White supremacy is the belief thatwhite people aresuperior to those of otherraces and thus should dominate them.[1] The belief favors the maintenance and defense of anypower andprivilege held by white people. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine ofscientific racism and was a key justification forEuropean colonialism.[2][3]
As apolitical ideology, it imposes and maintains cultural,social,political,historical orinstitutional domination by white people and non-white supporters. In the past, this ideology had been put into effect through socioeconomic and legal structures such as theAtlantic slave trade,European colonial labor and social practices, theScramble for Africa,Jim Crow laws in the United States, the activities of theNative Land Court in New Zealand,[4] theWhite Australia policies from the 1890s to the mid-1970s, andapartheid in South Africa.[5][6] This ideology is also today present amongneo-Confederates.
White supremacy underlies a spectrum of contemporary movements includingwhite nationalism, white separatism,neo-Nazism, and theChristian Identity movement.[7] In the United States, white supremacy is primarily associated with theKu Klux Klan (KKK),Aryan Nations, and theWhite American Resistance movement, all of which are also considered to beantisemitic.[8] TheProud Boys, despite claiming non-association with white supremacy, have been described in academic contexts as being such.[9] In recent years, websites such asTwitter (known as X since July 2023),Reddit, andStormfront, have contributed to an increased activity and interest in white supremacy.[10]
Different forms of white supremacy have different conceptions of who is considered white (though the exemplar is generally light-skinned, blond-haired, and blue-eyed — traits most common in northern Europe and that are viewed pseudoscientifically as being traits of anAryan race), and not all white-supremacist organizations agree on who is their greatest enemy.[11] Different groups of white supremacists identify various racial, ethnic, religious, and other enemies,[11] most commonly those ofSub-Saharan African ancestry,Indigenous peoples of the Americas and Oceania,Asians,multiracial people,Middle Eastern people,Jews,[12][13][14]Muslims, andLGBTQ+ people.[15][16][17][18]
In academic usage, particularly incritical race theory orintersectionality, "white supremacy" can also refer to a social system in which white people enjoy structural advantages (privilege) over other ethnic groups, on both a collective and individual level, despite formal legal equality.[19][20][21][22][23]
White supremacy has ideological foundations that date back to 17th-centuryscientific racism, the predominant paradigm of human variation that helped shape international relations and racial policy from the latter part of theAge of Enlightenment until the late 20th century (marked by decolonization and the abolition ofapartheid in South Africa in 1991, followed by that country'sfirst multiracial elections in 1994).[citation needed]
White supremacy was dominant in the United States both before and after theAmerican Civil War, and it persisted for decades after theReconstruction Era.[25] TheVirginia Slave Codes of 1705 socially segregated white colonists from black enslaved persons, making them disparate groups and hindering their ability to unite. Unity of the commoners was a perceived fear of the Virginia aristocracy, who wished to prevent repeated events such asBacon's Rebellion, occurring 29 years prior.[26] Prior to the Civil War, many wealthywhite Americans owned slaves; they tried to justify their economic exploitation of black people by creating a"scientific" theory of white superiority and black inferiority.[27] One such slave owner, future presidentThomas Jefferson, wrote in 1785 that blacks were "inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind."[28] In theantebellum South, four million slaves were denied freedom.[29] The outbreak of the Civil War saw the desire to uphold white supremacy being cited as a cause forstate secession[30] and the formation of theConfederate States of America.[31] In an 1890 editorial about Native Americans and theAmerican Indian Wars, authorL. Frank Baum wrote: "The Whites, bylaw of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians."[32]
TheNaturalization Act of 1790 limited U.S. citizenship to whites only.[33] In some parts of the United States, many people who were considered non-white weredisenfranchised, barred from government office, and prevented from holding most government jobs well into the second half of the 20th century. Professor Leland T. Saito of theUniversity of Southern California writes: "Throughout the history of the United States, race has been used by whites for legitimizing and creating difference and social, economic and political exclusion."[34]
The denial of social and political freedom to minorities continued into the mid-20th century, resulting in thecivil rights movement.[35] The movement was spurred by thelynching ofEmmett Till, a 14-year-old boy. David Jackson writes it was the image of the "murdered child's ravaged body, that forced the world to reckon with the brutality ofAmerican racism."[36]Vann R. Newkirk II wrote "the trial of his killers became a pageant illuminating the tyranny of white supremacy."[37] Moved by the image of Till's body in the casket, one hundred days after his murderRosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white person.[38]
Sociologist Stephen Klineberg has stated that U.S. immigration laws prior to 1965 clearly "declared thatNorthern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the white race".[39][a] TheImmigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opened entry to the U.S. to non-Germanic groups, and significantly altered the demographic mix in the U.S. as a result.[39] With 38 U.S. states having bannedinterracial marriage throughanti-miscegenation laws, the last 16 states had such laws in place until 1967 when they were invalidated by theSupreme Court of the United States' decision inLoving v. Virginia.[40] These mid-century gains had a major impact on white Americans' political views; segregation and white racial superiority, which had been publicly endorsed in the 1940s, became minority views within the white community by the mid-1970s, and continued to decline in 1990s' polls to a single-digit percentage.[41][42] For sociologistHoward Winant, these shifts marked the end of "monolithic white supremacy" in the United States.[43]
After the mid-1960s, white supremacy remained an important ideology to theAmerican far-right.[44] According toKathleen Belew, a historian ofrace andracism in the United States, white militancy shifted after theVietnam War from supporting the existing racial order to a more radical position (self-described as "white power" or "white nationalism") committed to overthrowing theUnited States government and establishing a white homeland.[45][46] Suchanti-government militia organizations are one of three major strands of violent right-wing movements in the United States, with white-supremacist groups (such as theKu Klux Klan,neo-Nazi organizations, andracist skinheads) and areligious fundamentalist movement (such asChristian Identity) being the other two.[47][48] Howard Winant writes that, "On thefar right the cornerstone of white identity is belief in an ineluctable, unalterable racialized difference between whites and nonwhites."[49] In the view of philosopherJason Stanley, white supremacy in the United States is an example of the fascist politics of hierarchy, in that it "demands and implies a perpetual hierarchy" in which whites dominate and control non-whites.[50]
The presidential campaign ofDonald Trump led to a surge of interest in white supremacy andwhite nationalism in the United States, bringing increased media attention and new members to their movement; his campaign enjoyed their widespread support.[51][52][53][54]
Some academics argue that outcomes from the2016 United States Presidential Election reflect ongoing challenges with white supremacy.[55][56] PsychologistJanet Helms suggested that the normalizing behaviors of social institutions of education, government, and healthcare are organized around the "birthright of...the power to control society's resources and determine the rules for [those resources]".[6] Educators, literary theorists, and other political experts have raised similar questions, connecting thescapegoating of disenfranchised populations to white superiority.[57][58]
As of 2018, there were over 600 white-supremacist organizations recorded in the U.S.[59] On July 23, 2019,Christopher A. Wray, the head of theFBI, said at aSenate Judiciary Committee hearing that the agency had made around 100domestic terrorism arrests since October 1, 2018, and that the majority of them were connected in some way with white supremacy. Wray said that the Bureau was "aggressively pursuing [domestic terrorism] using both counterterrorism resources and criminal investigative resources and partnering closely with our state and local partners," but said that it was focused on the violence itself and not on its ideological basis. A similar number of arrests had been made for instances of international terrorism. In the past, Wray has said that white supremacy was a significant and "pervasive" threat to the U.S.[60]
On September 20, 2019, the actingSecretary of Homeland Security,Kevin McAleenan, announced his department's revised strategy for counter-terrorism, which included a new emphasis on the dangers inherent in the white-supremacy movement. McAleenan called white supremacy one of the most "potent ideologies" behind domestic terrorism-related violent acts. In a speech at theBrookings Institution, McAleenan cited a series of high-profile shooting incidents, and said "In our modern age, the continued menace of racially based violent extremism, particularly white supremacist extremism, is an abhorrent affront to the nation, the struggle and unity of its diverse population." The new strategy will include better tracking and analysis of threats, sharing information with local officials, training local law enforcement on how to deal with shooting events, discouraging the hosting of hate sites online, and encouraging counter-messages.[61][62]
In a 2020 article inThe New York Times titled "How White Women Use Themselves as Instruments of Terror", columnistCharles M. Blow wrote:[63]
We often like to make white supremacy a testosterone-fueled masculine expression, but it is just as likely to wear heels as a hood. Indeed, untold numbers of lynchings were executed because white women had claimed that a black man raped, assaulted, talked to or glanced at them. TheTulsa race massacre, the destruction of Black Wall Street, was spurred by an incident between a white female elevator operator and a black man. As the Oklahoma Historical Society points out, the most common explanation is that he stepped on her toe. As many as 300 people were killed because of it. The torture and murder of 14-year-oldEmmett Till in 1955, a lynching actually, occurred because a white woman said that he "grabbed her and was menacing and sexually crude toward her". This practice, this exercise in racial extremism has been dragged into the modern era through the weaponizing of 9-1-1, often by white women, to invoke the power and force of the police who they are fully aware are hostile to black men. This was again evident when awhite woman in New York's Central Park told a black man, a bird-watcher, that she was going to call the police and tell them that he was threatening her life.
TheTuskegee Institute has estimated that 3,446 blacks were the victims oflynchings in the United States between 1882 and 1968, with the peak occurring in the 1890s at a time of economic stress in the South and increasing political suppression of blacks. If 1,297 whites were also lynched during this period, blacks were disproportionally targeted, representing 72.7% of all people lynched.[64][65] According to scholar Amy L. Wood, "lynching photographs constructed and perpetuated white supremacist ideology by creating permanent images of a controlled white citizenry juxtaposed to images of helpless and powerless black men."[66]
White supremacy has also played a part in U.S. school curriculum. Over the course of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, material across the spectrum of academic disciplines has been taught with a heavy emphasis on white culture, contributions, and experiences, and a lack of representation of non-white groups' perspectives and accomplishments.[67][68][69][70] In the 19th century,Geography lessons contained teachings on a fixed racial hierarchy, which white people topped.[71] Mills (1994) writes that history as it is taught is really the history of white people, and it is taught in a way that favors white Americans and white people in general. He states that the language used to tell history minimizes the violent acts committed by white people over the centuries, citing the use of the words, for example, "discovery," "colonization," and "New World" when describing what was ultimately a European conquest of theWestern Hemisphere and itsindigenous peoples.[68] Swartz (1992) seconds this reading of modern history narratives when it comes to the experiences, resistances, and accomplishments ofblack Americans throughout theMiddle Passage,slavery,Reconstruction,Jim Crow, and thecivil rights movement. In an analysis of American history textbooks, she highlights word choices that repetitively "normalize" slavery and the inhumane treatment of black people. She also notes the frequent showcasing of whiteabolitionists and actual exclusion of black abolitionists and the fact that black Americans had been mobilizing for abolition for centuries before the major white American push for abolition in the 19th century. She ultimately asserts the presence of amasternarrative that centers Europe and its associated peoples (white people) in school curriculum, particularly as it pertains to history.[72] She writes that this masternarrative condenses history into only history that is relevant to, and to some extent beneficial for, white Americans.[72]
Elson (1964) provides detailed information about the historic dissemination of simplistic and negative ideas about non-white races.[68][73][74] Native Americans, who were subjected to attempts ofcultural genocide by the U.S. government through the use ofAmerican Indian boarding schools,[73][75] were characterized as homogenously "cruel," a violent menace toward white Americans, and lacking civilization or societal complexity (p. 74).[71] For example, in the 19th century, black Americans were consistently portrayed as lazy, immature, and intellectually and morally inferior to white Americans, and in many ways not deserving of equal participation in U.S. society.[69][73][71] For example, a math problem in a 19th-century textbook read, "If 5 white men can do as much work as 7 negroes..." implying that white men are more industrious and competent than black men (p. 99).[76] In addition, little to nothing was taught about black Americans' contributions, or their histories before being brought to U.S. soil as slaves.[73][74] According to Wayne (1972), this approach was taken especially much after theCivil War to maintain whites' hegemony overemancipated black Americans.[73] Other racial groups have received oppressive treatment, includingMexican Americans, who temporarily were prevented from learning the same curriculum as white Americans because they supposedly were intellectually inferior, and Asian Americans, some of whom were prevented from learning much about their ancestral lands because they were deemed a threat to "American" culture, i.e. white culture, at the turn of the 20th century.[73]
With the emergence of Twitter in 2006, and platforms such asStormfront, which was launched in 1996, analt-right portal for white supremacists with similar beliefs, both adults and children, was provided in which they were given a way to connect. Jessie Daniels, ofCUNY-Hunter College, discussed the emergence of other social media outlets such as4chan andReddit, which meant that the "spread of white nationalist symbols and ideas could be accelerated and amplified."[10] SociologistKathleen Blee notes that the anonymity which the Internet provides can make it difficult to track the extent of white-supremacist activity in the country, but nevertheless she and other experts[77] see an increase in the number ofhate crimes and amount of white-supremacist violence. In the latest wave of white supremacy, in the age of the Internet, Blee sees the movement as having become primarily a virtual one, in which divisions between groups become blurred: "[A]ll these various groups that get jumbled together as the alt-right and people who have come in from the more traditional neo-Nazi world. We're in a very different world now."[78]
David Duke, a formerGrand Wizard of theKu Klux Klan, wrote in 1999 that the Internet was going to create a "chain reaction of racial enlightenment that will shake the world."[79] Daniels documents that racist groups see the Internet as a way to spread their ideologies, influence others and gain supporters.[10] Legal scholarRichard Hasen describes a "dark side" of social media:
There certainly werehate groups before the Internet and social media. [But with social media] it just becomes easier to organize, to spread the word, for people to know where to go. It could be to raise money, or it could be to engage in attacks on social media. Some of the activity is virtual. Some of it is in a physical place. Social media has lowered the collective-action problems that individuals who might want to be in a hate group would face. You can see that there are people out there like you. That's the dark side of social media.[80]
A series on YouTube hosted by the grandson ofThomas Robb, the national director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, "presents the Klan's ideology in a format aimed at kids — more specifically, white kids."[81] The short episodesinveigh against race-mixing, and extol other white-supremacist ideologies. A short documentary published byTRT describes Imran Garda's experience, a journalist of Indian descent, who met with Thomas Robb and a traditional KKK group. A sign that greets people who enter the town states "Diversity is a code for white genocide." The KKK group interviewed in the documentary summarizes its ideals, principles, and beliefs, which are emblematic of white supremacists in the United States. The comic booksuper heroCaptain America was used fordog whistle politics by the alt-right in college campus recruitment in 2017, an ironic co-opting because Captain America battled against Nazis in the comics, and was created by Jewish cartoonists.[82][83]
There has been debate whetherWinston Churchill, who was voted "the greatest ever Briton" in 2002, was "a racist and white supremacist".[84] In the context of rejecting the Arab wish to stopJewish immigration toPalestine, he said:
I do not admit that thedog in the manger has the final right to the manger, though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race or at any rate a more worldly-wise race ... has come in and taken their place."[85]
British historianRichard Toye, author ofChurchill's Empire, concluded that "Churchill did think that white people were superior."[84]
A number of Southern African nations experienced severe racial tension and conflict during globaldecolonization, particularly aswhite Africans of European ancestry fought to protect their preferential social and political status. Racial segregation in South Africa began in colonial times under theDutch Empire. It continued when the British took over theCape of Good Hope in 1795.Apartheid was introduced as an officially structured policy by theAfrikaner-dominatedNational Party after thegeneral election of 1948. Apartheid's legislation divided inhabitants into four racial groups — "black", "white", "coloured", and "Indian", with coloured divided into several sub-classifications.[86] In 1970, the Afrikaner-run governmentabolished non-white political representation, and starting that yearblack people were deprived of South African citizenship.[87] South Africa abolished apartheid in 1991.[88][89]
InRhodesia a predominantly white government issued its ownunilateral declaration of independence from the United Kingdom in 1965 during an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to avoid majority rule.[90] Following theRhodesian Bush War which was fought byAfrican nationalists, Rhodesian prime ministerIan Smith acceded to biracial political representation in 1978 and the state achieved recognition from the United Kingdom asZimbabwe in 1980.[91]
Nazism promoted the idea of a superiorGermanic people orAryan race in Germany during the early 20th century. Notions of white supremacy and Aryan racial superiority were combined in the 19th century, with white supremacists maintaining the belief that white people were members of an Aryan "master race" that was superior to other races, particularly the Jews, who were described as the "Semitic race",Slavs, andGypsies, who they associated with "cultural sterility".Arthur de Gobineau, a French racial theorist and aristocrat, blamed the fall of theancien régime in France on racial degeneracy caused by racial intermixing, which he argued had destroyed the "purity" of the Nordic or Germanic race. Gobineau's theories, which attracted a strong following in Germany, emphasized the existence of an irreconcilable polarity between Aryan or Germanic peoples and Jewish culture.[92]
As theNazi Party's chief racial theorist,Alfred Rosenberg oversaw the construction of a human racial "ladder" that justifiedHitler's racial and ethnic policies. Rosenberg promoted theNordic theory, which regardedNordics as the "master race", superior to all others, including other Aryans (Indo-Europeans).[93] Rosenberg got the racial termUntermensch from the title ofKlansmanLothrop Stoddard's 1922 bookThe Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man.[94] It was later adopted by the Nazis from that book's German versionDer Kulturumsturz: Die Drohung des Untermenschen (1925).[95] Rosenberg was the leading Nazi who attributed the concept of the East-European "under man" to Stoddard.[96] An advocate of the U.S. immigration laws that favored Northern Europeans, Stoddard wrote primarily on the alleged dangers posed by "colored" peoples to white civilization, and wroteThe Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy in 1920. In establishing a restrictive entry system for Germany in 1925, Hitler wrote of his admiration for America's immigration laws: "The American Union categorically refuses the immigration of physically unhealthy elements, and simply excludes the immigration of certain races."[97]
German praise for America's institutional racism, previously found in Hitler'sMein Kampf, was continuous throughout the early 1930s. Nazi lawyers were advocates of the use of American models.[98] Race-based U.S. citizenship and anti-miscegenation laws directly inspired the Nazis' two principalNuremberg racial laws—the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law.[98] To preserve the Aryan orNordic race, the Nazis introduced the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which forbade sexual relations and marriages between Germans and Jews, and later between Germans andRomani andSlavs. The Nazis used theMendelian inheritance theory to argue that social traits were innate, claiming that there was a racial nature associated with certain general traits, such as inventiveness or criminal behavior.[99]
According to the 2012 annual report of Germany's interior intelligence service, theFederal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, at the time there were 26,000 right-wing extremists living in Germany, including 6,000neo-Nazis.[100]
Fifty-one people died fromtwo consecutive terrorist attacks at theAl Noor Mosque and theLinwood Islamic Centre by an Australian white supremacist carried out on March 15, 2019. The terrorist attacks have been described by Prime MinisterJacinda Ardern as "One of New Zealand's darkest days". On August 27, 2020, the shooter was sentenced tolife without parole.[101][102][103]
In 2016, there was a rise in debate over the appropriateness of the naming ofMassey University inPalmerston North afterWilliam Massey, whom many historians and critics have described as a white supremacist.[104] Lecturer Steve Elers was a leading proponent of the idea that Massey was an avowed white supremacist, given Massey "made several anti-Chinese racist statements in the public domain" and intensified theNew Zealand head tax.[105][106] In 1921, Massey wrote in theEvening Post: "New Zealanders are probably the purest Anglo-Saxon population in the British Empire. Nature intended New Zealand to be a white man's country, and it must be kept as such. The strain of Polynesian will be no detriment". This is one of many quotes attributed to him regarded as being openly racist.[107]
Supporters ofNordicism consider the "Nordic peoples" to be a superior race.[108] By the early 19th century, white supremacy was attached to emerging theories of racial hierarchy. The German philosopherArthur Schopenhauer attributed cultural primacy to the white race:
The highest civilization and culture, apart from the ancientHindus andEgyptians, are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, theBrahmins, theIncas, and the rulers of theSouth Sea Islands. All this is due to the fact that necessity is the mother of invention because those tribes that emigrated early to the north, and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want and misery, which in their many forms were brought about by the climate.[109]
TheeugenicistMadison Grant argued in his 1916 book,The Passing of the Great Race, that the Nordic race had been responsible for most of humanity's great achievements, and thatadmixture was "race suicide".[110] In this book, Europeans who are not of Germanic origin but have Nordic characteristics such as blonde/red hair and blue/green/gray eyes, were considered to be a Nordic admixture and suitable forAryanization.[111]
In the United States, the groups most associated with the white-supremacist movement are theKu Klux Klan (KKK),Aryan Nations, and theWhite American Resistance movement, all of which are also considered to beantisemitic. TheProud Boys, despite claiming non-association with white supremacy, have been described in academic contexts as being such.[9] Many white-supremacist groups are based on the concept of preserving genetic purity, and do not focus solely on discrimination based on skin color. The KKK's reasons for supportingracial segregation are not primarily based on religious ideals, but some Klan groups are openlyProtestant.[citation needed] The 1915 silent drama filmThe Birth of a Nation followed the rising racial, economic, political, and geographic tensions leading up to theEmancipation Proclamation and the SouthernReconstruction era that was the genesis of the Ku Klux Klan.[112]
Nazi Germany promulgated white supremacy based on the belief that theAryan race, or the Germans, were themaster race. It was combined with aeugenics programme that aimed forracial hygiene through compulsory sterilization of sick individuals and extermination ofUntermenschen ("subhumans"):Slavs, Jews andRomani, which eventually culminated inthe Holocaust.[113][114][115][116][117]
Christian Identity is another movement closely tied to white supremacy. Some white supremacists identify themselves asOdinists, although many Odinists reject white supremacy. Some white-supremacist groups, such as the South AfricanBoeremag, conflate elements of Christianity and Odinism.Creativity (formerly known as "The World Church of the Creator") isatheistic and it denounces Christianity and othertheistic religions.[118][119] Aside from this, its ideology is similar to that of many Christian Identity groups because it believes in theantisemitic conspiracy theory that there is a "Jewish conspiracy" in control of governments, the banking industry and the media.Matthew F. Hale, founder of the World Church of the Creator, has published articles stating that all races other than white are "mud races", which is what the group's religion teaches.[citation needed]
The white-supremacist ideology has become associated with a racist faction of theskinheadsubculture, despite the fact that when the skinhead culture first developed in the United Kingdom in the late 1960s, it was heavily influenced by black fashions andmusic, especially Jamaicanreggae andska, and African Americansoul music.[120][121][122]
White-supremacist recruitment activities are primarily conducted at agrassroots level as well as on the Internet. Widespread access to the Internet has led to a dramatic increase in white-supremacist websites.[123] The Internet provides a venue for open expression of white-supremacist ideas at littlesocial cost because people who post the information are able to remain anonymous.
Whiteseparatism is a political and social movement that seeks the separation ofwhite people from people of otherraces andethnicities. This may include the establishment of awhite ethnostate by removing non-whites from existing communities or by forming new communities elsewhere.[124]
Most modern researchers do not view white separatism as distinct from white-supremacist beliefs. TheAnti-Defamation League defines white separatism as "a form of white supremacy";[125] the Southern Poverty Law Center defines both white nationalism and white separatism as "ideologies based on white supremacy."[126] Facebook has banned content that is openlywhite nationalist or white separatist because "white nationalism and white separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organized hate groups".[127][128]
Use of the term to self-identify has been criticized as a dishonest rhetorical ploy. The Anti-Defamation League argues that white supremacists use the phrase because they believe it has fewer negative connotations than the termwhite supremacist.[125]
Dobratz and Shanks-Meile reported that adherents usually rejectmarriage "outside the white race". They argued for the existence of "a distinction between the white supremacist's desire to dominate (as inapartheid,slavery, orsegregation) and complete separation by race".[129] They argued that this is a matter of pragmatism, because, while many white supremacists are also white separatists, contemporary white separatists reject the view that returning to a system of segregation is possible or desirable in the United States.[130]
The termwhite supremacy is used in some academic studies of racial power to denote a system of structural orsocietal racism which privileges white people over others, regardless of the presence or the absence of racial hatred. According to this definition, white racial advantages occur at both a collective and an individual level (ceteris paribus,i. e., when individuals are compared that do not differ relevantly except in ethnicity). Legal scholar Frances Lee Ansley explains this definition as follows:
By "white supremacy" I do not mean to allude only to the self-conscious racism of white supremacisthate groups. I refer instead to a political, economic and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings.[19][20]
This and similar definitions have been adopted or proposed byCharles W. Mills,[21]bell hooks,[22]David Gillborn,[23] Jessie Daniels,[131] and Neely Fuller Jr,[132] and they are widely used incritical race theory andintersectional feminism. Someanti-racist educators, such as Betita Martinez and the Challenging White Supremacy workshop, also use the term in this way. The term expresses historic continuities between a pre–civil rights movement era of open white supremacy and the current racial power structure of the United States. It also expresses the visceral impact of structural racism through "provocative and brutal" language that characterizes racism as "nefarious, global, systemic, and constant".[133] Academic users of the term sometimes prefer it toracism because it allows for a distinction to be drawn between racist feelings and white racial advantage orprivilege.[134][135][54]John McWhorter, a specialist in language and race relations, explains the gradual replacement of "racism" by "white supremacy" by the fact that "potent terms need refreshment, especially when heavily used", drawing a parallel with the replacement of "chauvinist" by "sexist".[136]
Other intellectuals have criticized the term's recent rise in popularity among leftist activists as counterproductive. John McWhorter has described the use of "white supremacy" as straying from its commonly accepted meaning to encompass less extreme issues, thereby cheapening the term and potentially derailing productive discussion.[137][138] Political columnistKevin Drum attributes the term's growing popularity to frequent use byTa-Nehisi Coates, describing it as a "terrible fad" that fails to convey nuance. He claims that the term should be reserved for those who are trying to promote the idea that whites are inherently superior to blacks and not used to characterize less blatantly racist beliefs or actions.[139][140] The academic use of the term to refer tosystemic racism has been criticized byConor Friedersdorf for the confusion that it creates for the general public, inasmuch as it differs from the more common dictionary definition; he argues that it is likely to alienate those that it hopes to convince.[140]
Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination.
Although white racist activists must adopt a political identity of whiteness, the flimsy definition of whiteness in modern culture poses special challenges for them. In both mainstream and white supremacist discourse, to be white is to be distinct from those marked as nonwhite, yet the placement of the distinguishing line has varied significantly in different times and places.
The questions deal with most of the major racial issues that became focal in the middle of the twentieth century: integration of public accommodations, school integration, residential integration, and job discrimination [and] racial intermarriage and willingness to vote for a black presidential candidate. ... The trends that occur for most of the principle items are quite similar and can be illustrated ...using attitudes toward school integration as an example. The figure shows that there has been a massive and continuous movement of the American public from overwhelming acceptance of theprinciple of segregated schooling in the early 1940s toward acceptance of theprinciple of integrated schooling. ... by 1985, more than nine out of ten chose the pro-integration response.
In 1942 only 42 percent of a national sample of whites reported that they believed blacks to be equal to whites in innate intelligence; since the late 1950s, however, around 80 percent ofwhite Americans have rejected the idea of inherent black inferiority.
white racial attitudes shifted dramatically in the postwar period. ... So, monolithic white supremacy is over, yet in a more concealed way, white power and privilege live on.
While theNew Right andChristian Right flourished in the 1970s and 1980s, the Far Right also rebounded... The Far Right—encompassing Ku Klux Klan, neonazi, and related organizations—attracted a much smaller following than the New Right, but its influence reverberated in its encouragement of widespread attacks against members of oppressed groups and in broad-based scapegoating campaigns
The white power movement that emerged from the Vietnam era shared some common attributes with earlier racist movements in the United States, but it was no mere echo. Unlike previous iterations of the Ku Klux Klan and white-supremacist vigilantism, the white power movement did not claim to serve the state. Instead, white power made the state its target, declaring war against the federal government in 1983.
Statistics provided by the Archives at Tuskegee Institute.
For instance, Ben Klassen, founder of the atheistic Church of the Creator and author ofThe White Man's Bible, discusses Christianity extensively in his writings and denounces it as a religion that has brought untold horror into the world and has divided the white race.
A competing atheistic or panthestic white racist movement also appeared, which included the Church of the Creator/ Creativity (Gardell 2003: 129–34).
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