Thread by @kmele

Days later, and there is still zero tangible evidence that race had anything to do w/ this unfortunate incident.

Fact is, #WhiteSupremacy 👻 (which should probably always be paired w/ a mocking ghost emoji) is the most prolific + widely believed conspiracy theory in America...

https://twitter.com/benandjerrys/status/1381743962558504969

When invoked in contexts like this, #WhiteSupremacy 👻 describes a myopic + politically motivated oversimplification of American history.

In short: 'The American project, and all* its byproducts, are fundamentally contaminated by its historical moral defects.'

This is bonkers.

It’s also absolutist, reductionist, and necessarily condemns the cultural/political/philosophical milieu that:

- gave us the first written constitution
- unleashed unparalleled human prosperity
- seeded a worldwide *antislavery abolitionist movement*

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

#WhiteSupremacy 👻 is a ghoulish inversion of "American Exceptionalism."

Like the most potent religious dogmas, it provides a seductive *moral clarity* by obscuring inconvenient contradictions, nuance, and historical context.

It’s a morbid fable, but it’s conveniently tidy.

Yet, for all America’s defects, we can’t ignore the rest of the story.

My grandparents (a domestic worker + a semi-literate laborer) immigrated here to forge a better life for their progeny. My mom was 1 of 9 children then—young, unmarried, and very pregnant w/ me. Long odds...

Miraculously, we became Americans -- and collectively, if somewhat unevenly, our sprawling clan has thrived in America in ways that would have been impossible in Jamaica.

'Miraculous' not because things turned out well for us, but because of how routine stories like ours are.

Even with its many historical + contemporary flaws, how can any honest person describe a system that so regularly produces these extraordinary outcomes for millions of africans, asians, latinos, + every other superficially distinct variety of humanity -- as #WhiteSupremacy 👻?

It isn't extraordinary that slavery, colonialism, or other grave imperfections once existed in America. Or that those defects have some tangible influence in the present.

What's extraordinary, in part, is how ubiquitous such depravations have been around the world across time.

Subjugated populations were fully human and necessarily capable of both nobility and savagery.

The Native American, African, and Indian... all were well-practiced in slavery and every other form of depraved inhumanity long before they made contact w/ Europeans.

That doesn't excuse any historical awfulness perpetrated by European colonizers, but that context underscores the most extraordinary things about America, humanity more broadly.

First -- subjugation + slavery can't be the foundation of American power/wealth if they're universal.

Second -- after centuries of murdering/marauding/and enslaving one another -- humanity somehow reached a broad consensus RE the awfulness of such practices. And we've found fruitful ways to collaborate with alien cultures and former rivals.

Casting America (or the convoluted construct of whiteness) as the source of ultimate goodness or unparalleled evil is absurd on its face.

But I fear that latter construction is a more determined + pernicious falsehood. More troubling -- this mythology appears to be ascendant.

No one should believe that America is perfectly just. That US foreign policy is w/o severe defects. Or that urgent reforms aren't required in many, many areas.

But we can't pursue those projects w/ the seriousness they demand if we're all taken in by deluded ghost stories 👻.