That Is Typically An "Out" Used By White People

I don’t think I’ve ever felt less confident in the information I consume. Which, being a writer, is probably as it should be.

I double and triple check my sources, I spend hours poring over statistics and checking databases. I force myself to watch left- and right-wing media to get an idea of which parts of a story are being cherry-picked or ignored. In short, I do everything I can think of to make sure that the information I present is correct.

And yet not since Galileo was threatened with torture for suggesting that the Earth revolves around the Sun has it felt so risky to state simple facts.

In my article, What If White Supremacy Isn’t The Problem?, I laid out the details of the Rittenhouse case as clearly as I could. For many of my readers, it was the first time they’d heard some of these facts. Others, like Brigit, were more focused on hypotheticals.

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Brigit:

I don't agree with everything you've written here, but I do appreciate the good read. I will say that I don't disagree that the term "white supremacy" gets thrown around nowadays; however, I do disagree that white supremacy should be equated to actual white supremacist groups. That is actually typically an "out" used by white people.

I've known some pretty appallingly racist people who seem to feel that they deserve an award simply for not being a member of the KKK. I am consistently shocked to the core by the foul things I hear white people say to me about nonwhite people. I'm not sure what's most disturbing to me- the fact that they have such horrible things to say, or the fact that they seem to assume that I will agree (I am white, to be clear).

That is the true, sinister reality of white supremacy- the pervasive belief held both consciously and unconsciously by the white community as a whole that nonwhite people should have to work harder, do better, to "prove" that they deserve equality, while white people are allowed to simply exist in the world.

The main reason that the Kyle Rittenhouse case can be used as evidence of the persistence of white supremacy?

Black people aren't allowed to walk around with AR-15s in America, at least not if they would like to live. White people know this as well as black people. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

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Steve QJ:

I do disagree that white supremacy should be equated to actual white supremacist groups.

😅Look at this sentence. Doesn't it strike you as bizarre? If white supremacy shouldn't be equated with white supremacist groups, then what exactly should it be equated with? If we use white supremacy as a synonym for anything we don't like, how do we distinguish these hate groups? Words are useful when they have meaning.

And believe me, I hear people of colour saying absolutely appalling things about white people too sometimes. And sometimes they also think I'll agree, or at least that it's safe to talk like that around me, because I'm "on the same side". Saying hateful things and being bigoted is absolutely not exclusive to white people.

As to your reason why Rittenhouse's case is evidence of white supremacy, I'm curious to know how you square that with the fact that black people absolutely do walk around with semi-automatic weapons and live to tell the tale. Most recently at Ahmaud Arbery's trial:

https://nypost.com/2021/11/23/armed-black-militias-expected-to-return-to-arbery-trial/

There's this knee-jerk, knowing cynicism about black people and their lives today which is not only tiresome, but psychologically cancerous to black communities. It's become so common to just state without any evidence how the world is constantly and obviously against black people. So much so, that nobody even bothers to check whether what they're saying is true.

So now that you know it's not true that "anybody who says otherwise is lying," might you consider that "everyone who blames white supremacy for everything" is wrong? Is it possible that it's worth thinking about these issues a little more carefully for the sake of everybody concerned?

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As I pointed out recently, one of the biggest problems in racial discourse (and discourse in general) is the absolute certainty with which some people are wrong. Our information bubbles are getting so good at keeping conflicting ideas out of sight, that more and more people simply can’t accept that conflicting ideas exist.

But another problem is that the language we use is so imprecise. White supremacy, institutional racism, racist behaviour, unconscious bias, these terms point to very different problems. Yet they’re used pretty much interchangeably by many of the people discussing racial issues.

Conversations about social issues are difficult enough as it is. There’s emotion and defensiveness and the myriad challenges of reconciling conflicting historical perspectives. But if we don’t have a common set of facts from which to begin a conversation, there’s little hope of making progress on any issue.