White Supremacy by Daniel Strausman

Daniel Strausman
10/2/17
Arts Activism

Issue: White Supremacy 

How to Preserve White Supremacy

Points of the article:

  • New era for Jim Crow, now James Crow Esq.
  • 5 point system
    • Racial gerrymandering.
    • Fighting immigration reform.
    • Mass incarceration.
    • Voter restrictions.
    • A resurgence of white nationalism.
  • 4 Points system of solutions
  • Racial gerrymandering by, either party, must be rejected.
    • People, mainly people of faith (as pointed by the article), should speak out clearly for reform.
  • Keep pressure on elected officials for positive immigration reform. 
  • The racial difference and mass incarceration must stop
    • Removing mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses .
    • Dealing with drugs through education and rehabilitation, instead of police and prison time.
  • Protect the right to vote and support “Matthew 25 people.”
    • Mathew 25 is to protect the “the hungry, thirsty, and naked, strangers and those sick and in prison.”
Questions:

  • With the title of this article, I was questionable about what bias it had. How could someone get behind the ideology of white supremacy and bigotry? And why?
  • How can it be a political issue, and a moral one?
  • How can someone, who doesn't have a political voice, push to change these systems of oppression?
  • If slavery has “evolved” into mass incarceration, how can we change that? Also how can we prepare if it “evolves” into something else? What would hat be?
  • How can the ideology and out look of an entire nation change?

Citation:
Nika, Alexandru. “How to Preserve White Supremacy.” Sojourners, 20 Oct. 2016, sojo.net/magazine/november-2016/how-preserve-white-supremacy



The History of White Supremacy in America

Points of the article:

  • Many of White Supremacists, such as the former leader of the KKK David Duke, are major supporters of Donald Trump
    • Wanting to “take back this country.”
    • Some, like Christopher Cantwell, want a president even more racist.
  • The nation's founding and mainstream white supremacy
    • Parts of the Constitution is based off of White Supremacy, saying slaves can only be 3/5 of a person.
    • Ending of the Civil War ended legal White Supremacy, but was continued to be enforced mainly by the South, white militant groups such as the KKK, and Jim Crow.
    • The KKK has fallen and reemerged around there times; After the ending of the Civil War, In the early 20th century known as a Protestant nativist movement, and then in the Civil Rights movement during the 50’s and 60’s.
  • White supremacy goes underground.
    • After the end of legal segregation, what groups started to go underground and spread all over the United States.
    • These smaller groups used ideas of Nazi Germany, discriminating against Jews and others minorities which were not White Europeans.
    • William Potter Gale, a veteran of WWII, started  "United States Christian Posse Association,” or known as "Posse Comitatus”. He stared teaching violence as a mean of oppression. 
    • Richard Girnt Butler took this group after Gales death and started the Aryan Nations.
  • Fear of the Jewish threat
    • William Pierce fearing a government controlled by Jews
    • Fear in government taking away guns
    • “They saw themselves as under attack by waves of "mud people" (Mexicans, Asians, blacks). The Jews were behind it all.”
  • Violence defines the far right
    • The amount of assassinations, bombing, and other terrorist attacks and forms of violence is common and is increasing by Aryan Brotherhood, the Militia movement within recent years.
  • White supremacy today
    • Now are made up of many small groups today.
    • Neo-Nazis, Neo-Confederates, and the KKK
    • These groups discuss their activities online, mainly reddit.
    • These groups hold a “mix of paranoia and inferiority”
Questions:

  • How do you change the idea and belief (no matter how convoluted we see it) of ignorance?
  • Instead of shunning these groups, how can people as a collective unify? How can these groups learn to see pass race and religion?
  • Where is this notion of white inferiority coming from? How can these people see past/overcome this issue?
  • Why do these groups see violence as the best (or only) solution?
  • Is this uncovering/acknowledgment of White Supremacy needed for the solution of it? Or is it the path of normalization?
Citation:

Skutsch, Carl. “The History of White Supremacy in America.” Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone, 19 Aug. 2017, www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-history-of-white-supremacy-in-america-w498334.

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