Analysis by John Blake, CNN, Sat September 4, 2021
"The modern concept of race has been used too long to enslave and exploit. As Audre Lorde, the poet and activist, once said, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."
We can't get there, though, if we continue to underestimate the resilience of White supremacy. It is a shapeshifter that can adapt to any environment.
It survived a revolution whose leaders declared "all men are created equal," a Civil War, the civil rights movement, several "racial reckonings," and the nation's first Black president. It keeps on keeping on.
The US may indeed become a majority minority country around 2045. We may become a rainbow nation of varying racial identities, skin tones and interracial unions.
But if we don't dismantle the racial hierarchy that gives status and power to Whiteness, this new version of America won't really be new.
It'll be just another updated version of White supremacy -- with a tan."
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From Carlos: In this article, John Blake provides facts, history, personal narrative and insight, and advocacy for moving beyond the false and pernicious construct of race.
As is apparent from simply reading the title, this article uses and explores the phenomenon of "white supremacy." We are in a moment wherein the term white supremacy is both well understood and useful in understanding social identity, social bias, and social justice dynamics and resisted and reviled as invalid and offensive. Blake provides a good definition of white supremacy: the belief that White people are superior and they should maintain political, social and economic power over other races.
The articulation of "white supremacy" that I recommend is one that understands it as a particular and currently prevalent form of Social Identity Supremacy – the belief that people categorized as members of a particular social identity group are superior to those categorized as members of other social identity groups, and that they are therefore entitled to more power, privileges, and social goods of all kinds.
Blake's article can be found here.