Defining American culture is difficult to narrow down and explain due to the various existing narratives. The standard explanation says the American culture is a melting pot of influences from Native Americans, early English settlers, Europeans, Africans, Asians, and everyone in between that contributed to the food, traditions, sports, entertainment, style of clothing, religious practices, and languages. This perspective is coming from a sense of unity, diversity, equality, and inclusion. However, this narrative dismisses the continued normalization of white supremacy that is embedded in our American culture.
White supremacy has been deeply embedded in American culture since the establishment of this country. Often when we hear the term “white supremacy” we immediately men in white hoods ag cross burnings during the early 1900s. However, when discussing white supremacy in American culture, the conversation must go further than the ideology of white superiority.
White supremacy is a systemic issue that has a foundation in the historical exploitation and oppression of nonwhite individuals and other disenfranchised groups in order to uphold a system of wealth, power, and privilege. This idea is rooted in the same scientific racism and pseudoscience used to justify chattel slavery, imperialism, colonialism, and genocide throughout history. The belief of white superiority has been the narrative since the inception of the United States. The European imperialists who settled here believed they were superior to BIPOC. This belief led to the genocide of the Indigenous population and nearly 250 years of enslaving Black people.
White supremacy is reproduced in all institutions in our society, such as the education system, the media, western Science (this played a pivotal role in reinforcing the idea of race being a biological truth with the white race as the ideal top of the hierarchy), Christian churches (these churches played a central role in reproducing the idea of whiteness as normal, better, smarter, holy as opposed to BIPOC), and the Judicial system
The American Education system has been known to “whitewash” much of its curriculum. Educational curriculums often exclude full accounts of American history which explain the systems of oppression and include the contributions of people of color. This has helped foster the covert white supremacist ideologies that are so deeply embedded in American Culture.
Many studies have found that the American education system has been teaching history through a very narrow lens. A recent report by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance project concluded that slavery is mistaught, mischaracterized, sanitized, and sentimentalized by the education system. This not only leaves students poorly educated but also to misunderstand the existing issues of racism in America. Without the proper historical context of the racial issues in America, dismantling those very systems that oppress minorities is challenging.
The white supremacy culture in the United States is the glue that binds together 1) white-controlled institutions into systems and 2) white-controlled systems into the global white supremacy system. This system is reinforced by the following characteristics:
Perfectionism, a sense of urgency, defensiveness, valuing quantity over quality, worship of the written word, belief in only one right way, paternalism, either/or thinking, power hoarding, fear of open conflict, individualism, belief that I’m the only one (who can do this ‘right’), the belief that progress is bigger and more, a belief in objectivity, and claiming a right to comfort.
All of these characteristics reflect American culture & values. These characteristics are damaging because they are used as norms & standards and they promote white supremacy thinking and behavior. One way to explore ways in combating the system of white supremacy is understanding the structure and where the roots are buried. Please click the link to the Pyramid of White Supremacy to explore abolishing white supremacy from a bottom-up approach.
Sources:
Resources:
Pyramid of White Supremacy
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