White Supremacist Racism (WSR)

Picture credits: Houston Chronicle. 

     The world is trying desperately to deal with racism and white supremacy but the more we listen to those who have suffered from white supremacist racism (WSR) for centuries the more we realize that we have a daunting task ahead of us.  I recently changed my Facebook page 'Studying the Hunter-Gatherer', which was a research page, to an advocacy page for HG, indigenous people and all people of color who have and are suffering from WSR.  My current idea of support is to study questions about the history and practice of WSR.  As an undergrad historian and philosopher, (i) I truly believe that we can learn from history. Understanding the history can help us know the best attack. Why do you think that professional sports teams spend so much time studying game films?  Knowing what happened - history - can identify an opponents' weaknesses and/or help one avoid making the same mistake again. 

     For me, in our current crisis,  looking at the game film; i.e. studying the history of WSR;  is an important step.  I can't blame people of color (POC), which is basically the entire world except those of European ancestry, for boiling over and demanding immediate action. They deserve it. Nevertheless, acting too hastily can result in laws that are passed just for show, have no teeth and are about as good as the Indian peace treaties the US government has made over the years and subsequently broken.  I'm not advocating for slowing down or backing off!!  Quite the contrary.  We just need to make sure that we have a game plan that will not only bring some quick success and relief as well as success that will endure backlash and last for perpetuity.  Besides the fact that most people have neither the patience nor the desire to do this type of research,  I'm seventy-four years old and people like me don't have the physical ability to hit the streets like I did in the 1960s.  

     I believe that the first, and perhaps biggest question is "how did the white colonialist overcome all these people?" -OR- "what is the origin of WSR?"  We know the Europeans weren't smarter.  Europe was just coming out of a period of great superstition and ignorance while their POC neighbors, in what is now the Middle East, were the keepers of knowledge in what we call the western world and Asians had successful, sophisticated medical systems. The Asians had gunpowder long before the Europeans. Some native tribes in North America had been successfully practicing pure democracy (ii) for centuries before the white colonialist.  What happened?  

     We know that the white Europeans believed themselves superior and so treated others with total disregard and inhumanity.  I think we see that that is still true of the modern WSR. This belief can be translated into a total lack of concern for the effects of their behavior.  In other words, early colonialists might smile sweetly at the indigenous person while another colonialist stabs the indigenous person in the back.  Do you think that the modern WSR would do this?  You can bet on it.  Andrew Jackson told many stories about the horrible, bloody, ruthless behavior of the Indians.  He was actually describing his own behavior and that of other white people but, to turn the unsuspecting and naive US citizen against the natives, he attributed his behavior to his victims.  The white historical account of Lt. Col George Custer's defeat at the Battle of the Greasy Grass; the native name for what whites call the Battle of Little Bighorn; was called a massacre and an appalling example of Indian savagery. This is what appears in many school books. Thankfully historians aren't going to be put off. If you read the whole story, the true story, you find that Custer had just slaughtered a village of women, children and elderly, and that wasn't the first such slaughter. Whites tried to rewrite history. There were, and probably still are, those who tried to make slavery look good; depicting the southern plantation as a comfortable, happy life and ignoring the reality of being chained and dragged from their homes in Africa, of being bred and sold at auction, and being whipped at their owner's discretion, and much more. Do you think that the modern WSR would resort to such lying?  You'd better believe it.  Colonialist, which include the so-called pioneers, had no qualms about murdering native women, children and elderly, and as a result the saying "the only good injun is a dead injun" (iv) made its way into the twentieth century western movie. Speaking of movies, for decades the black slave was little more than a simpleton, and people of color were almost always the bad guys.

     These are just a few of the behaviors and issues which I can tell about without having to go do research.  As the son of an historian and a history major myself as an undergrad, these are facts that I've always known.  These are the facts, coupled with personal experience, (iii) which made my Father and me the protagonist of the WSR.  It is written in the Cambridge English Corpus (iv) that "All good protagonists require a formidable foe,..."  We have that in the WSR.  Our efforts and the results of the 1960s civil rights campaign were good, but only a good start.  They have proven to lack the strength to survive much more of the modern WSR attack. Looking back and thinking about the blatant racism that still exists, I think we failed to cut off the head of the evil serpent.  

     In J.R.R. Tolkien's 1937 novel "The Hobbit", Bilbo Baggins crept into the lair of the evil dragon, Smaug, and discovered the weak spot in the dragon's armor.  Until then the dragon was invincible.  Until now WSR has given indication of invincibility.  While people are still manning the front-lines of the everyday battle, I propose that we dedicate some serious brainpower to finding the weak links in the WSR armor and exploiting them for the good of all.  

FOOTNOTES.

(i)   I did history and philosophy as an undergraduate. Even though I ended up a psychotherapist, these are still subjects important to me.

(ii)  pure democracy is where everyone in the community, males and females, had equal say in the community decisions. There were no "representatives" and the chief was often selected by the people and subject to their demands.  Read  Hudson, Charles (1976).  The Southeastern Indians.  Knoxville. University of Tennessee Press.

(iii)  My Father grew up in a small Midwestern town that had no people of  color.  His first introduction to racism was in World War II.  He was a disabled vet, who could barely walk and had just been returned to the US days before, when a gang of white men threatened to hurt him because he held the door for a black lady.  That was his trigger. He became a member of the NAACP and, as a professor, advocated for black students throughout his career. He was responsible for the Pennsylvania university system offering black history, and, realizing that there were no black faculty  to teach it, he did copious research so that he could be the first professor. His original specialty was the US Constitution.

(iv)  This saying can be traced back to General Philip Sheridan, 1869, when he replied to Comanche  chief Tochaway's statement about being a good Indian by saying "the only good Indians I ever saw were dead."  Racism. WSR


(iv)  The Cambridge English Corpus is a multi-billion word corpus of English language (containing both text corpus and spoken corpus data). The Cambridge English Corpus (CEC) contains data from a number of sources including written and spoken, British and American English.