Thread by @fenrir_71

White Supremecy Everywhere
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White folks, we need to talk. There's a white supremacy problem in this nation that goes far beyond Nazis & the KKK. It's not all men in camo playin' cosplay soldier.

And to illustrate this, I'm going to tell my story.
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Because the true, cold hard reality is this: all white people are white supremacists in some way, or have been. You may think you're not, but I bet you've done things to belittle a non white person and not known it.

Looking back, I sure have. And that's not easy to write.
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Now before we get going I want to discuss terminology a bit. I'm choosing to use white supremacy for two reasons. One is because it carries more weight. It IS associated with Nazis and the like.

But the more important reason is because of the word "racist."
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The concept of separate races within the human population is a construct. A construct I might add that is gleefully perpetuated by actual Nazis and other open white supremacists.

In a nutshell, race theory is a late enlightenment concept thrust upon us by bad science.
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We are all the same race, and when we use the word "racism" we engage in the myth of race. Base truths must be agreed upon, and language matters. Using the term racism only keeps us separated.

So I choose the more accurate white supremacy. When I'm done you may agree.
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What we must understand is that white supremacy, and the Civil War itself, are still alive and well in the US today. Everywhere. And since Obama's election it's been emboldened, which of course we all know trump chose to make worse.

Because he's a white supremacist too.
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So to hopefully share how insidious & pervasive white supremacy is in the US I'll tell my story and let y'all decide if there's parallels in your own lives. I suspect there are.

Please note, I'll not pull punches here; the impact of events & words must resonate.
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Technically I'm a son of the south, though any northerners reading this shouldn't get puffy, the north is white supremacist too. My family are MO boot heel people. Hard workers, kind, and white supremacists.

The Mississippi Alluvial Plain is one of the flattest...
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...and most fertile regions on the planet. Cotton, rice, soy & pretty much anything grows there. It's so flat if you stood on a tin can you could see the next town. My mom's grandfather started a (now) very large AG corp as an orphan during the depression.
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My dad's father was a rural route mailman, he had flood stains on the floorboards of his car from delivering mail during annual river delta flooding. But he always delivered and those farmers loved him for it.

Hard working good Americans right?

Also white supremacists.
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My great grandfather is a man I admired as a kid. Orphaned during the Great Depression he made a business that ended up earning billions annually. Then I heard about how he got cotton pickers cheap to help make those billions.
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He'd personally drive a trailer train of old flat bed cotton trailers to pick up migrants at the TX border, then take them back in these trailers, also called chicken coop trailers

Humans literally in commodity cages. For hundreds of miles.

White supremacy. And common.
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Lest you think that's so far in the past it doesn't matter, that went on until the 80s when he got too old to do it himself anymore.

Still, it's over so why does it matter? Because white supremacy is passed on down the generations.

It's habit for us now.

Me at three:
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My uncle chose to tell me a story a year or so after trump was elected.

Now I've always come down on him HARD when he says white supremacist things but this just stunned me. It changed our relationship forever. Many family relationships actually.
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Back in the 60s & 70s, my great great grandfather used to take my uncle, apparently his favorite, to St. Louis to buy Sunday church clothes for the entire family. Sounds like a great time right? A country boy and his grandad going to the big city. It's like a kids' book.
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BUT. The while the primary purpose of the trip was to clothe the fam, the secondary purpose was to drive through "n****r town" and scream "n****r" at the folks who lived in East St. Louis, because that was some sort of twisted fucked up form of release for them.

Still is.
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No biggie right? Just some run of the mill white supremacist terrorism of folks who just want to live their lives in peace. Sickening.

Then I would visit my dad in TN and I noticed a thing: the other side of the tracks still meant exactly what you think it means.
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Now while I'm sure there was overt white supremacy in my dad's town I didn't much associate with white townies. What I did see was the kind of "genteel" white supremacy you see in Antebellum types: the covert bigotry of economic white supremacy.
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My dad belonged to a country club, whites only of course. But whites only counted just for memberships because every person that did any sort of menial task at that club was black. Greenskeepers, cooks, maintenance, etc. Zero blacks folks in any positions of leadership.
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Maybe the worst thing about my families tolerating & engaging in white supremacy is that it was perpetrated every Sunday in their churches, because Christian fundementalists believe that PoC are of an ancient tribe that's cursed by god. Keeping PoC down is biblical to them.
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While I'm a son of the south I actually grew up outside of Chicago, at the time one of the largest cities on the planet. There were a few black kids in my school, just under the actual national percentage of black folks in the US at the time, but my district was very white.
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I remember in 6th grade when I sat next to my first black kid in school. Pretty much nobody talked to him but I hung with the black folks at my dad's country club so I did. We became lifelong friends until he died of heart failure like FAR too many black men do.
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See I thought I was "woke" before that was a thing. But that didn't stop me from asking if I could touch his hair like he was some kind of oddity, or less than me. That's white supremacy right there, as pretty much any black person can tell you. That shit is belittling.
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Now my friend never mentioned this to me but it eats at me to this day that I could be so flippant about invading another human's space because he didn't look like me. Because white supremacy is everywhere, and in things we white folks don't think about.
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(Twitter made me post this thread before it was done so I'll be writing the rest right now.)
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In '89 I joined the army. I my infantry battalion I'd guess that about 30-40% of my fellow soldiers were black. I hung with them on Sundays for BBQs. Laughs were had by all and friendships made. No biggie for me really: I played jazz & blues, my connection to PoC was strong.
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But I wasn't until I was out for 20 years that it dawned on me that even though almost half my unit was black I'd had exactly two black leaders past the rank of E-6. TWO.

And in a sad ironic twist they were the best two leaders I had in the army.
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Now you northern folks might be sensing where I'm going but I'll spell it out: how come in majority black cities there's not majority black leadership? We vote for leaders in our own communities yet Chicago, other than Harold Washington.
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I've lost count of how many white supremacist jokes I heard about Harold Washington at the time. Jokes I laughed at and never once called out my friends for telling. Of course we white folks frown on that now but is that enough?

I say no.
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Attitudes like that only continue white supremacy in America. And SO much is stacked against PoC still today. School funding, zoning laws, political representation, law enforcement habits, the list goes on and on. White supremacy is EVERYWHERE.
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Now personally I've got plenty to atone for, and I suspect that even the most "woke" of you do too when you count simple ignorance of the system. Maybe I just look inward more than most folks, who knows?

What I do know is that black folks know these truths from childhood.
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And I'd posit to you that a community which has been enslaved & marginalized for things beyond their control that still loves the nation that does this to them are true patriots, and believers in equitable treatment.

We OWE them our hard work at fixing the system.
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So what's the solution? I honestly don't know beyond what I personally can do which is to speak out about white supremacy and recognize it in places were I have to LOOK for it, not just wiat for it to happen. Because hate must be proactively stopped. You can't wait to see it.
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So to my fellow white folks I say be an ACTIVE enemy of white supremacy. Tell your friends about it who may not know how pervasive it is. Read books about it, educate yourself and be an ally in the truest sense of the word: go through the pain of the struggle.
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I don't remember who it was but a black host on MSNBC once said that every year on her birthday her dad would sign her card "the struggle continues." That stuck in my heart y'all, that a black woman so successful still lived the struggle for equality.
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Vote with that struggle in mind y'all, LIVE with that struggle in mind, because it's real, pervasive and evil.

We owe PoC so very much in our nation: they made it what it is today as much as we did, in my opinion more.
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It's not possible for those with little power to gain equality unless they have allies that have the power. Be that ally. Be the change you seek. Do the little things, and the large, so that one day we might realize the dream, and the struggle may come to a close.
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