There is a segment of our citizenry who are afraid of losing the privileged status they have enjoyed since the founding of the nation. When confronted by the notion that they ever had such a status that provided them exclusive access to opportunities, capital, law-making and criminal justice leniency they will vehemently deny it. The fact that whole segments of society were legally and socially denied access to these same tools for social mobility and in fact were also subjected to their violence and exploitation is a fact they ignore in order to preserve their self-esteem. Look at it this way: A runner who wins a race would like to believe that he won his race because he was faster than his opponents and not because there were shackles around his opponent’s feet while he had to dodge arrows. As long as those shackles and flying arrows remain hidden from the runner, he will continue to win all his races and falsely assume superiority.
That is America in a nutshell. White males have been winning the economic and social status race in this country since its inception because they were willing to use violence to steal land and then create laws to discriminate, exclude, oppress, and exploit women and people of color. Their rhetoric today demonizes black and brown people as criminals while shielding their own wrongdoers from criminal prosecution. In short, they ran unimpeded while everyone else had invisible shackles around their feet and arrows being shot at them. An example of this kind of mindset came directly from Senator Tommy Tuberville yesterday. If you don’t want to use the link to watch it, here’s an excerpt from that speech:
“They want crime because they want to take over what you’ve got. They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people who do the crime are owed that. Bullshit! They’re not owed that. We have to understand what’s going on. Folks, what’s going on is a takeover from underneath our country from the people behind the scenes to create such havoc on our streets that we’re afraid to go outside that they can control us. They could stop it today. They don’t want to do it.”
What’s frustrating is that they continue to build on a false narrative that was created to explain their substantial gains in power and success. They supported and promoted eugenics, a debunked pseudo-science that injected the poisonous notion into the minds of the entire western world that white peoples’ success is due to their superior in intelligence and morality (not violence and political maneuvering). That mindset of white superiority remains deeply engrained in the western conscientiousness even though it is objectively and scientifically proven to be untrue. It continues to be used to promote whiteness and as a weapon of oppression and discrimination.
But as we are seeing around the world, oppressed people will eventually rise up and demand liberty and justice. As intelligent, courageous, and creative beings because we are humans, individual acts of civil disobedience eventually become people banning together to demand access to resources and civil liberties. That happened here in the U.S. when individuals defied slavery and birthed the abolitionist movement that eventually led to the Civil War to finally free the slaves. Then it took the Women’s Suffrage Movement for women to gain the right to vote. And then we had a Civil Rights Movement to eliminate legal discrimination against women and people of color. However, we haven’t yet arrived. Social discrimination continues to this day because it is deeply ingrained in the psyche of many Americans. Even worse, white supremacists are threatened by the progress, and we are experiencing their calculated effort to turn back the clock.
I think the election of Barack Obama was a blow to the unconscientious white superiority many white people and people of color still held. For many whites and people of color, it was liberating to see the indisputable success, intelligence, grace, and morality of a black man and his wife as they occupied the White House for eight years. But for other white people, Barack and Michelle were a threat to their self-esteem and their deeply ingrained belief in white hegemony. Among those threatened was Donald Trump and his ban of white supremacists who launched a birther movement and a demand to see Obama’s academic grades to try to discredit him and hang on to their claim to supremacy.
No one should be surprised that Donald Trump became president despite his obvious character flaws, his failures as a businessman, his ignorance, and his lack of grace and morality. He was running against a highly accomplished, intelligent and strongminded feminist who represented the progress they fear the most. The only thing Trump had going for him was the shared insecurity of enough Americans. Trump convinced insecure white people that through him they could reclaim their place at the top of the economic and social food chain. His slogan, “Make America great again” spoke only to those white heterosexual people who felt threatened by the overwhelming and visible progress of women, gays, and people of color.
And then he appealed to religious and conservative white men and women, sympathetic to male domination, a gender binary, and heterosexual relationships as the true social order. They embraced his leadership when he promised them Supreme Court judges who would do their bidding. Trump fed into their collective belief that non-white, non-Christian immigrants from “shit-hole” countries were bringing crime, diseases, and degradation to “their” country. His promise to close the borders gave comfort to the xenophobia he introduced.
It is no surprise to me that it took another white male to replace him in the White House. I’m convinced that black leaders backed Biden because they, too, understood this. Personally, I think the same will be true in 2024. The Democratic candidate will need to be a white heterosexual cis gender male because we must continue to fight the unconscious bias of too many Americans. Progress is slow and we must be steady and persistent.
So, this is where we stand today. We have a segment of our country who call themselves White Christian Nationalists. That is a nice way of saying they are religious zealots who believe that God made white people superior to everyone else and that this country belongs to them and that everyone else should live by their rules or get out. Their rules include:
- Arm white people to maintain the social order and support police who kill armed (or unarmed) people of color.
- Maintain white political rule even if it means suppressing or invalidating the votes of people of color.
- Legalize discrimination against LGBTQ people.
- Close the border to non-Christians and people of color.
- Prevent white women from having access to birth control and having abortions by making it illegal for everyone. They want more white people.
- Keep people of color from gaining access to adequate healthcare so they and their babies die young.
- Expand prisons and policing to incarcerate people of color.
- Limit access to higher education for people of color with disadvantaged k-12 education so we have a continued flow of cheap labor without political aspirations.
- Keep appointing judges to the federal and supreme court to codify their discriminatory laws.
- Take over state and local governments to secure elections, enact favorable laws, control the school curriculum and legally discriminate and oppress LGBTQ, women, and people of color.
Of course, they don’t say these things out loud except when their passions take over or when they think they are alone. However, when you dig deep into their policies, these are the desired outcomes. The election this November is critical to stopping these White Christian Nationalists from taking us back to the days when civil disobedience and a civil rights movement is again necessary. Vote like our country and our liberties depend on it, because they really do.