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SPOILER ALERT (BUT NOT WHAT YOU THINK): THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE NOVEL TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, BY HARPER LEE. IT DOES NOT CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR GO SET A WATCHMAN (AT LEAST NOT MUCH).
I recently read Harper Lee's novel Go Set a Watchman. Like many of us, I loved reading her Pulitzer Prize winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird and, when I heard that her early novel had finally been published after all these decades, I rushed to the bookstore to get it. When I read Mockingbird as a teenager, not only did it make me think deeply about issues of race, prejudice and justice, but it made the character of Atticus Finch one of my literary heroes. In Mockingbird, in my reading, he's not only the father of the main character, whose nickname is Scout, and the defending lawyer of the black man falsely accused of raping a white woman, but a defender of justice in general, under which everyone, regardless of race, is equal. He's a sole light of reason amid a racist, white-dominated South. Go Set a Watchman presents a more complex and nuanced look at the subject of racism and white supremacy in the South.
In this blog post, and in another (which I hope to write later) I write a personal, layman's review of the novel. I'm no literary critic; I just have a BA from a liberal arts college. So I know about as much about literary criticism as the rest of you. Since I don't want to spoil anything, I plan to write my review in two parts. This first part will be a non-spoiler review that anyone who hasn't read the book can read (well... except for a few minor bits). The second part will be one for people who have already read it and will start with a big spoiler alert. I will expect my reader to have read To Kill a Mockingbird or at least to be okay with spoilers about it, since it's an American classic.
So, if you haven't read Go Set a Watchman, I encourage you to read it. I have been unable to escape people telling me that there's some sort of controversy, but I've been purposely ignorant of the controversy, because I wanted to read the novel fresh and without prejudice. After all, the last thing I'd want to do is treat Harper Lee the way Scout, Gem and Gil treated Boo Radley or most of Macomb County treated Tom Robinson in Mockingbird.
Reading Go Set a Watchman, I was confronted with some much deeper issues than I was in To Kill a Mockingbird. It was strangely fateful, because, although Go Set a Watchman was actually written earlier than Mockingbird, though only recently published, I found it to be a more mature novel in many ways. It's almost as if I wasn't ready for something like it in High School. Now, with police brutality against black people, with black protestors being treated like sub-humans by police, with black church shootings, black church burnings, the a Republican Congress refusing to renew the Voting Rights Act, and the Ku Klux Klan protesting South Carolina taking the KKK's hallowed flag down, Go Set a Watchman is really making me think--and understand racism and white supremacy in a deeper and darker way than I ever have before.
At the same time, I can see why others might have mixed feelings about the novel and, to some extent. in fact, I have some mixed feelings as well. But, overall, I thought the book was real good. I hope to say more about this in my next post. Suffice it to say that, for me, my mixed feelings get resolved by realizing that Go Set a Watchman confronts the reader with multiple kinds of racism and, having sat with my mixed feelings, I think, in the end, they've arisen because it was hard for me to be confronted with some portions of this range.
Go Set a Watchman is set twenty years after Mockingbird, though it's not exactly a sequel to it. Mockingbird is set in the 1930's. Go Set a Watchman is set in the 1950's and almost (but not quite) has the story of Mockingbird in its past. It would be a bit like, if the Tolkien estate allowed an earlier edition of Lord of the Rings to be published that was written from the perspective of the Right Honourable Samwise Gamgee, Mayor of Hobbiton 20 years after the War of the Rings and we find out that some of the characters did things a little bit differently.
Go Set a Watchman begins with Jean Louise Finch traveling home from Manhattan to the fictional Macomb County, Alabama at the age of 26. 20 years ago, when she was a tomboy with the nickname Scout, she witnessed her father, Atticus Finch, a prominent lawyer, defend a black man who was falsely accused of raping a white woman. Now she's come home to spend time with her boyfriend Henry (Hank), whom Atticus has taken under his wing in his law practice. She's trying to decide whether she wants to marry Hank. She meets with her family, including Atticus and her aunt Alexandra, who admonishes her not to marry Henry because he is, in Alexandra's words, "red-necked white trash". She also meets up with her eccentric uncle, Dr. Finch (Alexandra's brother), a retired doctor who lived outside of the South for a time before moving back to Macomb for retirement.
To put the novel in historical context, as the novel begins lots of political events have taken place in the twenty years since the trial. FDR's New Deal has come into affect, World War II has been won, and a bigger middle class is emerging. Most recently, the Supreme Court has ruled on Brown vs. the Board of Education, the famous ruling hallowed by so many of us, that mandated racial integration of the schools in all 50 states and made the famous pronouncement that separate is not equal.
If you want to know what follows in Macomb County, you'll have to read the novel (and I encourage you to do so).
The novel is written not only with the excellence we'd expect of a Pulitzer Prize winning author (complete with vocabulary words I had to look up and literary allusions I had to hunt down), but with a biting satirical wit. The novel is written almost entirely in the third person limited voice from Jean Louise's perspective. Occasionally, the narrator seems to stray into the minds of other characters, but this may actually be Jean Louise's speculation about their minds, rather than their actual thoughts, which would bring the novel back, firmly, to a third person limited voice as opposed to an omniscient author.
It is also written in the cadence of Southern speech, and if you have a Southern friend (I used Valerie), ask them to read a portion out loud to you. You'll hear Jean Louise's (and possibly Harper Lee's?) Alabama drawl and biting wit come right out of the pages. The style gives the impression of a rather spunky young lady who still has much of the old tom boy in her finding ways to laugh at the Southern milieu to which she's returned.
The story is told through a comparison and contrast between the modern life of the sophisticated and free-thinking Jean Louise and flashbacks to her childhood as Scout, the tomboy. Through both her present and past, the reader follows her realizations not only about the racism of the poor and unsophisticated Southerners in the 1930's and 40's, but the increasing and insidious white supremacy among the Southern elite of her own class. Something's wrong. Something's changed. Well educated, upper middle class white people have fired their black servants with whom they once had close relationships. Black folks are cold and hostile in contrast to the warm and friendly interactions she recollects from her childhood.
I found it particularly poignant that the best of Macomb County have opinions on race that seem nuanced and intelligent and yet are deeply racist and white supremacist. Throughout the novel, Lee presents us with an insight into what the well educated white Southern elite were saying about race issues behind closed doors. Valerie has confirmed for me that Lee's portrayal is extremely accurate, because Valerie witnessed much the same thing first hand from her family (of which she is very much the black sheep) and her community in Birmingham, much as Jean Louise does in the novel.
The vision in the novel is frightening, even by today's standards. Valerie says that she's convinced that, although much of the South today has greatly improved, the very same ideas that Jean Louise encounters are still alive and well in far too many portions of the South. Worse, they are spreading!
Lee's vision is as sobering as it is scary. It's difficult to confront it and easy to become enraged. And, yet, I think that's exactly the point of the novel! From my own experience, many of us non-Southerner liberals (at least we white ones) tend to think that race issues are better than they actually are. We tend to want to think that it's the poorly educated people who are the primary racists. After all, we see them among the KKK members who recently protested the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina capital recently. We certainly see their brand of racism in To Kill a Mockingbird. Yet, in Go Set a Watchman, we see that education and privilege does not necessarily change one's views. It's easy to point one's finger at the poor, angry white men who forms up lynch mobs. It's more difficult to fathom the grim and banal evil of the genteel Southern gentlemen and ladies who stop the lynch mobs with one hand and pull the strings of white supremacy with the other.
Still, the novel is a product of its time, as is Jean Louise. It can be a difficult novel to interpret at times. While Jean Louise sees what is going on from the fresh eyes of a Southerner who's been living in New York and who has, presumably, been influenced by its cosmopolitan milieu so different from provincial Macomb County, it can be difficult to know whether some of the things she says to her fellow Southerners is meant to be taken at face value or to politely obscure her own opinions in order to get along with her fellows among Macomb's upper crust.
So much has changed in America since the writing of the novel that it can be hard to remember certain historical facts about the 50's. For example, in many states, at that time, interracial marriage was not only socially condemned, but actually illegal. Entertainment media did not even feel a need to have token non-white characters, much less black heroes like modern Will Smith movies. People of color were seldom, if ever, depicted as middle class, much less as having positions of power and influence. The black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from "West Wing", for example, would have been unfathomable. Even as of the late 60's, the black/white kiss between Kirk and Uhura was scandalous, in spite of the fact that it was forced on them by aliens. Now, in the reboot, we think nothing of the romantic intrigue between Uhura and Spock.
Reading it now, I can see how mixed feeling can come in. I have my own mixed feelings. However, I'd like to remind my reader of something. As many of you know, To Kill a Mockingbird was banned in many parts of the South. Valerie reports that she never read the book until she went to college in Kansas. If To Kill a Mockingbird was censored, I think Harper Lee would surely have been lynched if Go Set a Watchman had been published back then. It's also hard to tell exactly where Harper Lee stands on some issues. Personally, I think she was a radical for her time, as testified by the visceral outrage she received from her fellow Southerners, and that she took a great risk even allowing Mockingbird to be published. We must see Go Set a Watchman in this light. More on this in my next post. I can't explain why I think some people might have mixed feelings, or why I have mixed feelings to some extent, without spoiling the book for those who have not read it.
Although the title can have many meanings, I take it as an imperative. It's an instruction to the reader. Jean Louise, as Scout, could be the watchman of the title. So could the book itself. I take the novel as a report on a deep-seated, white supremacist racism of the Southern elite that most of us would otherwise not be privy to.
There's another theme to the novel: maturity. Scout was a feisty little girl mucking around town. Jean Louise is a young lady full of piss, vinegar, and ethical resolve. Her journey is one of becoming more mature in a variety of ways. It's made me more mature to follow her journey out of young adulthood.
So I think that Harper Lee has finally allowed us to see a more mature version of the childhood adventure of To Kill a Mockingbird. While we followed Jem, Gil, and Scout in their adventures spying on the strange and reclusive Boo Radley and seeing Atticus defend a falsely accused black man in To Kill a Mockingbird, we have to take a deep breath and witness the full horror of the institution and invisible empire of white supremacy as it was ultimately supported by upper middle class white moderates in the 1950's South.
If you want to understand that piece of history, as shown unapologetically by a white Southern author who pulls no punches and has a unique insight into that world, please read Go Set a Watchman and make your own assessment. I for one plan to take the title as an instruction and be on guard, because I firmly believe that the mentality portrayed is still alive and well and that it must be stopped.
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Thursday, August 13, 2015
The Keystone of White Supremacy
As I've been reading the new/old Harper Lee book, Go Set a Watchman, I'm realizing that, although I was raised as a liberal in the progressive San Francisco Bay Area, I've missed something very critical about racism in America, and in the South in particular.
While everyone around me, from my parents to my high school teachers who had us read books like To Kill a Mockingbird to other adults I got to know to peers I discussed these issues with, agree that racism is fundamentally wrong and should be stopped, all of these people also instilled in me the notion that prejudice is its keystone. "Prejudice is caused by ignorance," was the monolithic message I was reared with. "Even if it's willful ignorance, it's still ignorance," was the second part of that teaching from the liberal culture that raised me.
The idea seemed to be that white racists see other races in terms of stereotypes such as the "unruly blacks", the "greedy Jews" or the "lazy Mexicans" and that this is the keystone of the entire edifice of western racism. Take that out, I was taught, and racism will crumble.
As I've been reading Go Set a Watchman, I realized that prejudice is part of it, but I no longer think it's the keystone. To put it another way, a certain type of prejudice is at the center of it all, but it's taken me a more focused lens to see something my liberal culture seems to have missed. What's missing from that model is that white supremacists don't just think that they're better than other races on a practical level. They think that white people are fundamentally more moral!
Once I realized this, everything about race in America fell into place for me that had not been fully explained by the prejudice theory. Fundamental to white racism is not only that people of color are fundamentally "less civilized" and "less disciplined" (and, in the twisted logic of these racists, therefore "less moral") than white people, but that white people have some sort of "responsibility" to civilize them and discipline them so that they can become as "moral" as white people.[1]
Understanding this makes perfect sense out of, say, the white supremacist reaction to Brown v Board of Education as well as to the reason why the Supreme Court actually had to say that separate is not equal. If racism was focused on conscious hatred or purely practical oppression, the question would not come up. White supremacists would simply be against any sort of education for people of color. As it was at the time of that ruling (and still is in many quarters, I think), the goal of the white supremacists was to educate black children separately from white children on the basis that they "need to be taught" lessons in "civilized" behavior, discipline and "morality" that white children "didn't need" to be "taught" and that white children "need to be taught" not only skills that white supremacists want to withhold from people of color, but also some sort of esoterica, including white supremacy itself, however indirectly that teaching might come about.
Obviously, as an anti-racist, I find that whole concept frightening to the bone and completely immoral. Since I know that people of all races are equal and that, biologically, there is no such thing as race in the first place, I support integrated education and am glad that as much change has come about as there has been, and I hope for more. However, I'm now seeing that prejudice alone does not entirely explain the white supremacist reaction to that ruling specifically or segregated education in general.
The same moral superiority attitude explains police brutality against people of color. If white police officers think of people of color as fundamentally less moral and more in need of discipline, it could explain why they'd feel justified in opening fire on, say, a black boy who mouthed off to them or possibly threw a punch at them. Under an equality perspective, it seems obvious that the killing was way, way excessive. In fact, that it's murder or something close to! The cop had a gun, the kid didn't. However, from a moral superiority perspective, a black boy mouthing off to or throwing a punch at a police officer is a boy who's "rotten to the core", in the eyes of a white supremacist cop. Such a kid could be seen as a thorough disregard for white attempts to "civilize" black people and his death might be seen as the removal of a "rotten apple" that would "spoil the barrel". (Of course, if that's a wide spread attitude in the police department of a given city, it may be very understandable that black people would disrespect law enforcement officers there.)
This white man's burden concept [2] would also explain why people of color are so frequently funneled into either (a) our military (b) our prisons or occasionally (c) universities, but only on sports scholarships.
The idea that a person of color could get a university education the same way a white person would may seem obvious to us non-racists, but doing so would be a threat to the white supremacist worldview. However, a white supremacist might easily imagine a person of color being good at sports. After all, one expects physical prowess from a class of people expected to perform manual labor. Since it also takes discipline to be a good member of a sports team, excellence in sports could, in the eyes of white supremacists, signal that an athlete of color is ready to be rewarded by a higher education normally "reserved" (in the mind of the white supremacist) to white people.
The military will give people of color the discipline that the white supremacists think they "need", making them "good colored folks", in their eyes. Beyond merely being an institution for war and defense, it is also an institution of profound discipline, in which soldiers are broken down, built up, taught to follow orders and so forth: in short, the military teaches people of color exactly the sorts of lessons white supremacists want them to be taught. Whether or not the military itself, as an institution, is racist is beside the point. In fact, all the better to hide white supremacist designs. The bottom line is that, in their minds, I think, it accomplishes exactly the "white man's burden" with regard to the people of color who enter it.
Another option acceptable to white supremacists, I believe, is for people of color to remain working class. That is, if they don't get into universities on sports scholarships or join the military, they could gain some amount of respect (though not equal respect) by serving white people as dutiful members of the working class. Such people of color "know their place" in the eyes of white supremacists.
Finally, prison would be reserved for any person of color who did not choose one of the other options, as it would punish them for trying to gain a level of power, status and success on their own, and not under white tutelage.
This also explains the outrage of so many angry white people against the President. It's not just that he's a Democrat and they're some flavor of conservative. It's that he's a person of color. Under egalatarianism, it seems obvious that he's a highly disciplined, moral, upstanding man. Even if one disagrees with some or even most of his policies, one can still admire the man as a true statesman. However, from a white supremacist perspective, him being President is the worst possible threat. It's totally incompatible with their world view. To them, having him in charge of America stops white man's burden in its tracks and turns what they see as the "natural" and "good" social order on its head, with a person of color in charge. It doesn't matter whether he's Muslim or Christian, an American citizen or not. I think all of those are just red herrings. White supremacists are simply willing to use any means necessary to destroy him, whether through misinformation or through obstructing the normal operations of our government, by refusing to pass the budget. They never treated President Clinton so terribly. Why? Because, even if they hated Clinton's politics, he was white.
As a man opposed to all of this and in favor of equality for all, it, of course, makes me angry to think about all of this. However, emotions alone will not win the social and political battles that lie ahead of us egalitarians. In order to win, we must understand the opposition. Trying to make white supremacists less prejudice is fruitless. That's why I say that generalized prejudice is not actually the keystone, here. Take it out, and the edifice of white supremacy may be crippled, but it will still stand. White supremacists will be blind to any attempt to prove that their being prejudicial. Since their worldview is that they are morally superior to people of color, saying that it's a stereotype to, say, view black people as "listless", "amoral" or "wanton" will go in one ear and out the other, because the white supremacy keystone is moral superiority, not merely prejudice.
Now, it may seem impossible to dissuade white supremacists from their views and, for some of them, it may be. For the dedicated, serious sorts of premeditated white supremacists: the leaders of the movement, I think it must be impossible to dissuade them. However, I think that a lot of rank-and-file white supremacists never really gave it much thought. They were just raised to be white supremacists and never thought any differently.
Those are the people whose minds I think we can change, but not merely by removing prejudice. I think what will really change their minds will be to normalize the concept of moral equality among races. For example, our storytelling media has done a great job, over the decades, of changing prejudices about people of color. They often portray people of color as business leaders, lawyers, doctors, soldiers, police officers and so forth. However, this attacks prejudice, but not necessarily a sense of moral superiority, because these people of color can still be immoral. As long as they are, these portrayals can be dismissed by people raised to be white supremacists (the ones we want to target) as going against the "natural order".
But, what if we began to normalize the morality of people of color? What if, say, storytelling media made a concerted effort to portray people of color as moral? What if we began to point out moral deeds of people of color in the news? If it became normal to see people of color as moral, as well as normal to see them contrary to stereotype, we might really start changing the minds of the rank-and-file white supremacists. This is because they're victims too. They've been indoctrinated with the idea of moral superiority and presenting them with something that clashes with that might just work to change their world view. Of course, the premeditated white supremacists will still be out their pulling the strings of every white supremacist puppet they can manipulate to their ends, but we egalitarians just might be able to cut a few strings by normalizing morality among people of color.[3]
---
[1] Since I've been taught that prejudice is wrong, I'll note that, obviously, there's a spectrum of white supremacy in America. What I'm talking about here is what I have come to see as being at the center of that bell curve, but I acknowledge that variants to the model I describe here do exist.
[2] "White man's burden" was, I believe, coined in the 19th Century as a colonialist term.
[3] There is already a lot of this, but there needs to be more, I think.
While everyone around me, from my parents to my high school teachers who had us read books like To Kill a Mockingbird to other adults I got to know to peers I discussed these issues with, agree that racism is fundamentally wrong and should be stopped, all of these people also instilled in me the notion that prejudice is its keystone. "Prejudice is caused by ignorance," was the monolithic message I was reared with. "Even if it's willful ignorance, it's still ignorance," was the second part of that teaching from the liberal culture that raised me.
The idea seemed to be that white racists see other races in terms of stereotypes such as the "unruly blacks", the "greedy Jews" or the "lazy Mexicans" and that this is the keystone of the entire edifice of western racism. Take that out, I was taught, and racism will crumble.
As I've been reading Go Set a Watchman, I realized that prejudice is part of it, but I no longer think it's the keystone. To put it another way, a certain type of prejudice is at the center of it all, but it's taken me a more focused lens to see something my liberal culture seems to have missed. What's missing from that model is that white supremacists don't just think that they're better than other races on a practical level. They think that white people are fundamentally more moral!
Once I realized this, everything about race in America fell into place for me that had not been fully explained by the prejudice theory. Fundamental to white racism is not only that people of color are fundamentally "less civilized" and "less disciplined" (and, in the twisted logic of these racists, therefore "less moral") than white people, but that white people have some sort of "responsibility" to civilize them and discipline them so that they can become as "moral" as white people.[1]
Understanding this makes perfect sense out of, say, the white supremacist reaction to Brown v Board of Education as well as to the reason why the Supreme Court actually had to say that separate is not equal. If racism was focused on conscious hatred or purely practical oppression, the question would not come up. White supremacists would simply be against any sort of education for people of color. As it was at the time of that ruling (and still is in many quarters, I think), the goal of the white supremacists was to educate black children separately from white children on the basis that they "need to be taught" lessons in "civilized" behavior, discipline and "morality" that white children "didn't need" to be "taught" and that white children "need to be taught" not only skills that white supremacists want to withhold from people of color, but also some sort of esoterica, including white supremacy itself, however indirectly that teaching might come about.
Obviously, as an anti-racist, I find that whole concept frightening to the bone and completely immoral. Since I know that people of all races are equal and that, biologically, there is no such thing as race in the first place, I support integrated education and am glad that as much change has come about as there has been, and I hope for more. However, I'm now seeing that prejudice alone does not entirely explain the white supremacist reaction to that ruling specifically or segregated education in general.
The same moral superiority attitude explains police brutality against people of color. If white police officers think of people of color as fundamentally less moral and more in need of discipline, it could explain why they'd feel justified in opening fire on, say, a black boy who mouthed off to them or possibly threw a punch at them. Under an equality perspective, it seems obvious that the killing was way, way excessive. In fact, that it's murder or something close to! The cop had a gun, the kid didn't. However, from a moral superiority perspective, a black boy mouthing off to or throwing a punch at a police officer is a boy who's "rotten to the core", in the eyes of a white supremacist cop. Such a kid could be seen as a thorough disregard for white attempts to "civilize" black people and his death might be seen as the removal of a "rotten apple" that would "spoil the barrel". (Of course, if that's a wide spread attitude in the police department of a given city, it may be very understandable that black people would disrespect law enforcement officers there.)
This white man's burden concept [2] would also explain why people of color are so frequently funneled into either (a) our military (b) our prisons or occasionally (c) universities, but only on sports scholarships.
The idea that a person of color could get a university education the same way a white person would may seem obvious to us non-racists, but doing so would be a threat to the white supremacist worldview. However, a white supremacist might easily imagine a person of color being good at sports. After all, one expects physical prowess from a class of people expected to perform manual labor. Since it also takes discipline to be a good member of a sports team, excellence in sports could, in the eyes of white supremacists, signal that an athlete of color is ready to be rewarded by a higher education normally "reserved" (in the mind of the white supremacist) to white people.
The military will give people of color the discipline that the white supremacists think they "need", making them "good colored folks", in their eyes. Beyond merely being an institution for war and defense, it is also an institution of profound discipline, in which soldiers are broken down, built up, taught to follow orders and so forth: in short, the military teaches people of color exactly the sorts of lessons white supremacists want them to be taught. Whether or not the military itself, as an institution, is racist is beside the point. In fact, all the better to hide white supremacist designs. The bottom line is that, in their minds, I think, it accomplishes exactly the "white man's burden" with regard to the people of color who enter it.
Another option acceptable to white supremacists, I believe, is for people of color to remain working class. That is, if they don't get into universities on sports scholarships or join the military, they could gain some amount of respect (though not equal respect) by serving white people as dutiful members of the working class. Such people of color "know their place" in the eyes of white supremacists.
Finally, prison would be reserved for any person of color who did not choose one of the other options, as it would punish them for trying to gain a level of power, status and success on their own, and not under white tutelage.
This also explains the outrage of so many angry white people against the President. It's not just that he's a Democrat and they're some flavor of conservative. It's that he's a person of color. Under egalatarianism, it seems obvious that he's a highly disciplined, moral, upstanding man. Even if one disagrees with some or even most of his policies, one can still admire the man as a true statesman. However, from a white supremacist perspective, him being President is the worst possible threat. It's totally incompatible with their world view. To them, having him in charge of America stops white man's burden in its tracks and turns what they see as the "natural" and "good" social order on its head, with a person of color in charge. It doesn't matter whether he's Muslim or Christian, an American citizen or not. I think all of those are just red herrings. White supremacists are simply willing to use any means necessary to destroy him, whether through misinformation or through obstructing the normal operations of our government, by refusing to pass the budget. They never treated President Clinton so terribly. Why? Because, even if they hated Clinton's politics, he was white.
As a man opposed to all of this and in favor of equality for all, it, of course, makes me angry to think about all of this. However, emotions alone will not win the social and political battles that lie ahead of us egalitarians. In order to win, we must understand the opposition. Trying to make white supremacists less prejudice is fruitless. That's why I say that generalized prejudice is not actually the keystone, here. Take it out, and the edifice of white supremacy may be crippled, but it will still stand. White supremacists will be blind to any attempt to prove that their being prejudicial. Since their worldview is that they are morally superior to people of color, saying that it's a stereotype to, say, view black people as "listless", "amoral" or "wanton" will go in one ear and out the other, because the white supremacy keystone is moral superiority, not merely prejudice.
Now, it may seem impossible to dissuade white supremacists from their views and, for some of them, it may be. For the dedicated, serious sorts of premeditated white supremacists: the leaders of the movement, I think it must be impossible to dissuade them. However, I think that a lot of rank-and-file white supremacists never really gave it much thought. They were just raised to be white supremacists and never thought any differently.
Those are the people whose minds I think we can change, but not merely by removing prejudice. I think what will really change their minds will be to normalize the concept of moral equality among races. For example, our storytelling media has done a great job, over the decades, of changing prejudices about people of color. They often portray people of color as business leaders, lawyers, doctors, soldiers, police officers and so forth. However, this attacks prejudice, but not necessarily a sense of moral superiority, because these people of color can still be immoral. As long as they are, these portrayals can be dismissed by people raised to be white supremacists (the ones we want to target) as going against the "natural order".
But, what if we began to normalize the morality of people of color? What if, say, storytelling media made a concerted effort to portray people of color as moral? What if we began to point out moral deeds of people of color in the news? If it became normal to see people of color as moral, as well as normal to see them contrary to stereotype, we might really start changing the minds of the rank-and-file white supremacists. This is because they're victims too. They've been indoctrinated with the idea of moral superiority and presenting them with something that clashes with that might just work to change their world view. Of course, the premeditated white supremacists will still be out their pulling the strings of every white supremacist puppet they can manipulate to their ends, but we egalitarians just might be able to cut a few strings by normalizing morality among people of color.[3]
---
[1] Since I've been taught that prejudice is wrong, I'll note that, obviously, there's a spectrum of white supremacy in America. What I'm talking about here is what I have come to see as being at the center of that bell curve, but I acknowledge that variants to the model I describe here do exist.
[2] "White man's burden" was, I believe, coined in the 19th Century as a colonialist term.
[3] There is already a lot of this, but there needs to be more, I think.
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