Why has White Supremacy Become The ‘Go To’ Insult of The Woke?
The Corruption of The Meaning of White Supremacy
This is the first post in our series on Demystifying the Woke Dictionary.
Demystifying the Woke Dictionary' will be a regular feature on Roots & Wings.
It is devoted to exploring the jargon and rhetorical strategy of woke semantic engineers
We begin our series on demystifying the language of woke by examining the transformation of the term white supremacy into an accusatory phrase used to morally condemn virtually any value and form of behaviour associated with modern western culture.
The meaning that the woke dictionary assigns to white supremacy bears little relationship to its historical usage. It has lost its focus on racial oppression and the affirmation of supremacy. Instead, it serves as a vehicle for universal condemnation.
Britannica correctly defines white supremacy as:
‘beliefs and ideas purporting natural superiority of the lighter-skinned, or “white,” human races over other racial groups. In contemporary usage, the term white supremacist has been used to describe some groups espousing ultranationalist, racist, or fascist doctrines. White supremacist groups often have relied on violence to achieve their goals.
For 21st-century woke semantic engineers, the above definition is far too narrow since it is confined to the articulation of views that uphold white racial superiority and the behaviour of those who support them. They argue that it is wrong ‘to identify white supremacy with violent segregationist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and their modern-day equivalents’. They want to expand its meaning to refer to ‘characteristics’ that affirm and institutionalise what they refer to as ‘whiteness and Westerness’ as the norm.
According to Robin Di Angelo, arguably the most prominent advocate of the claim that white supremacy is the default outlook of western society, white people are implicated by this condition regardless of their intention. She observed:
‘Remember: White supremacy does not refer to individual white people per se and their individual intentions, but to a political-economic social system of domination. This system is based on the historical and current accumulation of structural power that privileges, centralizes, and elevates white people as a group’.
According to this widely used definition, what’s at stake is not individual intentionality but an omnipotent transcendental force that imposes white supremacist cultural norms on virtually anything that stands in its way. The term does not so much refer to possessing a supremacist ideal but to who you are, regardless of your behaviour and outlook. It has become a diffuse and opaque term that suggests that the mere fact of being white turns an individual into a beneficiary of supremacy. White supremacy works as the woke equivalent of original sin. The concept of white supremacy has been re-engineered to capture the banal and the everyday. ‘We use the term to capture the all-encompassing dimensions of White Privilege, dominance, and assumed superiority in mainstream society’, argue proponents of the ever-expanding narrative of white supremacy1.
Since the turn of the century, the term ‘white supremacy’ has undergone a process of concept creep. The term concept creep is ‘the gradual semantic expansion of harm-related concepts’. It also refers to a growing range of unexceptional institutional practices, attitudes and behaviours that are reinterpreted as negative and harmful. What is remarkable about the lexical expansion of the concept of white supremacy is that it now attaches itself to phenomena that have nothing to do with racism or even race. Below is a selection of values and behaviours that have been indicted for their association with white supremacy
Perfectionism
Sense of Urgency
Defensiveness
Quantity over quality
Worship of the written word
Only One Right Way
Paternalism
Either/or thinking
Power Hoarding
Fear of open conflict
Individualism
I am the only one
Progress is bigger, more
Objectivity
Right to comfort
Numerous guidelines produced by universities, cultural institutions and corporations refer to many of the values mentioned above in their list of scare words.
The Duke University’s School of Medicine produced a guide to ‘White Supremacy Culture’ that states that ‘some identifiable characteristics of this culture includes perfectionism, belief that there’s only one right way, power hoarding, individualism, sense of urgency and defensiveness’. The guide claims that these characteristics ‘discriminate against non-Western and non-white professionalism standards related to dress code, speech, work style, and timeliness’. Another version of values to be condemned states:
‘white supremacy culture at an organizational level is apparent in: the belief that traditional standards and values are objective and unbiased; the emphasis on a sense of urgency and quantity over quality, which can be summarized by the phrase “the ends justify the means”; perfectionism that leaves little room for mistakes; and binary thinking.
The constantly expanding lists of supposedly white supremacist values often come across as an infantile reaction against a rigorous maintenance of institutional standards. How else could one account for a perspective that can attach racist connotations to ‘perfectionism’, ‘timeliness’, ‘a sense of urgency’ or ‘objectivity’?
This catalogue of grievances against a work ethic and expectation of high standards indicates that the current obsession with white supremacy is partly motivated by an anti-cultural imperative. The lists of grievances directed at institutional practices convey the claim that its standards are too exclusive because they discriminate against those who cannot meet its expectations. From this perspective, the expectation of high standards discriminates against those who can’t meet them. Standards of work need to give way to the cause of inclusion.
The obsession with inclusion afflicts all spheres of life, but its corrosive impact is most evident in the sphere of education. Advocates of the revised concept of white supremacy promote an orientation towards education that is anti-intellectual to the point of being philistine. Woke curriculum engineers claim that the ‘focus on getting the right answer’ in maths is an indicator of ‘white supremacy in the mathematics classroom’. Supporters of this bizarre proposition assert that the idea that there are always right and wrong answers ‘perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict’. These are apparently two characteristics of racist systems in organisations. An ethos that is willing to indict maths as racist is likely to adopt a similar philistine orientation to other school subjects. It is, for example, willing to extol educational illiteracy in relation to the written word. Not surprisingly, we discover that ‘worship of the written word’ is also a marker for white supremacy.
The San Francisco School Board was so fixated on its crusade to eradicate what they label as the culture of white supremacy from the classroom that it decided to portray educational success as one of its markers. Consequently, it decided to target American-Asians, who presumably, because of their timekeeping, perfectionism and hard work, were deemed to be carriers of the disease of white supremacy. Some members of the School Board depicted Asian Americans as collaborators with white supremacy. Many Asian Americans were upset when statements tweeted in 2016 by Alison Collins, one of the Board members, were publicised during the pandemic.
In these tweets, Collins stated that Asian Americans used ‘white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead’”. In an unrestrained tone of hostility, she referred to Asians as ‘house N….s’. As far as Collins was concerned, it was legitimate to use the N-word to express her anti-Asian sentiments. For people like Collins, the use of Anti-Asian language is OK because it assists the cause of de-legitimating white supremacy.
Numerous institutions have embraced the omnipresent narrative of white supremacy and are using its ever-widening definition in their training schemes. Signing up for courses that brand white supremacy as a form of original sin possessed by white people is mandatory for institutions that wish to signal that they are on ‘the right side of history’. Although there is no cure for white people suffering from this condition, ideologically committed trainers claim that the willingness to submit to their expertise represents a step in the right direction.
Even nurseries and nursery workers have become subjects of interest to the white supremacy industry. In Britain, Nottingham City Council and the Welsh Government have signed up to a programme designed to ‘decolonise’ nursery staff. The training programme is devised by the group Black Nursery Manager, who are critical of the ‘violence of white supremacy’. It aims to rid the nursery of any hint of racial bias. In Scotland, teachers are invited to take a white privilege test to help them participate in the decolonisation of the curriculum. A document published by the executive agency of the Scottish government urges teachers to identify and consider ‘white fragility’— defined as the clumsy defensiveness of a white person confronted with information about racial inequality and injustice — which it says, ‘upholds white supremacy’. Apparently, just about any form of behaviour can be indicted for upholding white supremacy. The animal-rights campaign group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has decided to exploit the influence of the white supremacy industry. It opposes children drinking milk. But instead of just saying ‘don’t drink milk’, it argues against this practice on the ground that drinking milk is linked to white supremacy!
If the drinking of milk can be linked to white supremacy – why not other matters related to people’s health? During the recent Covid Pandemic, a public letter signed by dozens of American public health and disease experts asserted that ‘white supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to Covid-19. For these officials, white supremacy works like a disease that constitutes a threat to people’s health. The medicalisation of white supremacy indicates that virtually any health condition can be attributed to it. That is why campaigners also insist that white supremacy has a corrosive impact on mental health. According to one account, ‘there is no shortage of ways in which white supremacy negatively impacts mental health’. Given its omnipresence, it is likely that there will be a steady proliferation of mental health problems attributed to it. White Supremacy is even implicated in the conduct of autopsies.
A keyword in the censor’s dictionary
The very mention of the term white supremacy serves to shut down discussion. The term weaponizes people’s understandable and genuine concern to distance themselves from any form of behaviour that can be construed as racist. It is an accusatory term which cannot be challenged. A white person who rejects the label racist and argues that good timekeeping has nothing to do with white supremacy is likely to be told that she personifies the condition of ‘white fragility’. Indeed, the failure to accept the charge of being an accomplice to supremacy is itself proof of this cultural crime.
Charging someone of white supremacy spares the accuser of the burden of providing proof. In the United States, groups campaigning for access to abortion contend that anti-abortion activists should not be offered a platform to argue for their view on the ground that their ‘narrative is rooted in white supremacy’. What they are saying, in effect, is that opponents of abortion have no right to a voice.
No Debate & No Platform
In normal times the assertion that people’s opposition to abortion is ‘rooted’ in white supremacy would be dismissed as absurd. But in a world where campaigners can, in all seriousness, claim that children drinking milk are affirming white supremacy, such absurdity can become normalised.
It is important to realise that the re-engineered version of white supremacy is not simply an ideologically loaded term that seeks to racialise everything in society. It is not merely used to censure and guilt trip white people. This term is evoked to constrain the exercise of free speech. That is why it has become the go-to term for woke censors. From their perspective, white supremacy, like abortion, is not a legitimate subject of debate. Those who refuse to abide by their semantic practice risk losing their right to a voice. Once people are prevented from expressing their strongly held views on a debate as important as abortion, society is in big trouble.
As we shall see in subsequent discussions on the language of woke, many of their terms are not just words but rhetorical weapons for shutting down discussion and imposing a culture of conformity.
Sensoy, O. and DiAngelo, R., 2017. Is everyone really equal?: An introduction to key concepts in social justice education. Teachers College Press, p.120.
“...beliefs and ideas purporting natural superiority of the lighter-skinned, or “white,” human races over other racial groups.”
By definition, then, anyone who believes the evidence showing greater white average intelligence compared to black average intelligence is true is a white supremacist or a black supremacist if they believe blacks are better at sports. This doesn’t seem correct.