The Mantra of White Supremacy - The Atlantic - 0 views
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When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, opponents of racial equity largely stopped openly claiming that anti-racist measures were harmful to white people. They instead claimed that anti-racist efforts to remedy racial inequality constituted “reverse discrimination” or “reverse racism” (against white people).
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They weaponized the very Civil Rights Acts they had long opposed against the policies and programs leading to integration, enfranchisement, racial equity, and racial justice. When the medicine is rebranded as the disease, the disease will inevitably persist—and it has.
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Ronald Reagan said, “If you happen to belong to an ethnic group not recognized by the federal government as entitled to special treatment, you are a victim of reverse discrimination.” In 1995, Senator Phil Gramm of Texas said, “You cannot give somebody preference over somebody else without discriminating against the person who is not receiving the preference.” Or, as Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in 2009, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
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since the civil-rights movement, Republicans (and many non-Republicans) have expressed two conflicting racial mantras: (1) racism no longer exists, and (2) racism is spreading against white people. Since Joe Biden’s election, this second mantra has overtaken the first.
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White-supremacist ideology lives on what Heather McGhee calls the “zero-sum myth,” the idea that progress for people of color necessarily comes at white folks’ expense.
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It fearmongers about the future: If white people are not worshipped in schools, then they will be demonized; if white people don’t reign supreme, then they will be subjugated; if white people don’t hoard resources and opportunities, then they will be starved; if white people cannot kill at will, then they will be killed at will
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White violence is presumed to be self-defense. Defending yourself against a white supremacist is presumed to be a criminal act.
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Extreme fear perhaps breeds this extreme fear. White supremacists probably fear revenge, retaliation, the tables turning—as they wipe the blood of democracy, of equality, of the dying and dead off their hands
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They probably can’t imagine that Indigenous anti-racists just want their land back and aren’t genocidal; that Black anti-racists just want reparations and don’t want to enslave; that Asian anti-racists just want to be visible and don’t want to render white people invisible; that Latino and Middle Eastern anti-racists just want to flee violence and don’t want to invade predominantly white nations.
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History reproduces itself. But when people don’t know history—or are barred from learning it—how can they ever recognize its reproduction?