White supremacy is not just a Fox News problem
The label of racism has somehow become more horrifying to the white frontal cortex than racism itself
Hi! I’ve added a mission statement to Pancake Brain since first publishing this post: America is currently an oligarchy organized by the hierarchy of the white supremacist patriarchy. Pancake Brain is a Friday newsletter dedicated to replacing the status quo with equitable public power, and a community dedicated to building the discipline of democracy that equity requires. We move through the world committed to a daily practice of activism and critical thinking. We reject limitations and embrace the possibilities of social imagination, certain that the queer future is better than anything we’ve yet dreamed up. We insist on our right and duty to the political conversation, and empower others to join us. Out of love for ourselves and the collective, we are engaged in a sustainable practice of freedom, endlessly un-fucking our brains.
Dearest *Pancake Brains,
I am writing to you from the train back from **Boston, and, yes, I am pretending to be in a music video. While dramatically gazing out of the Amtrak window, it occurred to me that it has been over 24 hours since I last looked at Twitter. It’s as if I can feel my brain inflating back to full size.
On Tuesday, in response to Kamala Harris dropping out of the primary, I tweeted that white supremacy is not just a Fox News problem. In reading about my own tweet on the hell site, I discovered from various responses and quote tweets that I was 1) calling all the presidential candidates white supremacists, 2) saying all Democratic voters are racist, and 3) denying the agency of black voters. One right-wing podcast just straight-up called me “batshit crazy,” and that may be the most plausible scenario, or, anyway, it’s how I felt after yet another Twitter toxicity k-hole. There were so many responses assuming underlying meaning beyond what I even considered, I had to log off to remember how to think clearly.
We need to have nuanced conversations about the racial injustice that defines life in this country, and I suppose it makes sense that a platform for 280-character one-liners is not the ideal space for that dialogue to unfold. Since I have you here in newsletter form, allow me to explain where I’m coming from: Our society is a white supremacist patriarchy. Full stop. (There are a complex series of factors that contributed to the end of Kamala Harris’s candidacy. That said, I think it is reasonable to state that an all-white lineup of Democratic primary qualifiers is indicative of white supremacy.)
What is less complicated than the intricacies of Harris’s campaign operation is the fact that it is has ever been possible to turn on C-SPAN and see only white men making the laws in this county. The term “white supremacist patriarchy” seems to be infuriating and/or intimidating, because it sounds extreme. It is extreme, and it is the hierarchy that informs every element of our lives, from the shape of policy to the way you are treated while walking home alone at night.
Earlier this fall, I had the chance to talk about “How to Start a Revolution” on The Breakfast Club with DJ Envy and Charlamagne Tha God. As a white woman being interviewed by two black men, I suggested that if a white dude in a suit walked in the door, he would be taken more seriously than all three of us. Think about it for a moment: there is automatic authority afforded to the aesthetics of Brooks Brothers. A white man can walk into a room and be respected before he even opens his mouth. That is what a white supremacist patriarchy looks like.
A few weeks ago, I joked that white men raise their hand and say, “I’m ready for my presidency now.” Perhaps it was too realistic to be funny: Pete Buttigieg recently told The Daily that he literally raised his hand when a teacher asked who would like to be President. I wonder how many girls and children of color in the class felt compelled to do the same. That doesn’t mean Pete Buttigieg is a white supremacist. Instead, white supremacy is the paradigm through which Julian Castro is largely ignored by the legacy publications (despite stunning moral clarity on immigration and critical experience in the crucial economic sector of housing), while Mayor Pete enjoys viral moments for speaking Norwegian.
Here’s another example for your consideration: Joe Biden is not a white supremacist, but the lack of extended interrogation of his role as architect of the 1994 Crime Bill stands out in juxtaposition with the criticism Harris has received for her prosecutorial past. Why might a white male candidate receive less scrutiny for racially-harmful policy than a black female one?
I have heard, both from Twitter followers and Baby Boomers who share my last name, that using terms like “white supremacist patriarchy” will make people uncomfortable. I suppose they’re right. This is a white supremacist patriarchy, and we should all be supremely uncomfortable. (The idea that being comfortable could even be a choice is a fact of white privilege.)
After filtering through the responses to my tweet, I found that many people seemed to think of white supremacy as the stuff of hate crimes. One man wrote me an email asking me to reserve the term for “genuine victims” of white supremacy, clarifying in a later message that he was thinking of his grandmother, who spent her youth in a Japanese internment camp. It is impossible for me to comprehend the impact of human rights atrocities committed by the United States government during World War II, or any other time in history, for that matter. The thing is, white supremacy occurs on a spectrum. White supremacy doesn’t always look like government-perpetrated racism, although, that is happening everyday at the border. White supremacy doesn’t only look like the anti-immigrant rhetoric from Fox News which explicitly regards white people as most deserving of citizenship. You don’t have to be Tucker Carlson to perpetuate white supremacy.
It may help to discuss stigmatization of the idea of white supremacy in terms of the radioactive status of the word “racist.” The label of racism has somehow become more horrifying to the white frontal cortex than racism itself. In the most obvious display of absurdity to this end, mainstream media frequently tiptoes around the “racially-charged” actions of Donald Trump, as if it were not possible to say with total journalistic certainty that a man who declared his campaign for the White House while calling Mexicans “rapists” is a racist. We have come to think of the labels of white supremacy and racism as the stuff of David Duke’s Pinterest account, except this is a racist, white supremacist society, and white people all participate in maintaining that status quo, if only by failing to sufficiently challenge it. As a white woman, I remain horrified that 53% of white women voted for Trump.
As some of you will recall, “How to Start a Revolution” ends with a call-to-action. Being a democratic citizen requires developing habits of democracy. The most concrete, transaction mode of raising your voice is voting — and, for the love of GOD, register, vote, make sure all your friends are registered and voting — but, beyond that, we must choose rituals of civic action including things like contacting elected officials, attending town halls, participating in protests, and any other demonstrative behaviors that makes you political opinion manifest. One option to that end is interpersonal work. For newly-awakened white millennials, I think this is most crucial. White families need to do more racial healing work around the dinner table.
Ahead of Thanksgiving, I wrote about challenging white family members to have uncomfortable conversations about race and politics. I went to high school in a wealthy white town, where the idea of racism was approximately as narratively complex as the 2004-Oscar-winning-film “Crash.” It is from this vantage point that I suggest we are experiencing a crisis of white politeness: there are far too many white people who think not being racist means being kind to individual people of color while failing to meaningfully address the structural realities of their participation in a status quo defined by police brutality, mass incarceration, income and housing inequality. For white people, truly being anti-racist requires actively using the privilege of whiteness to overthrow the white supremacist patriarchy. (I just ordered a copy of Ibram X. Kendi’s new book “How to Be an Antiracist.” You may want to gift that for the holidays and/or consider this list of 32 books by authors of color. If you need a guide for pursing interpersonal work, check out this one from SURJ, along with their other resources.)
I have been accused of hating white people in response to writing about white supremacy before. Some Pepe the frog avatars go so far as to say I am “racist against white people.” People accused of racism famously signal their token black friend, so it seems silly to point you to my token white parents or token white reflection in the mirror. As was apparent after my tweet, more clarification is needed: I don’t hate white people, but I am ashamed of the cultural impact of my whiteness. That we live in a white supremacist patriarchy is not the fault of any individual white person, but I think it is my personal responsibility to work to change it.
A white woman who is trying to do better,
Lauren
*For those of you who are just joining us, pancake brain is a reference to this.
**I was in Boston to speak at Cambridge Forum in conversation with Martin Lukacs and Extinction Rebellion. I’m excited to share that in podcast and video form when it goes live. Until then, I offer up to your commute an interview with Omkari Williams on her podcast Stepping Into Truth: Conversations on Race, Gender, and Social Justice. The whole show is more than worth your time. Check out my episode and consider subscribing here.