Posted on 05/12/2016 6:13:57 PM PDT by Borges
Hello, Internet! My name is Emily, and I’m a white supremacist.
I know you might find this revelation upsetting, but before you start taking me to task, please allow me explain what I mean by that.
I don’t mean that I believe white people are inherently superior to Black people, or to anyone else for that matter. I believe that empathy is the highest human quality, and that privilege is one of the greatest obstacles to empathy because it allows us to ignore or rationalize the suffering of people whose experiences are different from our own. By this measure, the more privilege you have, the more challenging it is for you to be “good.”
I believe in the mission of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. As a white ally, I believe that it’s my job to engage in uncomfortable conversations with other white people about racism, taking whatever pressure I can off people of color who are constantly called upon to educate the rest of us about the nuances of oppression. And most of all, I believe that it’s my job to shut up and listen when Black people take the time to tell me about things I’ll never experience, so that their insight isn’t lost on me.
Do I deserve a cookie? Better hold onto it for now. Because nothing I have said here changes the fact that I am a white supremacist.
“Do I deserve a cookie? Better hold onto it for now.”_ How am I a white supremacist? Well, I was born and raised in the United States of America, a country built by slave labor on stolen land, and every privilege I’ve ever enjoyed has come at the expense of someone else’s oppression. The education I received was white supremacist education, from its demand that I learn to write and speak “proper English” to its reliance on a literary, scientific, and artistic canon comprised of and curated almost exclusively by white men. My aesthetic tastes are permeated with subtle coding that extends subconscious preference to those who look like me and communicate themselves in a way I can identify with. I have interjected my unwanted, unwarranted opinion into conversations that are out of my lane, and I have chosen to look the other way rather than confront instances of racism because of cowardice, complacency, and a misplaced sense of politeness. The very foundations of my way of life are in white supremacy, and the list of microaggressions I have committed, and will no doubt continue to commit in spite of my “good intentions” for as long as I’m alive, is virtually endless.
Does this mean I should just give up trying to fight my own colonizing, racist impulses? On the contrary, I see this as a call to fight harder, to never stop working on this part of myself. But at no point, now or in the future, will I ever be entitled to declare this work done. I will never be able to truthfully announce “There is not a racist bone in my body!” as though racism is something that could be surgically removed. My racism is a chronic, inherited condition. I can medicate the symptoms, and with effort I can even loosen its grip around my soul, but it will always be part of me, like green eyes or a predilection for dumb puns.
“The very foundations of my way of life are in white supremacy.”_ Now, if you’re like many well-meaning white people, you might be feeling defensive at the implication that, like me, you might be a white supremacist too. I have noticed that there is an ugly tendency for liberal, well-meaning white people to take loud umbrage at being called “racist” or a “white supremacist.” And I can understand the reaction. When I started paying attention to social justice conversations a few short years ago, I also found some of the language shocking to my sensibilities. The first time someone called me a white supremacist in an online forum, I found it ridiculous. After all, I’m from Texas—I know “real” white supremacists, the kind of people who watch Fox News and sport Confederate flags on their pickup trucks. The idea that there was no difference between me and those people, or even that we might be perceived as different shades on the same shitty gradient, struck me as absurd.
But once I began unpacking the implications of the words “white supremacy,” I realized that there really is no better way to describe the system of murder and exploitation that benefits some of us at the expense of others, and there is no better way to describe my behavior when I reinforce those oppressive dynamics with my actions. I realize this is a bleak reality to absorb. But in comparison to the suffering on which we’ve built our entire way of life—and which we continue to perpetuate even in our finest moments—it really is a small thing to have to come to terms with.
“My racism is a chronic condition. I can medicate the symptoms, but it will always be part of me.”_ Responding to accusations of racism with defensiveness is a common way that white people make our own emotions the center of the conversation, thereby creating the all-too-familiar vicious circle of a conversation that goes nowhere. Social psychologists call this behavioral response “self-justification.” It is a natural human tendency to rationalize our own actions, to minimize the discomfort of cognitive dissonance by maintaining an internal narrative in which we basically play the good guy. And so we often defend ourselves rather than listen, lashing out at the criticism until it leaves us alone with our ego intact.
Racism is not a quality that very many of us would put into our idealized versions of self, and so the idea that we are capable of being racist, or that we might even be white supremacists deep down in our kind, well-meaning souls, is something we have a very deep aversion to confronting head-on. It’s much more pleasant to imagine that the “real racists” are somewhere else, like Idaho, or that gun show your cousin Cody goes to every spring. But pointing a finger at everyone but ourselves is an exercise in self-righteousness, not an antidote to the deep foundation of white supremacy underlying and permeating our entire culture.
I am a good, kind, smart, well-meaning person who happens to be a white supremacist. I didn’t ask to be born this way, but I was. Coming to terms with white supremacy means being able to reconcile these seemingly paradoxical truths. It’s hard to hate something and simultaneously admit that the thing you hate is part of you. But it is necessary.
Let’s be clear about one thing: Coming to terms with the fact that I will never be fully free of my white supremacy is not the same thing as accepting a burden of shame, guilt, or self-pity. No one is asking for my shame, nor yours. Self-pity and shame are selfish, narcissistic responses to the problem of white supremacy, and if you’re experiencing these emotions in the context of a conversation about race, it’s likely a sign that you’re centering your own feelings at the expense of someone else’s.
“It’s hard to admit that the thing you hate is part of you. But it is necessary.”_ The problems that affect our society are systemic, with psychological components that drive our political and social realities, and vice versa. So if we are to even begin to tackle the problem of white supremacy, we must start by recognizing that no one of us is a model of perfection. We are all products of our time and place, and this particular time and place happens to be riddled with white supremacy on every conceivable level. The sooner we can stop denying that we might personally carry a little piece of the problem within ourselves, the sooner we can start to undo the damage our defensiveness has caused, and continues to cause to others.
When I look in the mirror and see something unflattering, it’s not the mirror’s fault. It’s tempting to look away, or cover all the mirrors in the house, and this might be a fine response if the problem were superficial. But when the ugly truth you’re ignoring is your own behavior, running away from the mirror won’t stop you from continuing to hurt someone else.
In order to break the cycle of defensiveness, we must get comfortable looking at ourselves with raw, critical honesty. What we see might not always flatter us, but the honest truth is the only thing that can help us heal.
I’m a white supremacist. If you’re white and American, you’re probably a white supremacist, too. This isn’t the end of the world—it’s a beginning. The first step is admitting we have a problem.
LOL!
When I was young, and had gone through a very bad time - deaths of people I loved, failure at goals - I was walking in the woods one day, and the thought came to me:
‘You can just drop everything that you’re worried about, and move on. Just drop it - you don’t have to care anymore.”
It was kind of a revelation; I realized that all the stuff I cared so intensely about, wasn’t really that important - goals that hadn’t been achieved, sadness from losses that couldn’t be retrieved - it wasn’t really that important. I could start over, and begin to care about other, more hopeful things - not the dead things, but things that had FUTURE in them. My life picked up, then; I had learned to always move forward, and not waste time and energy in negative emotions.
Give up ‘Angry’. It’s simply not useful - from any REASONable standpoint ;-)
Once you stop expecting ‘returns’ on your virtue, and simply exercise virtue from the impulse of simple Love, the returns flow in.
I’ve always loved The Sermon On The Mount, where Jesus said this:
“Can any of you, however much you worry, add one single hour to your span of life?”
(Of course, I don’t have ten children; and I can’t imagine the grief ;-)
-JT
I know, I know. I just get all in a fuss sometimes. You’d understand if you knew my mother ...
I think I understand. I knew my Grandmother!
God Bless!
-JT
I pick up from the rhythm & tenor of her writing, besides the content, that she is a psychopath. She sounds like one of these creepily cheery wind-up dolls (think of “Talking Tina” on TWILIGHT ZONE).
I once had an online conversation with someone like her (about liberal radio), which sounded like a conversation with a serial killer. She believed in nothing, except herself. This woman is a walking contradiction — she’ll extol empathy, but deep down feels nothing, only contempt for others.
“People like this scare the hell out of me.”
Why?
In the face of any adversity, she would collapse in a ball of panic in a matter of seconds. If she happened to find any inner strength, she’d flee in the face of danger, leaving any of her “comrades” behind to die.
She has no strengths, her skills are useless, and her views on the real world are skewed.
She’s not writing, she’s regurgitating. She hasn’t a single, unique thought in her vapid, programmed head. Reality kills people like this. They’re merely wandering through life with no direction. They are so consumed with jealousy that they fail to address their own shortcomings.
Bottom line, people like this are a joke ... even if they’re in large groups, they’re mostly harmless. They have no will to fight. They are followers without any core beliefs.
I have known so many people, both male and female, like this ignorant twat in my life. They’re in their 40s now and are no different than they were when they were in their teens ... and I don’t mean that in a good way. They bought into all of the ridiculous clap-trap promised by the filthy hippies and scummy communists of the late 1960s and have become the very definition of perpetual dependent.
Never let them scare the hell out of you. They’re too lazy to revolt. All they know what to do is shock people. They feed off attention since they can’t contribute anything useful to society.
Yes, the socialists basically brainwashed half of a generation of people with garbage like the crap this idiot scribbles. The problem is that they’re too damn useless to amount to anything.
Well put. Thanks for comforting me!
What you said.
BTTT
They scare me because they atr allowed to vote.
“How many people like this are out there?”
Another win for the internet. Making sure the stupid are given an audience. It can’t be healthy for society to affirm exactly how dumb we have become with such ease.
Freegards
She’s on the lefthand low side of the bell curve.
Read a little history. The country was not built by slave labor, the South was crippled by slave labor and lost the war because of it. If slave labor was so great, they would have won. But the North, using paid labor and industry won. That’s all you need to know.
Most of the slave driven plantations operated in debt from year to year, just like the current welfare/slave states.
You are not suffering from “white privilege”, you’re suffering from academic incompetence. Do not project your ignorance on the rest of us.
With a few adjustments, Emily could write some serious satire.
Is this person a Blind White Supremacist?
Yep, was looking for the sarc tag.
It sounded like one of the denunciations made by turncoat American soldiers in the Korean War that introduced the term ‘brainwashing’ to the world.
lots and lots and lots of them
It’s there, in the first few lines.
The real problem is that they vote. They are perfect products of the government schools. It is why I have long believed that allowing one’s children to attend public school is prima facie child abuse and deadly to the Republic.
When they think all the white girls are like this sad sack, why WOULDN’T they want to date outside the culture?
Until it turned out decades later that one man’s brainwashing is another man’s psychotherapy, and the only real brainwashing that’s going on is by the axis of the government-media-academia complex.
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