Supremacy ?


Last week we talked about white privilege and how in society we sometimes overlook the different privileges that we have. Whether you’re privileged because of your skin color, gender, socioeconomic status, or so forth, we overlook how some things seem to be handed to us. In the article from last week, Peggy McIntosh said “men don’t want to lessen their privilege.” Jane mentioned the Seneca Falls convention and how it “failed to address the racism and oppression faced by black women.” Usually I would just point to the white man and put all the blame on him. I never took into account that women wouldn’t want to lose their privilege, either. Women are the main causes that help to influence the institution of white supremacy.
 
 

Laura Smith correlates this idea of women being involved in white supremacy by reiterating the fact that “women have always played a determining role in white-supremacist movements” and that “more than half of white women voted for Trump.” I imagined males as the main issue behind the racism and white supremacist values but women, or rather white women are also to blame. It is said that a women was the main leader in one era of the KKK and she even evolved the racial hatred group by including more minority group.

Continuing, the first thing I read in Karen Cox’s article were the words, “The memorials are a legacy of the brutally racist Jim Crow era.” The article goes on to discuss how white men and white women don’t want to give up the fact that they lost the war and now blacks should be considered as equal. The white supremacist don’t want to give up their belief that blacks are lesser than whites. They hold on to these ideals by putting up confederate statues, which they claim is a symbol of peace yet it holds images of slaves.
 
 

I think it’s interesting how all these things happen around us yet the true meanings hope to be concealed or at least not so outright that another group can argue against it and win. What is really interesting to me in Cox’s article was when she said how Trump defends the neo-Nazis and other white supremacy groups. It makes me relate back to the fact that in Smith’s article she explains how the majority of white women voted for Trump. It’s a startling realization for me to actually see and learn how racism and even sexism plays a huge part in our lives. I thought that America overcame most differences in the light of diversity, but that’s not the case at all.
"Racism is not over."
-Tatiana F.

Comments

  1. MESSeptember 13, 2017 at 10:07 AM

    You're right: this can be a very startling realization, and I think has been a hugely startling one for many people. One thing to consider is what mechanisms are used to conceal true meanings, or to hide them just beneath the surface, so those who want to see them can find them, but those who are appalled by them can pretend they are not there. That raises another question: to what extent are true meanings concealed, and to what extent do many of us simply choose not to look carefully?

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