imply such- I could be wrong), you view non- Americans as being above Americans’ judgement. You also see ” liberal ideas of racial progress” as furthering white supremacy, and finally you are positing that democratic institutions created while slavery was legal will never grant justice to non- whites.
Here’s my question. What could remedy all of this? In other words, if you had absolute power to change laws and recreate institutions, how would you ” fix” all of this.
I may be mistaken, but you seem to be of the opinion that very little progress has been made, and that ” America” is itself too flawed to be salvaged. Should we vacate the continent so that indigenous tribes can reabsorb it? Should we split into multiple nations?
On a side note, why go out of the way to cite Republicans? As far as I know, the Democratic black president has done a pretty good job of keeping things going in terms of hegemony and warfare.
LikeLike
I like what brotha wolf said. I cosign that.
LikeLike
@Kiwi,
The quotes are yours, right? I wonder what it means to be “mindful”. To remember it.
We also need a similar sign on the National Mall in Washington, DC, perhaps next to the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian and also in front of the branch in New York City.
LikeLike
Posts on these topics please.
LikeLike
Including “the destruction of America As We Know It”.
LikeLike
Should Anti-Hispanic racism be seen as a variety of Anti-Native racism?
LikeLike
Scribed
LikeLike
The industrial element of the structure must include the entertainment industry (history education, too) to keep the edifice from showing its cracks.
After all, where would all this whiteness be without constant, unrelenting whitewashing from TV, Hollywood, advertising and such.
White supremacy has to keep its PR services well-oiled.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on oogenhand.
LikeLike
@oogenhand
Maybe it is better to see these as pillars of white supremacy as practised in the USA, rather than framework for white racism.
Among the 3 pillars, Whites in the USA maintain the supremacist hierarchy along 3 lines:
1. Cheap or free, compulsory labour
2. Land
3. War and Imperialism
In the case of Hispanics, depending on the time period, the location, the group and racial background, any of the 3 could technically apply. Hispanics are one of the sources of cheap or compulsory labour (eg, current agricultural labour). They also occupy land that was wrested from Spain and Mexico (However, the ideal of “sovereignty” is probably not as strong. For example, I don’t know how extensive Hispanics in the USA will fight for hunting or fishing rights, or use of land or religious or cultural purposes and to exercise degrees of self-governance. Certain Latin American countries are definitely part of #3 – explains Cuba, Puerto Rico, “some” of Mexico and much of Central and South America.
For Asians, primarily #1 applied 1850-1945, #3 1890 – 2013. Prior to the mid/late-40s, like blacks, the impetus for Asians was the fight for civil rights.
Blacks have been primarily #1 all along and Native Americans have been primarily #2.
I agree with Bulanik that they are all maintained by education and the media.
There should be a #4, which would be something that probably Canada and especially Australia do to maintain their white supremacist framework, and which white people in the USA would apply to people who do not fall neatly into #1-3. They had much smaller slave or coolie labour importation and do not wage war on the whole world (or at least in Asia and Latin America like the USA). Maybe it has something to do with what Bulanik said. For example, the Model Minority Stereotype is utilized to maintain racist hierarchies, with whites on top. This is probably a type of caste theme that is promoted and maintained by the government and media.
Countries like Guyana did have a very large slave and coolie labour importation, and still have larger numbers of Native Americans but smaller numbers of European-descendant groups. I wonder how pillars of white supremacy, or at least racial hierarchy works there.
LikeLike
Yes, great thread , Abagond
Id definitly like to expand on the cultural aspect, which is one of the big ones
i think using a term like “white supremacy” gives white people too much wiggle room to say that means kkk or something
if it was put as “white cultural supremacy”, “white cultural racism”, they would have to look at it differantly
the chances of walking out the door and being lynched, called the n word or shot by the police, are most likely not to happen on a daily basis, but, the cultural racism is right in the living room as soon as you turn on the box
white racists are going to get all defencive if you go at them politicly, I think their weak soft underbelly is the cultural racism, which is the more predominant aspect that creeps in everyday. the source of much colorisation issues has one fonte as the boob tube
I think if you want to get them off guard , lead them into territoy they arnt really prepared to deal with,, the effecs of white cultural racism and its history , the destruction , dissmissal and burial, are ripe points of attack to mount
for sure white cultural racism is a pillar of white supremacy
LikeLike
Abagond will always claim any ‘gap’ in achievement must be the result of discrimination, supremacy or institutional racism — unless that gap favors blacks. He only cares about indians, arabs and asians in so far as he can use them to wage his own campaign against whites. Were east indians the primary population of achievement as they were in uganda he would be attacking them. He only gives them a pass in America because their numbers are small. I’m not suggesting he does this deliberately. He’s not self-aware enough for that. I’d say he’d be satisfied to impose black supremacy but I know that isn’t true. Nothing would ever satisfy him.
LikeLike
well certainly .br’s ‘anti-fascist’ shim can be inserted here, it is unlikely, with the amount of control the chinese government purportedly has over its populace that there will be any meaningful let’s say direct exchange in terms of political rights and stuff, like glasnost took forever, know what i mean and i think that is the most important interms of the realpolitik like
LikeLike
besides rogue elements of course and all that tom clancy ish
LikeLike
well, absolutly, in the big picture, that is relevant, V8…and they have a small army patroling the internet, this blog would never exist in China
but, Im totaly willing to suspend the big picture in this case since Abagond put “American white supremacy ” in the title..but , i hear you, and I do carry an anti facist shim
LikeLike
Agabond,
I’ll just leave this here.
Dougla
It is amazing what one can find on the Wikipedia these days.
LikeLike
You are quite right that all blogs on wordpress are blocked in Mainland China, but some may be able to access via VPN.
LikeLike
Abagond, fantastic post. I love these insights.
If you take the long view of white hegemony on an international scale, regardless of specific history, geography or culture, the three pillars of labor, land, and warfare have been constants where ever colonialism occurred.
Additionally, Bulanik (as always) makes an excellent point about the (invisible) fourth pillar of education/entertainment/culture, which has now supplanted the other three, and allows for sustained and continuous conquest, even if whites aren’t physically present to engage in the more overt acts of warfare, land theft, or slavery and the exploitation of labor.
How do we even begin to dismantle a system such as that?
LikeLike
Great post but to me White supremacy= power + prejudice. It means being prejudice and biased towards a group of people you hate and having the power to act out on that hate by oppressing those you hate. It kinds of racism and discrimination all mirrors White supremacy in a way or another, if you think about it.
LikeLike
@Da Jokah
How come you are on here if you hate Abagond and this blog so much? He is not perfect but I happen to agree with Abagond 80% to 90% of the time. Too bad this blog doesn’t fit or suit your false sense of ego of being White. This blog was written for those who want to read and hear what he has to say.
And there is no such thing as Black supremacy. Blacks don’t have the power to oppress White people the way your people have oppressed Blacks for centuries.
LikeLike
@Bulanik: Good point about the entertainment industry and education system.
LikeLike
The link below is for an interesting article about the effects of TV on Asian Americans and the Model Minority myth:
“Television Exposure, Model Minority Portrayals, and Asian-American Stereotypes: An Exploratory Study”
by
Srividya Ramasubramanian
http://www.immi.se/intercultural/nr26/ramasubramanian.htm
LikeLike
@ jefe to the question
Should Anti-Hispanic racism be seen as a variety of Anti-Native racism?
You replied:
I disagree. Perhaps it IS the other way round, but the visibility of that framework is distanced and masked.
When the insistence is that a person who is Spanish-speaking should understand and should accept that they should say they are Hispanic or Latino, then they are being squeezed into European cultural heritages. Something which they may not be.
If most of so-called Latin America is a combination of Indigenous peoples, and Africans, mixed with Europeans (and others non-white ethnicities) — yet they are “white people” — then again, it is the white supremacy’s PR machinery and the Eurocentric and white-washing education system at work.
Commenters — such as Linda — have discussed this a few times before: it’s a Belief System that leaves many brown people in denial about who and what they are:
Once again this video: “When Brown People Think They Are White” encapsulates the confused, conflicted triumph of white-washing over truth:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e6ChgL1EC4)
LikeLike
@ Jefe
Guyana. Now there’s an intriguing country… Though Guyana’s population is small, and most of the land is “undeveloped” rainforest, this country is probably a classic example of white supremacy’s industrial needs, policies, reactions and ideals all wrapped up in one!
Not that there are many white people there, it’s more a case of white supremacy by remote control.
It has a variety of elements: artificially created market, product supply created by an enslaved population in the tradition of the capitalist factory, as well as “displaced” Indigenous peoples, AND black and brown populations nicely buying into divide and conquer.
This was land Columbus saw, but was later coveted and overrun by other Europeans, “displacing” the several Indigenous peoples who lived on the varied topography in this part of the northern parts South America. The Dutch that settled there had plans for the land, and as you know, the Dutch know a thing or 2 about land and commerce; they were probably the most adept of all the European colonial nations, and were experts at turning the former into the latter.
If you look at the geography of Guyana, the fertile coastal plain is pretty small and because it’s on the coast it’s naturally prone to water coverage at high tide. Therefore, the only way to protect any industrial and revenue potential from farming, was by transforming the coastline and great rivers with an irrigation system of dams and dikes. The Dutch had been doing much the same to their flat and down river land for 100s of years, and still do.
http://blogs.umb.edu/buildingtheworld/waterworks/protective-dikes-and-land-reclamation-the-netherlands/
With the native peoples cleared off to the hinterlands or dead, this great transformation could be only be achieved by the free labour of enslaved Africans. It was Africans who:
…{drove} back the sea and {had} cleared, drained and reclaimed 15,000 square miles of forest and swamps. This is equivalent to 9,000,000 acres of land. In short, all the fields on which the sugar estates are now based were cleared, drained and irrigated by African labour forces. All the plantations now turned villages and cities were built by unpaid African labour. In the process of building these plantations, careful research has shown that Africans installed the following (1) 2,580,000 miles of drainage canals, trenches and inter-bed drains, (2) 3,500 miles of dams, roads and footpaths, and (3) 2,176 miles of sea and river defence…. a value of 100,000,000 tons of earth had to be moved by the hands of African slaves “ (From “Scars of Bondage”, E & T Kwayana)
What was the point of the plantations? Was Europe so hungry that it neede more and more foodstores and food staples? No, rice growing was in the mix, but Europeans weren’t big rice-consumers then.
Instead, meeting the demands of drug addiction was pivotal.
In this case sugar.
Humans don’t need teaspoons of sugar for survival or quality of life, but it’s said that sugar’s neuro-chemical effects are so swift and “fix” at such an early age, these narcotic effects are not only life-long, but serve as a “gateway drug” for other drugs. (But let’s just call it by it’s euphemism: a luxury good.)
In books about the sugar industry, like Sidney Wilfred’s “Sweetness and Power: Place of Sugar in Modern History”, it’s clear that sugar farms in places like Guyana were the biggest vehicle driving human migrations and so much human suffering and human casualties, for centuries. It was an industry set up to to fuel white people’s drug addiction, and it was an industry that influenced not only Guyana’s ethnic mix but later political conflicts.
LikeLike
@ Jefe,
I suppose then, Guyanese slavery served as both:
-the template for how to run a commercial concern and exploit a labour force, and,
-sugar plantations served as the parallel of the capitalist, industrial factory.
Those 2 “templates” are pretty well-known.
When slavery ended, the British (because by now this was British Guyana) devised the indentured worker systems, another form of slavery, to work the cane fields: first Portuguese and Chinese and then Asian Indians, who became known as “East Indians”. It was the East Indians who make up the majority of Guyana’s population.
(White supremacy and its desires have such power: the modern ethnic mix of many nations over two centuries has been influenced by the demand for sweets! lol.)
Thus, Africans were whipped and worked to death to satisfy Europeans’ sugar addiction. The slavers’ methods always included divide and conquer, breaking up families and clans and linguistic groups, and then ranking based on field slave, factory slave, house slave, artisan slave, who was light-skinned and how much, who was dark-skinned and how much.
Then, later categories: who was Afro-Guyanese, who was Indo-Guyanese, who was mixed-race, who was Amerindian…And after that — who would control the country and have power after the British went (leaving the country poor)?
As far as I know, Guyana’s Sugar Corporation is nationalized but was always operated by British multinational agri-businesses like Tate and Lyle. Or controlled by “holding companies” — firms that produce nothing and provide no service, just own things, reducing the risk to share holders.
This is a benefit of white supremacy, too: distance. The long arm of ownership.
********************
I think the way it works is that as the black and brown political elite served the interests of white British in Guyana. After the British went, it would be the police who served the interest of the political elite, and in this case it was a mainly black police force, and black political elite. The police (or any militarised force salaried by the political elite) is the State’s own personal arm and hand.
And in Guyana’s case, the African political elite may have felt more entitled to govern a country they had built 180 years before the majority Asian population had arrived and had pretensions of power and racial superiority over them in place of the white man.
(From “Domination and Power in Guyana: Study of the Police in a Third World Context” By G.K. Dann)
Walter Rodney, Afro-Guyanese scholar and activist — and probably Guyana’s most influential thinker, held the belief that the various ethnic groups had all been disenfranchised by the ruling colonial class, and could work together.
He was assassinated. Many believe that his killing was the work of Guyana’s then black president, motivated by the need to maintain black governance of the country.
More on Walter Rodney: http://www.guyanacaribbeanpolitics.com/wpa/rodney_bio.html
LikeLike
what can be done?—
I am not an American, nor do I live there so my ideas may be impractical—but perhaps can serve as a starting point of discussion?………
Begin small-scale in your own community.
education—extend school hours…use time for….
a) provide homework help, advance courses.
b) encourage extra cultural activities such as arts, music, drama, literature/poetry…..etc
c) Show movies/programs from other cultures, countries such as China, Africa etc so that white culture is not the only culture kids know.
Economy—Bring up the community by
a) using micro finance to start up small community businesses
b) use consumer buying power to support these businesses
c) businesses should get together and invest in training/seminars for sustainable business growth/problem solving.
Environment—build safe, clean environment (see —Edi Rama mayor of Tirana Albania)
a) organize regular clean-up, recycling for community
b) collect money for repair and paint of public/community areas
c) organize community regarding security issues (dealing with gangs, police, community problems etc)
d) community members of all faiths should pool their resources for the betterment of their community…..
Revitalizing education, economy, and environment will bring change and prosperity in the community
LikeLike
@Bulanik,
It seems like you have researched some things about how whites maintain white supremacy in Guyana, even today. Does any research compare about how it worked elsewhere in places where whites were always a numerical minority and created multiracial societies, eg., Malaya. There the British drove out the Portuguese and the Dutch and seized the area for their tin mines, and plantations of rubber and palm oil. They then imported hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Chinese and Indian “coolies” to work them in the mines and plantations, hauling their products down to Singapore. They also had tens of thousands of Eurasian children, but later on abandoned them after they started to bring white women over, creating another “caste” of people. They tried to solve some of the racial politics problem by splitting Singapore off by itself and calling the rest Malaysia, but as we saw in the election earlier this year, the legacy of racial politics is just as brutal as ever.
Another place worth looking at – Mauritius. I have never been there, but I am really looking into visiting next year.
I wonder if the experiences of Guyana and Malaysia could be food for thought for what might happen to the USA after whites become the numerical minority yet where there is a legacy of white supremacy and race is still politics.
LikeLike
Great ideas Anon
LikeLike
I don’t agree that this is the solution. US education has already been experimenting with this cultural enrichment initiative since the 1990s, It is not bad, but it leaves out completely the non-white part of US history. Non-whites did not appear in US history as tokens or as merely contributions to white history. Their histories are just as much part of the America as “the white man” (to borrow 1950s encyclopedia talk). If those cultural enrichment programmes are shown to kids without the others, then whites (and non-whites for that matter) will look at all POC as foreigners with foreign cultures and no history in America.
LikeLike
@Jefe, you are certainly onto to something there.
I think we are all exposed to white supremacy, and maybe we maintain it without being conscious of it. Perhaps your own research, life experience, study and travel have made you reflect similarly.
I believe I know what you mean about Malaya/Malaysia. The race politics of empire just ripples and rebounds without end. When you get to Mauritius you can be sure to find those oh-so familiar resonances of white supremacy there too!
As I have said many, many times on this blog, growing up in London around many other nationalities and ethnicities was instructional. My own family is highly multi-ethnic (which makes me curious about how and why that came to be) and I’ve seen how white supremacy has impacted our lives in various ways. There are upside, but by and large, it’s not a pretty sight!
To put you in the picture, the Guyanese in England (whether Indo-, Afro-, Amerindian or otherwise), formed part of the “Caribbean” community, and even though it is a South American country, it shares a lot in common with the Caribbean island nations. Because of this environment, we all ended up at school with people from very diverse origins, and spending time around each others’ families. Also, that meant many of us studied around an international crowd, and later, worked around people from various nations, sometimes forming close relationships. Over time, along the way, over the decades, I think anyone would get pointed to ideas and knowledge: it forces one to think. — I know a lot of people like this. You might as well, I’d guess.
I believe it was the constant exposure to different peoples that forced me, and those around me, to see parallels and probe those questions…maybe that’s it. These days, I just tend to watch and not share too much about it, though as you asked about Guyana, it was an inviting departure, hence my long comments above.
I didn’t touch on Suriname/Dutch Guyana, btw, and it’s quite unlike its neighbour British Guyana. That Dutch population is even more diverse due to numbers of Indonesian indentured workers, Lebanese and early Jewish planters. To cut a long story short: everyone had to assimilate into white Dutch-ness. Even though that was rejected in politics and social life — particularly by the Asians in Suriname who didn’t like the light-skinned Creoles bossing them around — race and ethnicity is always on the scene. A Surinamese friend of mine (in Ireland) has occasionally told me that even in her own ethnically diverse family, EVERY family row is connected to, or trace-able to who is “whitest”. All related to class and privilege.
I’ve never met anyone from French Guiana — but France keeps most of its overseas territories as part of its Republic. From what I know of that though, those nations are kept second class in the practical workings of French administration. Therefore, Guadeloupe, Martinique in the Caribbean and Reunion and Mayotte — 2 French countries in the Indian Ocean — are all parts of the European Union.
LikeLike
@ anon, some of those ideas can be adapted and go places.
It’s easy to say that a clean, open and bright environment is “only cosmetic”.
Edi Rama is an artist. From my experience, most political leaders are lawyers, or businessmen from what I gather! Perhaps we have had too many of those kinds of people as leaders.
LikeLike
Jefe, that means you have to study jazz, that is black American cultural history, too bad you never got that..or at least never did really study it
And I do think seeing in depth films of other cultures is extremly valuable, like Black Orpheus, in the early sixties…no less than Dizzy Guilespi, ever heard of him ? Said that seeing that movíe let him know there were brothers and sisters like him in a place he didnt know about….my sentiments also
LikeLike
– Studied music from age 8 to university, including some jazz, but I have not actively studied music since university
– saw Black Orpheus several times
– heard of Dizzy Gillespie – have some memory of him when he was still alive
Really really don’t want to talk about this subject on this thread. Trying to stay on topic. I know you will dream up some way to link these topics together, but I may choose not to respond.
LikeLike
Jefe, its interesting, someone makes some great suggestions, and you come in saying they ought to study the cultural histories in their country, but you sure dont practice what you preach, especialy related to black american culture, which is the strongest building block in our music heritage, and you said black american culture is weak…you baffle me , man
I mean seriously, the intelectual , politicised battle against white supremacy has exausted itself…its running into walls, people are spending more time on battling about interracial sex than the actual much more important issues
and I maintain that white cultural supremacy is the real vulnerable area that can be attacked and is one of the deeper serious problems that affects poc in america on a daily basis
unfortunetly,to really have to fight white cultural supremacy, you have to do the hard work of understanding the profound values and contributions culturaly and how they have been abused and lied about right into today
People are going to have to get the stories right, they cant go implicating the inventor of black american tap because he was forced to wear cork…they are going to absolutly start studying black american jazz history in all its ramifications, and not intellectualy.but on a visceral leval and what are the universal Afro diasporic concepts that link it to other afro diasporic cultures and their similar cultural struggles and obstacles to really get the immensity of the reality and how it relates to white cultural supremacy..people are really going to have to get what it is about, and the really deep value it represents
a perfect example that you do have to pull back to get the greater perspective for more understanding
they have to know black american jazz musicians were way ahead of black militants in understanding the cultural racism thery faced regularly, they were adapting islam , first, Miles reads like the first part of Malcolm X.What do be bop, the zoot suit wars and malcolm X have in common?
and , all poc people in the USA are going to have to study and understand the black american cultural racist struggle, since all of them, Mexican, Asian, Feminist, gay, have all been biting off ther black American political struggle, they ought to learn the real cultural history of black americans, so they dont start falling in line saying tap is shucking and jiving for the white man
LikeLiked by 1 person
dont want to talk about this subject? Are you kidding me, or am i going to get carded for bringing up jazz talking about pillars of white supremacy? I thought I saw jazz in the thread text…is it just too out of your realm?
you studied music since 8? you think that gives you these insights? people with jazz doctrates dont have these insights because they dont teach them…this is something people have to go the extra mile, and if they do, they will be extremly rewarded, white people will never be able to tell the real deal , it has to be unearthed on a person’s own will to want to go deeper than the standard regular speil about what is happening
LikeLike
and you heard of Dizzy, but , do you know about be bop, the idiom he innovated along with Charlie Parker? Do you have any idea what that entails to play?
Did you know he and Machito were instrumental in bringing in focus on Afro Cuban culture , by bringing in Chano Pozo on congas , making musics like “Manteca”, that brought that culture to an American public…given the heavy inflience on American culture Cubans are brining to Florida, that is relevant
one of the Last Poets , Felipe, had a poem that said “Chano Pozo lives in a thatched hut in Mongo’s mind”…do you know what that means?
I mean there is heard of, and really knowing, if you dont know what Dizzy meant to be bop, you didnt really hear the reality about him
LikeLike
@anon good points, but also doesnt address the issues of mental health, disability, poor health in general in the community and how to expect people to make money with miccro-loans not just buy food or diapers
LikeLike
@v8, I like anon’s points too. Each thing would need to be adapted to the place and people it served. I first head of the People’s Banker in Bangladesh in around the mid-1990s. It’s still going in poor, rural areas in that country, but wouldn’t know how it would work in cities. Would it work through very small business enterprises? Social entrepreneurship?
I don’t remember the name, but the principle is “poverty-interruption”, and idea was that in countries like Bangladesh, incentives can spur poor business people can earn more money.
LikeLike
v8, I wonder about the mental health aspect, too.
But I found the source of that Asian bank idea, the Grameen Bank:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrUQKuvsmvw)
LikeLike
too easy to co-mingle funds when you are poor, trust me on this one
LikeLike
This just reminds me of the narrow mindedness and bigotry of western ideology.
LikeLike
Anon, has some excellent points, maybe that would advance our education system here America, and this would certainly benefit poor performing schools in lower income areas of the country.
LikeLike
@kiwi: What happened to those people? Ethnic clensing.
I think the Fourth pillar is the Belief in race.
It comes out from the comments again and again on this blog. It is so deeply ingrained in the american thinking that even many of the anti-racist activists on this blog suscribe it without even flinching.
Even though it is a biological fact that there is only one, just one, human race on this planet, people are talking about retaining the purity of races, weather black or white. I find that very strange indeed since it is the very corner stone of the racist world view, the very foundation of racism.
The promotion of racial purity is a promotion of racism itself. It is the Point. So if anyone speaks against “racial mixing”, or like abagond suggests in “marriage to Whites” that it would somehow dilute the natives, that is racism. Period.
As for the natives, when I was living in USA, I saw many times how black americans treated natives with the same fear and suspicion as did the whites or “browns”. The native guys where at the very bottom of all the social scales at that time. Nobody, and this included my black neighbour, a black university teatcher etc., saw them equal on anything. They were feared and outsiders many times more than anybody else.
I think the racism in USA is based on the very knowledge that EVERYONE ELSE is a new comer other than the natives. All the others know deep inside that this is not our land, our country. The very idea of the american nation is a lie. Everything you see, touch, what ever is around you has been put on a land stolen from the natives. Manhattan, Washington, highways, airports, harbours, roads, towns, cities, everything is on a stolen land.
In order to live on a stolen land, your brain must make it acceptable. You must somehow explain yourself why and how you can live on a land stolen from the original people. You somehow must accept that you are still participating on a massive crime against humanity on native people.
They are still there, the owners of that land you live in, without any rights on their own land. And all the others know this. That makes them uneasy. That makes the racism and the whole system what it is.
Just like the whites in South Africa had to accept the responsibility, or just like Australian government admitted its crimes against aborginals, the whole american nation, including the ones decending from the first immigrants and those just recently moving in, those originating from slaves and masters, all of them must accept the responsibility that they are all living on a stolen land which belongs to someone else.
Untill that happens I do not see how profound progress against the institutional racism in USA can be really made.
LikeLike
It is my feeling from most of the research I have done that white supremacy is routed mainly in economic placing. The one idea that we must lead because the rest of these fools don’t know how. We know how to use, make, and manage. I still hear it echoed in most of todays racism. Even thought, at this point in time all of that maneuvering has poison the water, air, and land. I guess if you yell loud enough for long enough eventually someone might take that for the truth.
LikeLike
Great comment Sam!
The reality of living on stolen land is the denial and legacy of what Western civilisation has been built upon. This has been a global practice. Until this is accepted what has been built will never form into stable societies. The idea that you can cut or remove people from their natural given heritage and treat them like they never existed is appalling, unnatural and non-spiritual. This can only logically lead to the downfall of its perpetrators.
This is what I believe can be witnessed happening now…those pillars are rapidly being forced to come down…
LikeLike
@ Kwamla
I think I am beginning to understand what you said here:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/reading-thucydides/
It is rooted in a profound white pathology where they see everyone and even themselves as less than human. Their words are Orwellian, turned upside down, meaning the opposite of what they seem to mean: Enlightenment, civilization, progress, advanced, normal, etc. An Alice in Wonderland of inhumanity. To persuade us of their spiritual health they talk about White Jesus and search the globe for sicker patients, like Mao and Genghis Khan. It is why they have to demonize black people.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2011/05/24/twilight-zone-eye-of-the-beholder/
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/john-trudell-when-columbus-got-off-the-boat/
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2013/08/17/magical-progress/
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/asian-atrocity-argument/
LikeLike
Well put Abagond and its good to see you beginning to incorporate this realisation more and more into your postings.
LikeLike
i dont have to search the globe looking for atrocities like mao, i have to defend against his sick ideology…get for real Abagond
LikeLike
@ B.R.
In the U.S. where I live it is not Mao’s ideology that pours forth from nearly every television channel, classroom, newspaper, Hollywood film, fashion magazine, racist joke, “ethnic” Halloween costume and so on. It is not Mao’s ideology that warps and damages my own ideas about myself and those of my children. It is not Mao’s ideology that is a scar upon the face of North America where I live.
ARGUABLY, but only arguably, Mao’s ideology has KILLED more people, but white supremacism has MORE THAN ENOUGH blood on its hand. It is easily one of the most dangerous ideas ever.
LikeLike
@ B.R.
White supremacism has killed at least 64 million people and that does not even count the genocide of Native Americans since my source is American. By your own account Mao has killed 50 million.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/democide/
LikeLike
What? that is your argument? When mao did this in a period of about 7 years, in my lifetime…recently? There isnt much like that
gees abagond, this started out to be a thread I can totaly agree with and contribute…and somehow, you, not me threw in mao…
I can fully agree about the horribleness of white supremacy, but in the same breath, Ill say black people have one of the better chances to play the system, something they fought and died for to do,in america than in most places in the world, in spite of its racism, white cultural supremacy…and brown people around the world, and asian, flock to this system, in spite of its horrible white cultural supremacy, we agree on
talking about white supremacy and how it works is one thing, fogging it over with white people might have something inherant in them that makes them worse than other people, starts another direction into fairy tales
and, you are just going to slap derailing on me, when you are derailing your own thread
and your Mao thread is a joke, its not about the horrors of what happened, you actualy wrote it to diminish mao’s insanity…this diminishing of that is a sickness, and Sam, for example, who wrote his scathing póst on here now, is a prime example of someone who will diminish Mao, he knows every base the CIA ever set up around the world, but sluffs off the 30 million starving in China as though it happens all the time…what????
why dont you get back on track on this thread , about white supremacy in America and how it works , instead of the tired anti Americanism…see , I can tell the differance, from white supremacy and american foreign policy
and, why dont you bring your diminishing of mao’s horrors over to your mao thread, I made a lot of great points, but, you just dont really say anything…you just come over here and slip in the cliche
LikeLike
@ Legion
I agree – the comment with the numbers probably does more harm than good since it can easily slip into a thief-thief or Oppression Olympics argument. Mao and white supremacism are each terrible in their own right.
LikeLike
Legion, Abagond refers to Mão, by reffering to his Asian Atrocity thread
You stop wasting my time, you sound really off base and húng. Up
LikeLike
@ B.R.
I do not want this thread to get derailed by the Mao stuff, especially since there is already a thread for it:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/asian-atrocity-argument/
I will continue my comments there.
LikeLike
Amen…Im totaly with you on that
LikeLike
@ sam
…it is followed with religious-like fervour, and by perfectly rational, well-informed people. As much as racism is a social reality, it’s based on a term which has no biological or other scientific reality.
Thus: a black woman cannot give birth to a white child, but a white woman can give birth to her black, biological child. This has nothing to do with how the child looks. Just the way racial descent is defined.
Defined, I stress.
This definition is an invention — not by “Europeans” as such — but by a colonial white elite: whiteness was their invention and Institution.
So, this means the conversations in this deeply-ingrained thinking by anti racists who subscribe to it without a flinch, are WHITE conversations.
What I mean is that none of the content of those conversations are actually about “non-white” people, because under white supremacy it can never be — because racism is intercourse between white people which uses non-white people as its language.
Hence my reservations about ways of thinking — racialized thinking — which claim to be outside of, and liberated from, white supremacist’s racism.
Such thinking points to white “pathology”, and white people as creatures of destructive incompleteness that can never be redeemed: a sick race.
I think I learned to pause at theories of this kind when I took an interest in the Swahili language as a teenager. It was the language of Pan-Africanism and to a less extent, black nationalism. Further, my friends liked the idea of it, because if Americans (a more advanced and glamorous nation we idealized and wished to be like) were learning the language, and using key words from Swahili, then. we brown and black youngsters should do likewise.
But, when I actually listened to various Africans, they asked:
wasn’t Swahili a language developed in the environment of East Africa’s slave trade? Swahili has the substance of Arabic, German, Portuguese, French — these are the slavers’ languages.
Why this language to the exclusion of Africa’s vast range of languages?
Sure, I understood and responded to the rhetoric/message, the purer and deeper notion of spirituality proposed — if I couldn’t feel my identity in that then I was as doomed and lost as a white person!
This appealed powerfully to the emotions, it invoked the presence of the ancestors: it was supposed to be “cleansing” and “freeing” by mere fact of knowing, and carrying that heritage..but something was wrong at its centre.
I read books and listened to theories that claimed to expose the profound and inescapable Truth About White People, the secrets to understanding them and their flawed humanity, of reading the psycho-sexual and socio-cultural signs, and deciphering the symbolism. Yet, when I read Sigmund Freud, it wasn’t far removed! and Freud, though sincere and serious and strong, was often wrong and did much harm.
I cannot conclude there is but one, homogeneous European, and one European culture. Nor have I found its “opposite”: a homogeneous non-white and non-European culture, full of virtue.
One theory about why Euro-Americans had to invent whiteness to protect elite interests: (http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=4463)
LikeLike
@Pay It Forward
Thanks for the link.
I was expecting something a bit more insightful in the study. The researcher is also speculating a lot in the summary discussion.
To me the important thing is in the last paragraph
Although appearing to be positive, model minority stereotypes do not seem to evoke admiration but appear to strengthen beliefs that racial discrimination does not exist in contemporary America and that race-targeted policies such as affirmative action are no longer needed for racial minorities. In essence, television portrayals of Asian-Americans, even so-called positive model minority stereotypes, might serve to privilege Whiteness and maintain boundaries between various racial groups.
This was my belief all along and this researcher seems to believe the same thing. What gets me is that people don’t realize that it is a stereotype designed to support the belief that America is colour blind and racial discrimination no longer exists.
It is very much a racial stereotype that exists only to maintain white supremacist hierarchy and divide and disempower non-whites. I knew it was just a stereotype when it was being promoted in the 80s, but now we have a whole generation educated on it. How can even blacks and Asians be blinded by it.
It also outlined 4 main stereotypes operating today:
“the yellow peril” (dangerous criminals),
“the perpetual foreigner” (unassimilated immigrants),
“the exotic geisha” (subservient sexual objects) .
“model minority”
We need posts on #1 and #3.
LikeLike
@ Jefe
I used to think the Model Minority stereotype was in reaction to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and the consequent Asian brain drain. But 1966 is way too quick for that. Also, it too closely follows a black anti-stereotype, so it was not based on any kind of reality. It seems more likely that it was deliberate, political and in response to affirmative action. Just as the welfare queen stereotype was deliberate to pave the way for Reagan’s tax cuts for the rich.
Affirmative action was given teeth by Executive Order 11246, which President Johnson signed on September 24th 1965. A year later: model minority appears in print. Too much of a coincidence if you ask me. Asian Americans were not even doing all that well on the SATs at that point.
LikeLike
Abagond,
It first appeared in the New York Times magazine in January 1966 to describe Japanese Americans. It was expanded in the US News and Report in Dec 1966 to include Chinese-Americans. It should be very suspect that the idea appeared just 3 months after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. I think most researchers on the topic acknowledge that it was created artificially to make whites look like they are not racist, to make blacks look like a “problem minority” that has nothing to do with whites.
Before 1965. Asian immigration was a tiny trickle. Before 1943, immigration was technically forbidden. There was no Asian Brain drain yet in 1965.
Such a phenomenon must have been carefully calculated. It was developed to counteract Affirmative Action and reinforce the bootstrap myth. My Aunt invited me to attend some Asian-American Republican rallies. I met Elaine Chow and Robert Dole when he was running against Clinton. The rhetoric was EXACTLY about how America does not need Affirmative Action. Just look at Asian-Americans!
It has also silenced Asian-Americans from making claims of racial discrimination.
Thing is. It appeared to have worked. We have a whole generation that believes the stereotype and look what is happening — erosion of affirmative action and civil rights.
LikeLike
Finally you figured this out. 😛
LikeLike
Yes I agree. There are 4 pillars of White supremacy; the 3 Abagond noted, and lastly Bulanik’s 4th theory.
Fantastic information on Guyana, Bulanik. I have a large amount of Guyanese family members, but knew very little about the history of the country.
I think the thing that can be so frustrating, is the truth of how think these strongholds actually are, and how easily they could be altered by a significant minority, at least modified for greater equality. And yet, the momentum and direction has never quite been grasped.
These models extend beyond the States, to Europe, to Australia, the Caribbean, even Africa and the IMF. (Has anyone ever seen the movie “Bamako?” Or Ross Kemp on the Congo, exploring the exploitation of terrorist armies for the cheap exchange of minerals and materials in all of our phones, despite the horror inflicted on the peoples victimized by these groups?)
I did a short compilation of very visible effects of White supremacy in multiple ethnic groups a short while ago. I may post it later if I find the time. It points much to Bulanik’s theory, where in that fourth point, it’s immediately identifiable.
They say the US’s dominant group will be the Hispanic community, in a short time. Has anyone any theories for the possible changes in the angles? What will society suddenly be like? Not only for White people, but the Asian and African American community?
LikeLike
That was one reason I brought up Guyana, Malaysia and Mauritius. Those are examples of colonies where the European colonizing power brought mass numbers of cheap and slave labour from different racial and ethnic groups, where whites are the numerical minority.
LikeLike
jefe,
you just described the whole d’mn Caribbean 🙂
LikeLike
Ebonymonroe,
They say the US’s dominant group will be the Hispanic community, in a short time. Has anyone any theories for the possible changes in the angles? What will society suddenly be like? Not only for White people, but the Asian and African American community?”
Linda says,
speaking as a part-Latina,who lives near Miami in Florida — if we use Miami as a model of what it is like when Hispanics are large and in charge, then I can say this:
both black and Anglo-white Americans will have to work hard to not get shut out of Hispanic dominated business/events and they and Asians would all have to learn to speak Spanish in order to get ahead and do business – being bi- or tri-lingual is a plus in Miami.
(Haitians and other Caribbean’s, as a group, do very well in Miami and these are some of the pet-peeves they complain about living and doing business in a dominant Cuban/Hispanic city)
Once the Hispanic community sees no need to band and stand together with African Americans to fight against the “Anglo” white Americans — then African Americans, as a political and business group, would have to make sure to maintain their positions of power and make it clear to the Hispanic community that they don’t plan to be relegated to the back socially.
(many Hispanics bring their prejudices with them from their own country and depending on the country, some of them are not used to black people with Power but they respect “class”)
LikeLike
Reading the review of Allen is dreadful..he has done research for dates and legal papers, but he cant hide his ideology
My gosh, “burgoise” is a ridiculous term , used in the communist manifesto, condemming anyone starting their own business…do you know how ridiculous that sounds? How many black American business men would be classified as “burgoise” by marxist standards?
he wants to look at the plantation as a capatalist structure , I always saw it like a communist structure, everybody has to work for the “state-estate”. he calls the plantation owners “the elite” and , I see the plantation owner as more like the dictator…cuban doctors sent abroad to work in other countries, based on agreements they have made with Castro, havr to send the majority of money back to Cuba
and, his attemt at trying to find when “white” came into play, takes no consideration for the huge slave trade happening in the caribean and latin America, especialy Brazil….they all had their histories of coming up with the races and defining “white”
many words in describing slaves , like “pickananies” are words with Portuguese origins…the concepts of describing race and “white” could just as well have been influenced from these other slave traders, the Portuguese did as big slave trade as anyone
A lot of good factual research and info,way too much of this guys ideology laced into his opinion, that really does cloud the truth…I just dont trust these descriptions of history that cant climb out of their ideology
LikeLike
@ Legion
Thank you.
LikeLike
@Jefe
Great points. I wonder if that will still be as applicable for the US, which is a much more “liberal, free speech, fight the power society,” and also considering the times, to the era of colonialism, and the post colonial positioning of its continued strands in the Caribbean.
@Linda
Thank-you Linda. . . What you said is exactly what I was alluding to, my dear.
What is in store for the African American, and the Asian community in the US when Hispanics become the dominant? Will it be better or worse? Very few people seem to be looking into the future at this, and yet the landscape is rapidly changing.
LikeLike
@Bulanik:
I’m not sure if I understud all.
On the pan-european whiteness/ white culture…
That is an illusion which has been promoted by the elite all trough the history despite what has been happening in real life. If you look at the history of so-called white Europe, it proves beyond any doubt that any notion of uniformal uniting white european identity/ cluture does not exist. There is nothing like that in reality, only in propaganda.
In reality europeans have been killing each other and people around the world like nobody else. European history has been constant warring, fighting and even during the peace times, bloody competition between different nationalities and people. There are dozens of cultures and languages, “races” from the saami people to the sicilians, and none of them has historically been bonding with any other group.
The national states were created by two weapons; religion and violence. Different people were subjacated, national identity was created from up to down, not the otherway around. In Finland even after WW2 different “tribes” of finns were still suspicious of each other, so much so that the western finns called carelian refugees as russkies etc. And this was happening in 1945.
National identity was built trough decades, via schools and propaganda, forgery of history and arts etc. National states promoted and pushed, brainwashed the people on this one and forced it via violence if need be. In almost every national state of Europe there has been one or more violent eras against the very own nation by the elite. That is the truth of the national identities.
Pan-european identity is similar. It is an illusion, propagandist idea. European Union is right now the main propagator of this, as was the church in the past. But recent euroscandals have revealed how much there is real pan-european unity. Anti-EU atmosphere is on the rise and people are very suspicious of others, including states and people.
So when looking from outside, from US or Africa, it might look like there is one Europe, that is just a mirage, false vision. Reality is shattered and very often almost hostile, splittered Europe of dozens of nations, languages, cultures, people.
When you think of this reality and compare it to the very idea of white race, you understand why the idea of white race has been promoted so hard. It is another attempt to unify europeans and their decendants across the seas. It is almost as if the lowest common nominator had been found: but hey, we are all white and those are not!
But even that is no longer valid in Europe. There are millions of non-white europeans today across the continent.
So what is this white Europe but an illusion?
LikeLike
Legion, Id like to answer you on the Asian Atrocity thead, and, Im taking my comment above over there to not derail here..Abagond, I support this thread of white supremacy pillars…my comment may not get there today, but II want to address there,
LikeLike
@sam
I’m not sure if I understud all.
😀
Okay, sam, sorry about that — you haven’t told what’s unclear, though.
In the mean time: may I summarize my point this way: white supremacy is so pervasive, it’s so in our heads, we don’t even notice it. That is the BELIEF aspect you describe about these “pillars”. Belief is a psychological state: so even if we can’t prove a thing, we hold it as true anyway. I don’t mean to say that because we can not see something it means it doesn’t exist — it just doesn’t make it a universal truth.
Naturally enough, belief ALSO applies to non-white thinkers who believe they have discovered breakthroughs that depart radically from the white supremacist mindset. They may believe white people are spiritually defective and morally sick — inherently so, holding it to be true that white people are born that way. This, then, is the study of white people as pathology.
I explained one example of that as I experienced whilst still a young teenager. It was an import of American black nationalism at the time, a nation we idealized unquestioningly, along with its exploration of what was essentially “African” — something that turned out to be a generic, mish-mash of what was imagined about African-ness by non-Africans.
(It also excluded anyone or anything not part of the black or white racial binary, such as anyone from Asia or of Asian descent, which is most of the world’s population — 70%, I believe. It was also silent about people of multiple ethnicities: but as I said earlier, in this Belief System, a black woman can never give birth to a white child, but white women can and do, give birth to Black children.)
In the example I gave, it was the use of one East African language (Swahili) to identify this stark “racial” difference — that is, the black-African mind, expression, spirit and intellect — and drew a line between blacks and whites….and all presented as as if it scientific truth, instead of ideas that simply have a lasting emotional affect.
This ^^ is racialized thinking and this is how racialized thinking works.
It is seductive. It is identity-forming. It resists rationality even by rational people.
At the time, the ideas we heard resonated with my non-white friends and me because there was powerful gratification to learn how much more spiritually-evolved and in-touch our brown and black skins made us.
We didn’t have to do anything, we were simply born that way and only needed to just be…
That is the power of an idea: because you really like how an idea or ideology makes you feel, it doesn’t make it true and right simply because it fits your wished-for world-view. So, when you are on the receiving end of racism, what is more nurturing than:
1) learning about the exceptional greatness of your heritage, and,
2) believing plenty of scathing confirmation biases about your racist tormentors?
******************************************************************************************
As you say there is a fantasy about Europe, this is the work of that continent’s elite, an infection they brought with them when they overran, murdered and settled their way through other continents.
There is no unified and homogeneous pan-European whiteness or identity. Take the obvious example of Nazism.
Was the white supremacy of Nazism of Germany embraced by all the Europeans? No. Many of Europe’s countries only collaborated with the Germans to further their own opportunism, nationalism, internal ethnic hatreds, and the anti-Semitism and anti-Communism in their own countries. This so-called United Europe is a new invention, created by Europeans to promote economic ties to (Euro) America, just as you said is
But even that project is fragmenting and failing…
LikeLike
“Natives see themselves as lacking sovereignty – control over their land, culture, society, even children (boarding school, foster care, adoption, dying languages).
Indian tribes in California have casinos that have made them rich. They are sovereign over those reservations. They have their own schools and police. It is their responsibility to retain their languages if they choose, or create another as urban blacks have done. I think you’re projecting what you would hope Native Americans think about their situation. In reality, it looks like they’re moving forward.
Would you support blacks being moved onto reservations where they were autonomous?
LikeLike
@riverside rob:
Native americans can “better” themselves only if they accept the conquerors values and morals and practises, their culture.
Even you are a son of conqueror, living on a conquered land, stolen from its owners etc. This is The american problem, the heart of the darkness, if you will.
As long as the americans understand this, there is a dark heart in the culture and its core.
@bulanik:
Racial thinking is very easy when you live in a culture which promotes it in all possible ways. Via media, text, sayings, acting, social conventions etc. One has to be very alert if one wishes to recognise it.
LikeLike
@ Riverside Rob
The casino thing has become a self-serving White stereotype: Most tribes have no casinos. Some reservations, in fact, are among the poorest places in America.
As to controlling their land, it is held in trust by the American government as if Natives are overgrown children.
The sovereignty thing is certainly not my projection. For one, it puts Blacks in a bad light, as pointed out in the post.
I do think Black Americans would generally be better off in their own country. The huge danger is that America would try to destroy it. Blacks would then merely be moving from Pillar I to Pillar III.
LikeLike
Powerful piece by Bell hooks
“Cultural criticism: White supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy.”
(Some language and graphic scenes.)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLMVqnyTo_0)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ-XVTzBMvQ)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0whHz7PLGY)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op16o9bjfMU)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3CBUm7GrNI)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEQh-Zpb4XU)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtoanes_L_g)
LikeLike
@Abagond
Thank-you for the inclusion of parenthesis around to links, I know you could have just discarded the post. I was unsure of threads outside the “Open thread.” My sincere apologies, I’ll be sure to always put links in parenthesis in future.
Thanks again.
LikeLike
Abaongond said:
Pillars I and II are conquered and owned (Native Americans and African Americans), but the Brown peoples are not, so they are still threatening, are the most threatening.
LikeLike
[…] This is my take on "Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy" (2010) by Andrea Smith. I changed things up a bit"-Abagond […]
LikeLike
[…] See on abagond.wordpress.com […]
LikeLike
epidemic disease was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the American natives because of their lack of immunity to new diseases brought from Europe.
LikeLike
[…] The three pillars of American white supremacy […]
LikeLike
my only disagreement is that democrats share equally in the perpetual war economy…the current potus being no exception…
LikeLike
Raise social awareness about the U.S. funded rape holocaust in the Congo.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLV9szEu9Ag)
LikeLike
Very good points – made me see things a little differently. Sometimes you get sucked into the mindset, because it surrounds you in the media, that you become almost blind to it. I think institutional racism is hard to see unless you’re a victim of it. But we’re all victims of this scam – we’re all paying for these wars, not just in money, but also in loss of self-esteem for being part of an engine of destruction, and the stress of this atmosphere of fear. And if you’re one of these groups, you have the aforementioned plus actually being victims of these policies. Life can be hell.
LikeLike
Yes, people freak out when they can’t use the Arab Trader Argument.
LikeLike
[…] The three pillars of American white supremacy […]
LikeLike
Your blog is somewhat unorganized.The same topics are everywhere,intertwined over the past 4 or 5 years.And you try to sound so very educated in explaining only YOUR beliefs.Anyway,somewhere in this mess,you say’America can be spending money to feed starving American children,rather than spending a fortune,on building the war machine,to maintain the war on terror,war on drugs,war against communism,etc.’So what about the insane amount of money being spent in Africa,Haiti,and other such places that cannot stand Americans-yet we do,in fact,have starving children in Appalachia-Kentucky,West Virginia,Tennessee,Arkansas,and Virginia,that could really use an infusion of cash,to help our fellow Americans?Wouldn’t you say that is more of a priority than sending money to third-world countries who simply hate our way of life,our freedom,our principals?And stop playing the race card.My parents both came from Eastern Europe.My dad saw a black man for the first time,in Auschwitz,in the early 40’s,where they were held by the Nazi’s.The black man was an American fighter-pilot,shot down over France,and brought to Auschwitz.As Dad related the story to me,it sounded as if the German soldiers there also never saw a black man,the way they were encircling him,kicking dirt at him,poking him with their bayonnets,spitting on him,etc.Why does it bother so many negroes when I say”My family had nothing do do with slavery”?It is the truth,and no matter how hard you try sir,you cannot explain away the truth,using five-dollar words,and rehashing crap that a) happened so long ago,and b) everybody already knows about anyway. That is typical Louie Farrakhan nonsense.
LikeLike
You’re a typical loon…… Next!
LikeLike
Abagond, I think your pillar theory of white supremacy while comprehensive, is ultimately too complex to function in the reductive manner necessary to reveal the root, the key, the seed… of what drives the behavior.
Its a great question; indeed, they don’t discuss it; but it is the only area where Neely Fuller and Francis Cress Welsing disagree.
1. Dr. Welsing says its fear of genetic annihilation (Cress Theory of Color Confrontation)
2. Fuller says its straight up immaterial ego
In other words, every behavior in your “Pillar Theory” is a consequence of one of those two pre existing cosmologies.
Their utility is due to their simplicity as they therefore are easier to balance when doing equations.
LikeLike
You know the ‘Final Excuse’ to such behavior would be on the on the lines of “If you guys could do this to us, you would” <<<<< The Final Excuse for Western Imperialism.
LikeLike
[…] Abagond inspired me to venture into the blogging scene. I have been reading his work religiously since I discovered him late last year. The first post I read was entitled The three pillars of American white supremacy. […]
LikeLike
[…] (Image source: Abagond) […]
LikeLike
Hold on. Wasn’t Andrea Smith white posing as actual (Indigenous) American? Why is nobody mentioning this? On that note, Ward Churchill is also faking it.
LikeLike
1.Corinthian 2. Doric 3. Ionic
LikeLiked by 1 person
^benefits of a classical education
LikeLike
@ Uriel
Not sure about Andrea Smith, but it is true of Ward Churchill:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/fake-indians/
LikeLike
don’t forget mixolydian
LikeLiked by 2 people
I was born a white male. I love myself very much. I do not suffer from white guilt, nor will i ever. As for “white privilege,” i see it as a term used by non-whites to help them legitimize their racism towards wonderful white-skinned people like me. I will always love myself, including my wonderful whiteness. Here’s a bit of helpful human advice for all you racist people of color: instead of focusing your thoughts on hating my truly blessed and wonderful whiteness, love yourself for who you are. Each of us, regardless of skin color, is an expression of all of humanity.
LikeLike
@jeff
Can you point out where in this post any of that was done?
LikeLiked by 2 people
@jeff
“As for “white privilege,” i see it as a term used by non-whites to help them legitimize their racism towards wonderful white-skinned people like me.”
White privilege as Black people observe it (from the outside looking in) includes a whole raft of social, emotional and practical benefits that flow from White status in the US and globally. From the freedom to live or travel wherever you want in this country (or globally) to the ability to encounter the police without fearing inexplicable violence.
For White people like you jeff, White privilege is an ocean and they are fish so they never notice an element that surrounds them every minute of every day. That element is missing in the lives of Black folk and others in this country. That is something Black people are acutely aware of every minute of every day.
jeff, please list ten ways Black “racism” prevents you from living your life as you see fit.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I was born a white male.
Fantastic! do you want a medal or a hairy chest to pin it on?
As for “white privilege,” i see it as a term used by non-whites to help them legitimize their racism towards wonderful white-skinned people like me.
Oh no, we think you’re wonderful, fantastic ans stupendous, all rolled into one!
I will always love myself, including my wonderful whiteness.
I’m glad someone does.
Here’s a bit of helpful human advice for all you racist people of color: instead of focusing your thoughts on hating my truly blessed and wonderful whiteness, love yourself for who you are. Each of us, regardless of skin color, is an expression of all of humanity.
Here’s my advice to you: STFU and take your masturbatory fantasies elsewhere you onanist!
LikeLiked by 3 people
Dang, Herneith! Mind me to never piss u off! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
@ jeff
I second jefe’s questions: where in the post am I being racist or hateful towards White people?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I second jefe’s questions: where in the post am I being racist or hateful towards White people?
Maybe you should take another tact and sing their praises. Say to them: ‘Oh no, I think you’re wonderful’. Perhaps a little shuck and jive would go over well? His proud white ‘beautiful’ white behind should be pleased with that! If all else fails %*+% him. Repeat after me, “Oh no, I think you’re wonderful”.
LikeLike
“I was born a white male. I love myself very much. I do not suffer from white guilt, nor will i ever. As for “white privilege,” i see it as a term used by non-whites to help them legitimize their racism towards wonderful white-skinned people like me. I will always love myself, including my wonderful whiteness.”
@ Jeff
Oh.. you mean like this?
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/09/us/raleigh-north-carolina-man-shoots-african-american-outside-home-911-calls/index.html
LikeLiked by 1 person
@jefe
Slavery and Racial Hierarchy
According to Professor Smith, the Black-White binary plays a central role in White Supremacy:
Click to access smith-racial-formations-article1.pdf
The “slaveable” aspect of Blackness is still very much with us in 2016. At this point in time, Black and other ethnic prisoners are conducting a nationwide prison labor strike. It is not well publicized by the corporate media, so many Americans are unaware of this national action. At the heart of the prisoner’s demands are an end to the last form of legal slavery in the US—the free labor of people convicted of crimes. In an Intercept article, the organizers of the strike said,
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/the-new-jim-crow/#comment-335461
In my own life, I have witnessed the racial hierarchy in action on many occasions. One of the most glaring was the local government response to a couple of incidents. One involved police harassing Asian teens. The other was police murdering a Black man. The response from the mayor and police chief were like night and day to the two communities. A full description of the incidents can be found here:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2016/05/12/the-asian-supremacy-argument/#comment-316292
While the Black-White binary may be central to White Supremacy, it is not the only binary or pillar. Another important pillar is the Indigenous/Settler binary with genocide as it’s central feature.
As you said, “it is complicated”….
LikeLike
@jefe
“…there are also other ways of characterizing the systems of white supremacy… If one merely says, “The system of white supremacy is one based on racial hierarchy related to skin colour…it overlooks other aspects.”
Indigenous/Settler Pillar and Genocide
Professor Smith describes the Native/Settler binary as a major logic or pillar in White Supremacy that operates on many levels:
Click to access smith-racial-formations-article1.pdf
Professor Smith shines a light on forms of genocide that include:
▷The classical definition of lethal violence against a group of people where they are physically eliminated or their numbers greatly reduced.
▷Ethnic cleansing where a group of people are driven from the land and supplanted by settlers.
▷Cultural appropriation where the Indigenous people’s culture is stolen and worn like a trophy mantle by settlers so that the settlers are seen as legitimate “natives”.
▷Assimilation of the Indigenous to the point where they are no longer seen as a separate group with land rights or treaty rights.
Perhaps this would explain why in local media, the most European looking tribal members are highlighted; the blond girl at the pow-wow or the blue-eyed and bearded men constructing traditional canoes. It is a means of “disappearing” the Indigenous population into the White population.
◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇
Related to the Indigenous/Settler binary is the experience of Black and Latino people with urban gentrification. Many Black and Latino people face “disappearing native” pressures in many American cities now. The police are used as a force to drive Black and Latino people out of prime urban real estate and control/punish those who remain.
The case of Alejandro Nieto in San Francisco, CA earlier this year is a prime example of an urban “native” disappeared because he was perceived by modern day White settlers as a troublesome native. His presence in a park in his own neighborhood was enough to warrant a panicked call to police and their killing him within minutes of arriving on the scene.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/21/death-by-gentrification-the-killing-that-shamed-san-francisco
LikeLike
@jefe
Orientalism and Perpetual Foreign Threats
Another major logic or pillar is that of racialized groups further up the hierarchy that White Supremacy views as a threat. Professor Smith describes the perils of proximity to Whiteness for Arab Americans. Their nearness to Whiteness can lead to (internally) demonization or (externally) perpetual war.
Click to access smith-racial-formations-article1.pdf
War includes not only bullets and bombs, also economic policies, sanctions that operate like sieges, “no fly zones”, land and resource extraction policies and practices, as well, as political meddling in the affairs of sovereign countries in Asia and the Global South.
LikeLike
@jefe
”…it is possible to be a victim of racial oppression in one of the pillars and act as an agent of oppression in other pillars.”
Complicity with White Supremacy
Professor Smith describes how one group of oppressed people can aid The White Supremacist/Settler Colonialist project oppress other people:
Click to access smith-racial-formations-article1.pdf
◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎
“…why should [Asian American activists] ignore the 2nd and 3rd pillars, when they do have a stake in those too (esp. the 3rd one)?. Is it appropriate for them to avoid subserving their interests on the other pillars and focus only on allying to dismantle (or uphold) the first one? All three pillars are holding up the structure of white supremacy in the USA.”
Professor Smith writes that one way non-European people can avoid the seductive trap of aiding White Supremacy oppress groups in other pillars is through working with allies:
Perhaps one way of organizing across “pillars” is to reject false scarcity. For example, some NE Asian groups see affirmative action as impeding their access to colleges and universities. What is not considered, especially in regard to public higher education is that over the past forty years, powerful groups have worked to limit access to higher education for everyone of moderate and middle incomes.
In the Powell Memo of 1971, Louis Powell singled out “the Campus” as a source of opposition to what he termed the “American Free Enterprise System”. Powell and others considered higher education to be a source of too much freedom for the American people and sought to restrict access to that ‘freedom’.
From the end of World War II until the 1980s, state colleges and universities were either tuition-free or so affordable to state residents that many students of all income levels were able to self-fund their education. Once color barriers were removed in the 1960s, many Black, Latino and Native American students were able to attend college and enter the professional classes. It was not unusual in many states for large numbers of resident students to attend a semester or two, “flunk out” and by sophomore year only the most serious students remained.
According to a 2013 Bloomberg News article, the cost of higher education has surged more than 500 percent since 1985. This increase was greater than the rate of inflation during that period. The cost surge has had the effect of pricing out low income students and burdening middle income students with odious debt. The cost surge also had the effect of increasing competition (false scarcity), especially in flagship state universities.
The cost surge and competition are the results of disinvestment by politicians at the state and national levels of a public good. A strategic alliance of activists in all communities could push politicians to re-invest in higher education so that all students in a given state have an opportunity to access a university education. Education need not be a scarce commodity, it could be restored to a public good. In that way, Asian people of all ethnicities, Pacific Islanders, low income White people, Black people and Latino people would have equal access to higher education.
This is just one example of how strategic alliances and coalition building could benefit groups in all pillars without one group ignoring their own needs or stifling the needs of other groups.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@jefe
Imagining Alternatives
According to Professor Smith,
Professor Smith lays out an inclusive alternative to the current White Supremacist-Settler Colonialist super structure with an emphasis on land and our relationship to the land. She cites Indigenous scholars and activists who have a:
Click to access smith-racial-formations-article1.pdf
LikeLike
@ Afrofem
“It is a means of ‘disappearing’ the Indigenous population into the White population.”
Until 1985, if a Canadian Native woman married a non-Native man, she lost her official governmental status as a Native at the time of her marriage and was unable to pass Native status to any subsequent children:
“Historically, the government also outlined how one may lose their Indian status and become a full Canadian citizen. The process of losing one’s Indian status for citizenship rights was called ‘enfranchisement.’
“Initially, any Indians who obtained a university degree and/or became a professional such as a doctor or lawyer would automatically lose their status. The same process would occur for any Indian who served in the armed forces, or any status Indian woman who married a non-status man. When a woman was enfranchised, as with any enfranchised Indian, she was not provided with compensation or support, nor could she be guaranteed access to her community of origin since her band membership would have been removed as well. Essentially, she lost her Indian rights. Of course, once someone had lost their status, or was enfranchised, they were unable to pass along Indian status (and hence the associated rights) to their children, thus severing ties to their ancestry and community— their Indian ancestry was no longer legally recognized, and in many cases they were further separated from their communities physically, geographically, socially, spiritually, psychologically, and emotionally.”
http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/government-policy/the-indian-act/indian-status.html
LikeLike
@Solitaire
Thanks for adding that information on how the Canadian government presented a poison pill to it’s Indigenous population. That is stupefying!
LikeLike
I can assure you that many of the disenfranchised made up for their loss of status when this was overturned.
LikeLike
@Herneith
Hmmm, you whet my appetite for more. You are a master of links…can you provide a link to an article about how the disenfranchised made up for their loss of status?
LikeLike
http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/government-policy/the-indian-act/bill-c-31.html
My brother-in-law, for example, can claim both Metis and Ojibway status if he wishes. His brothers have claimed Metis status as have their children. I am speaking anecdotally, that is through personal experience via relatives and such. I know of white people who claim status even though they do not reveal their ‘Indian blood’ to anyone unless they have to. There are quite a few white ‘Indians’ coming out of the woodworks. Many Black Nova Scotians have Mi’kmaq status.
LikeLike
http://www.ictinc.ca/indian-act-and-womens-status-discrimination-via-bill-c-31-bill-c-3
Gender parity still not wholly achieved when granting status to those who trace their First Nations blood throught the maternal line.
LikeLike
Last but not least, the Wikipedia version.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Act
LikeLike
@Herneith
Thanks so much for the links!
These laws resemble a razorwire trap; the more you struggle the deeper and more numerous the cuts.
Insidious.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@ Kiwi
“informal quotas against Asians at schools, which as far as I can tell is linked to affirmative action”
The link is disingenuous at best, more likely purposefully misleading. There is no reason to maintain a certain quota of white students at any given university because white students are not underrepresented in the overall college population and have not been historically discriminated against in college admissions. There’s no reason a few universities couldn’t become Asian majority and still maintain affirmative action policies to ensure the admission of an equitable percentage of African American, Hispanic, and Native students. It should work exactly the same way it does when the student population is majority white.
The reason this isn’t happening is white people freak out at the thought of being underrepresented at “their own” universities. They have been overrepresented for as long as there have been colleges in the U.S., and they can barely deal with the idea of being equitably represented. They are stacking the deck against Asian Americans to keep the universities predominately white and then publicly placing the blame on affirmative action to redirect Asian frustration away from whites onto other POC. It’s classic divide-and-conquer.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@Kiwi
From the reading I have done, there are no quotas against Asian Americans in public colleges and universities. Certainly not in the California university system. All Asian American groups constitute 14.9 percent of the population of California, yet make up 36 percent of the students in the University of California (UC) system.
Chinese Americans, in particular, are a scant 2.9 percent of California’s population, yet make up 15 percent or nearly half of all Asian American admissions in the UC system. According to the website REeappropriate.co:
http://reappropriate.co/2014/12/filipinos-are-underrepresented-at-most-competitive-of-uc-campuses-blockblum-iamnotyourwedge/
It is other Asian American/Pacific Islander groups such as Filipinos, Vietnamese, Cambodians and Samoans that face difficulty in enrolling in the UC system, particularly the most selective campuses such as UCLA, Berkeley and San Diego.
The paucity of available seats for California residents is due in large measure to state budget cuts which are precipitated by massive tax breaks and subsidies for large corporations and wealthy individuals in the state.
The state has further cut back on resident enrollment by opening the floodgates to foreign students from China, Korea and India. Those students pay premium out of state fees to attend UC institutions. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:
http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/How-foreign-out-of-state-students-pad-UC-s-6434407.php
The rancorous debate around affirmative action and blaming Black people is a diversion from other factors which limit all students in all states from accessing public higher education. A concerted push for full funding of public education (both K-12 and post secondary) would serve the needs of all Americans. Otherwise, California and other states face negative long term effects described by Patrick Callan, who is president of the Higher Education Policy Institute, a think tank in San Jose, CA:
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/18/local/la-me-uc-admissions-20120418
The enrollment of Asian Americans in private colleges and universities is another matter altogether…
LikeLike