What is White Supremacy? Pt. 1
Defining Racism and Whiteness
The urban context is often defined by what can be observed and measured. For example, some might associate the term urban with ethnic minority, immigrant, and lower-class communities that frequently populate inner cities. Others may refer to urban as an aesthetic; in the suburbs, it is common to find various clothing, furniture, and other stores using the word urban as a branding tool. Additionally, some might associate urban with issues that dominate the urban landscape: gentrification, unemployment, health and education disparities, poverty, and more. While each of these interpretations of urban holds some validity, none fully addresses the core narratives that define the urban context.
Since the industrialized era, urban communities have been defined by the narrative of White Supremacy. This narrative has shaped the social, economic, and theological imaginations of our communities for generations. As a result, urban neighborhoods are places that can be used, exploited, and easily discarded.
For urban communities to get out from under this narrative, they will need a more beautiful and powerful counter-narrative that can resist White Supremacy. Urban Christians possess this narrative in the gospel of the kingdom of God. However, we will not rightly understand how to live out this gospel until we discern the twisted narratives that have been fashioned in the kingdom of darkness, narratives that serve only to steal, kill, and destroy the lives of our neighbors (John 10:10).
If we are to understand White Supremacy, we must first understand the power dynamics of racism and Whiteness. In the following essay, I will expand on the narrative of White Supremacy and how it has impacted my community. This two-part series will be followed by two essays on how the gospel of the kingdom of God is central to the church's mission.
Racism is Not What You Think
A significant reason why addressing racism in our communities and churches is problematic is that we rarely agree on its definition. One perspective, typically held by White conservatives and evangelicals, views racism as simply a matter of personal prejudice. Another perspective, perhaps more common in marginalized and ethnic minority communities, sees racism as deeply rooted in power structures, institutional forces, the legal system, and so on. How can we make sense of these vast differences?
Emerson and Smith have charted a helpful path forward by grounding racism in the misuse and abuse of power. One challenge to our understanding of racism is that our definitions remain stuck in the past. We assume that racism is a constant; thus, if we compare our present to past forms of racism–such as chattel slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and the Ku Klux Klan–we might conclude that “racism is on the wane, and racial division and the racial hierarchy are merely historical artifacts.”[1]
The problem with this view is that racism is not constant; it is related to the use and misuse of power. Racism adapts to how power is wielded in any given context. Therefore, we need a definition of racism that can candidly address power dynamics. Two aspects of the definition provided by Emerson and Smith are particularly important here. First, it emphasizes that racism “(1) [is] increasingly covert, (2) [is] embedded in the normal operations of institutions, (3) avoid[s] direct racial terminology, and (4) [is] invisible to most Whites.”
Second, by grounding racism in power dynamics, we understand that it is not simply “individual, overt prejudice or the free-floating irrational driver of race problems, but the collective misuse of power that leads to reduced life opportunities for certain racial groups.”[2] In summary, Emerson and Smith characterize racism as a progressively adaptive and harmful power dynamic that creates unjust racial inequalities.
Drs. Robert Chao Romero and Jeff Liou provide additional insight into our understanding of racism by integrating the concepts of Critical Race Theory (CRT) into Christian theology. The Christian narrative on humanity’s fall into sin shapes our perspective on racism. If sin is narrowly defined as individual actions and attitudes, we will perceive racism merely as an issue of individual culpability.
However, if our understanding of sin is total and cosmic, then “the scope widens, [and] racism is understood to be as ordinary, innovative, cunning, and wily as sin because of the fall.”[3] As I’ve written previously, a proper Christian theology of sin should expect racism to be pernicious and adaptive.
These theological observations align with numerous academic fields today, including CRT, which holds that racism is ordinary; it is “the usual way society does business, the common, every-day experience of most people of color in this country.”[4] With a comprehensive account of the effects of sin and the fall, we recognize that racism can be observed in “personal hatred toward an individual of another race.” It may also manifest in “outcomes, systems, and structures” that lead to unjust and unequal results for different racial groups.[5]
Racism is an adaptive, pernicious, and sinful power dynamic that impacts individual relationships while creating unjust social systems and unequal outcomes for various racial groups. Therefore, individuals, along with institutions, communities, governing bodies, churches, and denominations, can be accountable for the sin of racism and its ongoing effects.
White Evolution
Intertwined with the concept of racism is that of Whiteness. Similar to the prevailing notion of racism, being White is often seen as a static characteristic. In other words, all White individuals in the United States are presumed to have consistently enjoyed the same social privileges associated with Whiteness. However, just as race and racism evolve within power structures, the workings of Whiteness in our nation’s history also change. Many European immigrants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, due to their country of origin and Catholic faith, were not recognized as White until social systems and laws evolved to grant these immigrants full “White” status.
To be clear: “Whiteness” (and White Supremacy) does not imply that all White people have always enjoyed equal advantages. Instead, “Whiteness” is a term to describe a shifting power dynamic that protects and benefits an evolving set of persons who are determined by social systems to be “White.”
In their book White Evolution: The Constant Struggle for Racial Consciousness, Drs. Christopher S. Collins and Alexander Jun define Whiteness as a “socially constructed status” that manifests within a social system. This system has “constructed such a dominant reality that it narrows our sense of choices and beliefs relating to race.”[6] The way our society perceives individual actions, behaviors, or attitudes is governed by a social system “that predisposes these attitudes and grants privileges and accessibilities to core members of a dominant group.”[7]
As Whiteness adapts to racism within evolving power structures, the targets of racial discrimination also change. Racism in the United States has never been as straightforward as light-skinned individuals discriminating against those with darker skin. As Yale historian Matthew Frye Jacobson has noted, “Caucasians are made and not born. White privilege in various forms has been a constant in American political culture since colonial times, but whiteness itself has been subject to all kinds of contests and has gone through a series of historical vicissitudes” (emphasis mine).[8]
In the Naturalization Act of 1790, Congress stated that “all free white persons” who migrated to the United States would be granted full citizenship rights after residing in the country for one full year. This law is noted for its exclusivity, which, even a century later, denied Chinese immigrants the political power to stand against exclusionism and discrimination. This law, still in effect in 1942, left Japanese immigrants so vulnerable in our country that they could be forced to comply with a federal policy of internment.[9]
However, the inclusivity of this law also led to a growing political and cultural crisis. From roughly 1840 to 1924, Jacobson documents how the increasing divisions within Whiteness created new forms of racial discrimination in our country. This period was driven by three dominant factors. First, industrialization in the United States created a significant demand for cheap labor, a demand that was met as unprecedented numbers of European immigrants arrived in this country. Second, there emerged a “growing nativist perception” of these migrants as a “political threat to the smooth functioning of the republic.” Third, a “fracturing of monolithic whiteness” occurred as eugenics and politics raised concerns about these migrants’ “fitness for self-government.”[10]
The evolving concept of Whiteness created varying levels of racial and ethnic discrimination, often cutting in two different directions. On the one hand, there were fears that Eastern European immigrants would lead to the decline of “Anglo-Saxons” in the United States. These immigrants were considered a degenerate stock that would taint the White race. On the other hand, when questions of slavery arose, White people were viewed collectively as greater than those of African origin.[11] Racism and Whiteness will always adapt to benefit those in power.
The pernicious nature of racism and Whiteness is also evident in the construction of economic systems. David R. Roediger has significantly contributed to our understanding of how Whiteness has evolved throughout our country’s history. Discrimination against various groups of European immigrants was often employed to fuel labor competition, keep wages low, and decide who was deemed suitable for undesirable positions. Roediger writes,
In the early twentieth century, employers preferred a labor force divided by race and national origins. As radicals understood at this time… work gangs segregated by nationality and/or race could be made to compete against each other in a strategy not only designed in the long run to undermine labor unity and depress wages but also to spur competition and productivity every day.[12]
For example, during the Great Steel Strike after World War I, an antilabor detective agency instructed its followers to “Spread [information] among the Serbians that the Italians are going back to work. Call up every question you can in reference to racial hatred between these two nationalities.” Similarly, groups of different national origins were played against one another in want ads and misleading employment statistics.[13]
Hiring and promotion decisions also worked from changing conceptions of Whiteness. Roediger gives several examples that are worth quoting at length:
When a native-born labor investigator asked for a "hunky job" on the blast furnace, he was told that "only hunkies work those jobs, they're too damn dirty and too damn hot for a 'white' man." In a smelter in Black Eagle, Montana, work in the tank house was so undesirable in the early twentieth century that one employee recalled "it was hard to get a white man to do it." Slavs did the tank house jobs that "white men" refused. Lumber companies in Louisiana built what they called "the quarters" for black workers and (separately) for Italians. For white workers, they built company housing and towns.[14]
As Jacobson noted above, economics and low labor costs were a driving force behind European immigration. Racial differences were used by employers to establish hierarchies and foster prejudice, all in the name of maximizing profits. Malcolm Foley explains of racism, “Race and racism were created because some people wanted more resources, wanted them cheaply, and were willing to do whatever it took to accumulate those resources.”[15] The same can be said for Whiteness.
Roediger also explains how personal prejudice was demonstrated in shared attitudes and language. European immigrants were often referred to with derogatory slang such as “hunky,” “Polack,” “wop,” “bohunk,” or “mutt.” These names had attributes of being “uneducated, unskilled” or even “intrinsically dull and stupid.” To be “hunked” would refer to someone who became disabled at work. Thus, these terms were used to describe “the brawny and the broken, the inferior and the damaged.”[16]
Whiteness would continue to evolve into the twentieth century and is still changing alongside concepts of race and racism today. As our country entered two World Wars, and Jim Crow segregation took hold of laws, institutions, and individual hearts, Whiteness became a more monolithic concept as some of the older ethnic and racial distinctions faded away. These dynamics will become more apparent in my following essay on the legacy of White Supremacy in my community.
[1] Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America(Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2001), 9
[2] Emerson and Smith, Divided by Faith, 9.
[3] Robert Chao Romero and Jeff M. Liou, Christianity and Critical Race Theory: A Faithful and Constructive Conversation (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2023), 23.
[4] Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, Third edition (New York: New York University Press, 2017), 8.
[5] Romero and Liou, 67.
[6] Christopher S. Collins and Alexander Jun, White Evolution: The Constant Struggle for Racial Consciousness (New York: Peter Lang, 2020), 15.
[7] Collins and Jun, 19.
[8] Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1998), 4.
[9] Jacobson, 39.
[10] Jacobson, 40-41.
[11] Jacobson, 44.
[12] David R. Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White, Second edition (New York: Basic Books, 2018), 72-73.
[13] Roediger, 73.
[14] Roediger, 74.
[15] Malcolm Foley, The Anti-Greed Gospel: Why the Love of Money is the Root of Racism and How the Church Can Create a Way Forward, 19.
[16] Roediger, 43-44.