Is it Really White Supremacy?
Spoiler: no. But then what's going on?
White Supremacy is the catch-all phrase being used by a lot of people to… well, to do some interesting things, including: To explain away poor academic performance, to excuse concerning demographic data around career achievement, and to assure people that ongoing guilt is the only way for white people to make up for years of systemic racism.
Here’s an example of this disingenuous usage. Seattle English students told it’s ‘white supremacy’ to love reading, writing
Another popular idea among those who enjoy affirming incompetence and lack of achievement due to low effort, is that it’s white supremacy or originally Puritanical to use the word ‘lazy.’ They call it the ‘Laziness Lie.’ This is obviously and comprehensively a revisionist and presentist view of history aimed at affirming a low-effort lifestyle.
The problem is that, just like with words/phrases including ‘liberals,’ ‘woke,’ ‘social justice warrior,’ ‘homophobic,’ ‘bigot,’ and ‘Christian nationalism,’ the phrase ‘White Supremacy’ actually means something. It originated to describe the false and racist idea that the white race is superior to all others, as well as the cruel behavior of those prejudiced people who hold to that idea. This definition is simple and useful.
Except just like with those other phrases, the fearmongers and dividers who have power, money, platform, and visibility have driven scope-creep of all these phrases and more. And they’ve done it so they can continue to build fear, suspicion, hate, and division.
I’m going to say that again: The overuse of these phrases - which reasonable people are perfectly aware of and sick of - is happening to foster fear, suspicion, ongoing hatred, and division.
The people who use these phrases with the meaning/scope-creep now associated with them are not trying to move the cultural and ideological conversation forward. They are not trying to have a productive discussion. They are doing one or more of these:
Virtue signaling to build their own credibility and clout and visibility among the crowd they’re pandering to.
Saying these things performatively to be seen by their crowd but also to be argued with so that onlookers can be pulled into the fight.
Trying to start a fight by crap-posting absurd straw man arguments that pose a false dichotomy - also to build their own clout and credibility (with their in-crowd). They do this also to get paid.
If you can think of another reason these dividers use these phrases so speciously and disingenuously, please comment or add your measured thoughts in a shared post.
Is high achievement white supremacy? No. Is loving to learn white supremacy? No. Is being driven to maintain good personal fitness white supremacy? No. Is standardized testing white supremacy? No. (Is standardized testing flawed in several ways? Yep. Maybe a topic for a future article.)
Is it white supremacy to promote hard work, relentless drive for improvement in all aspects of life, and equality of opportunity instead of outcome? No.
Extremely reasonable people, like yours truly, find the disingenuousness of this kind of language very frustrating. It’s a demotivator. We don’t want to engage in a political discussion or any other discussion about modern polemics - because the other person(s) (from either of the two wings of the same bird) is usually not going to be willing to honestly examine word meanings and basic false dichotomies that they’ve bought into.
And when all that the major candidates do is engage in this kind of divisive, straw-man-based argument and zingerism? Yeah, that makes it nigh impossible to conscientiously vote for any of them. We disengage, which isn’t the worst thing.
On the other side of political disengagement is quite often a sincere refocus on local issues that really make a difference in people’s lives.
But pushing back against the divisive and dishonest language being used by dividers and fearmongers and clout-seekers is still a righteous effort. Through this effort, we can explain why books like White Fragility were never aimed at helping solve the problems that the people and nation face. Instead, that kind of book is out there to make the writers and publishers money by stoking guilt in good, sincere, warm-hearted people who actually do see real problems and want to fix them.
White supremacy, as an ideology and a lifestyle, exists. It’s not as big or scary as people want you to think.
Be reasonable. Reason it out. Think it through. There’s more to the story - always.