What is White Supremacy? Pt. 2

A World Where Everyone Loses.

It is hard to believe that it has been nearly five years since my conversation with Oprah and Dr. Ibram Kendi.

As I reflect on that conversation, one comment from a fellow White panelist stands out more than any other. After witnessing a horrific incident of police brutality against a Black woman, my co-panelist remarked, “This makes me ashamed to be White.”

I understand the reaction. However, the more I’ve thought about this comment these last five years, the more I’ve realized… that ain’t it.

The response to racism lies in a positive vision of love grounded in a concrete display of justice. Shame is seldom, if ever, a positive motivator for change. However, in the context of racial justice in our country, I have observed this sense of “White shame” as a common response, particularly among White progressives.

Racism can be explained, in part, by a failure to treat others with the dignity they deserve as human beings. Racism often becomes internalized when ethnic and racial minorities begin to see themselves as “less than,” as those lacking inherent, God-given dignity. Consequently, racism perpetuates itself both externally and internally, as racial minorities are subjected to a power dynamic that views them as less than human. This power dynamic evolves into a mindset, a way of existing that embeds itself in how our society functions.

Yet what language do we have to describe my White co-panelist’s sense of “White shame”? In that moment, she confessed to losing her dignity because she was White. She, too, was experiencing loss. She, too, was subjected to a social system that made her feel “less than,” inadequate, and worthless.

“Racism” doesn’t fit. My co-panelist was not encountering a power dynamic at that moment. However, she was experiencing genuine loss: a loss of dignity, a loss of respect, and a loss of hope for herself.

What language can we use, if any, to describe this loss?

White supremacy.

White supremacy is not defined by “white supremacists” in black masks or white hoods, though it does explain why such persons are so fragile about their racial identity.

Nor is White supremacy defined merely by economic or institutional outcomes, such as the lack of generational wealth among Black families compared to White families or the lack of minority leadership in politics and business. These outcomes are better explained by the power dynamic of race and racism. Jonathan Tran has given specificity to these dynamics with the term racial capitalism, which helps us understand how economic exploitation and race go hand in hand.¹

White supremacy is driven by the evolving and intertwined threads of racism and Whiteness. Johnny Ramírez and Love L. Sechrest define white supremacy as “a general set of practices and beliefs embedded in institutions that promote a hierarchical ordering of racial groups from best to worst.”² Similarly, Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah emphasize how White supremacy creates social systems where dominant groups “define others as inferior and claim authority over them.”³ Willie James Jennings has noted how such practices and beliefs fuel our “social and theological way of imagining, an imaginary that evolved into a method of understanding the world.”⁴

White supremacy is the coalescing social, economic, and theological meta-narrative that promotes hierarchies, defines non-dominant groups as inferior, robs people of their God-given dignity, and shapes our institutional and societal practices.

This toxic narrative defines a world where everyone loses. Power is used to dominate others. Scarcity mindsets drive division and competition. In socially constructed hierarchies, men are pitted against women, while different racial demographics are turned against one another. The poor of every race are exploited to benefit unjust economic systems. Our social imaginaries evoke feelings of loss and shame. Some react to this shame with violence, while others retreat into isolation.

White supremacy is loss, domination, shame, and violence.

While this narrative can describe Western society, it is pronounced in urban communities that are populated by racial minorities, many different nationalities, and a diverse lower class, all of whom are deemed inferior under White supremacy. Regardless of who has called them home, urban communities like mine have been discarded, neglected, and considered inferior for generations. Urban Christians must understand the damage of this narrative before they can apply the alternative imagination of the kingdom of God, which alone can bring peace and wholeness to our communities.

White Supremacy in Haughville

These ideas only make sense if they touch down with real people and places. I offer my neighborhood’s history as an example of White supremacy at work across time and racial groups. Haughville’s history is typical of urban communities throughout the United States.

In 1925, Vera Morgan, the librarian of the Haughville library, lamented the lack of interest and information available about the immigrant families in her community. She referenced an interview with a well-known writer who described Indianapolis “as the typical American city, which had practically no foreign population.” This writer continued, stating that if an immigrant’s name ever appeared in the newspapers of Indianapolis, “we pass over it to more agreeable news.” However, when pressed, the writer admitted that residents would have to acknowledge, “there are a few hunkies out in Haughville, but we don’t know anything about them."

In the first half of the 20^th century, Haughville’s residents were mainly Irish, German, Macedonian, Hungarian, Polish, and Slovene immigrants. White supremacy magnified division among these groups, as they often clashed in neighborhood institutions, including factories, bars, and churches.

This discrimination is a concrete example of the dynamics of Whiteness playing out within a community. Though these groups all had white skin, they were not considered “White” by our social systems and thus were labeled inferior. The resulting violence, competition, and hatred fueled an imaginary of White supremacy. Under White supremacy, everyone loses–including White people.

These immigrants also faced external discrimination from various groups in the city. When immigrants spoke their native language on the Michigan Street trolley, they were likely to encounter verbal harassment from other passengers. As new immigrant communities arrived to work at the foundries, instances of physical violence occurred. Immigrants were afraid to walk east beyond the boundaries of Haughville.⁵ Long before African Americans became the dominant group in Haughville, the community experienced redlining as early as 1937.⁶

While Haughville had a few Black residents at this time, most of the Black community lived just across the river from Haughville along the central artery of Indiana Avenue. Local historian and community advocate Wildstyle Paschall describes the historic Indiana Avenue – or simply the Avenue - as both a “Black Wall Street” and a “Black Harlem.” The Avenue stretched a mile and featured Black-owned businesses, churches, bars, nightclubs, theaters, and homes. Indiana Avenue boasted a thriving jazz scene, with legends like Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald performing alongside local talents such as the Hampton Sisters and Wes Montgomery. As the center of Black culture, it was surrounded by 400-500 acres of Black neighborhoods.⁷ The Avenue was also home to the Madam C.J. Walker cosmetic factory, which successfully employed residents of the Black community in Indianapolis. Walker is often credited as the first Black female millionaire in the country.⁸

This community was destroyed when the city received state funding to construct I-465, I-65, and I-70, three interstates that tore through and around the Black community on the west side of downtown. Additionally, the development of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) specifically aimed to redevelop Indiana Avenue. By exerting city pressure and using the power of eminent domain, those in power erased the homes, businesses, and culture that the Black community had worked so hard to build for themselves.⁹

Around this time, jobs in Haughville began to dwindle as factories shut down or relocated. Second and third-generation residents lost their sense of communal identity that was tied to the neighborhood. Many moved away as a result. First-generation immigrants began to pass away. These two factors left vacant housing available for new residents to occupy.

Many displaced African Americans began purchasing vacant homes in Haughville if they were able. While the Black residents who relocated to the neighborhood were perceived as a disruption by the immigrant families that remained, the city’s development of public housing in 1966 sparked significant conflict between the immigrant and Black communities in Haughville.

Because of the toxic narrative of White supremacy, two working-class communities that should have worked together were forced into division and animosity.

In the following decades, Haughville’s European immigrant populations have become almost non-existent, and African Americans have become the dominant racial group in the neighborhood. Yet, White supremacy fuels a narrative of inferiority and internalized discrimination among the Black community, just as it did for the immigrants before them. As one Haughville leader explained to me, when social systems look down on you long enough, the community begins to look down on itself.

Haughville is now seen as a place to flee, a neighborhood to escape from. Data collected by the Polis Center of Indiana University indicates an overall population decline of about 10% over the last decade. Even more staggering is the decline within the Black community in the neighborhood, which has experienced a net loss of one-third of its population in the past ten years.

Latino and other immigrant groups have risen in their place. As the neighborhood increases in beautiful diversity, White supremacy continues to fuel division and animosity just as it did a generation ago. Last year, I asked one Latino leader in the neighborhood why the Latino community is never present at community events. He responded by saying that White or Black members of the community have never invited them.

Recent vandalism has also increased racial animosity. Both at community events and in online forums, residents have expressed their desire for ICE to conduct raids in the area to remove immigrants from the neighborhood.

The Narrative in the Kingdom of God

And so the cycle repeats itself. Generations of hierarchy, competition, and exploitation create an overarching narrative of loss, domination, shame, and violence. Is there any hope to break the cycle?

There is, and it is found, where God’s people live in the narrative of the Kingdom of God. This Kingdom gives where there has only been loss; it creates justice where there has only been domination; it gives dignity where there has only been shame; it brings peace where there has only been violence. This is the imagination of the Kingdom established by Jesus that is breaking into the world.

As Dr. Malcolm Foley has instructed, we need our social and moral imaginations to be shaped by the Kingdom of God. This imagination

is a call to creative rebellion against the powers and principalities. When the world tells us that violence is the only way, we respond with a vision of a future in which there is only Christ-poured-out-abundance and a Jesus who has promised us everything we need if we pursue his kingdom first. When the world tells us that actual turning from greed and pride is not possible, we respond with a vision of a world in which all things are made new: you, us, and everything. We respond with a Jesus who heals the sick, cures the blind, raises the dead, and redeems the sinful.¹⁰

What does it look like for the Church to be shaped by such an imagination? In the following essay, I will explain how the imagination of White evangelicalism has been inadequate in its tendency to reduce the Church’s mission through overspiritualization. I will conclude this series with a theology of the kingdom of God and its implication for the imagination and mission of the church.

1. Jonathan Tran, Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism. In the book’s introduction, Tran argues that American capitalism and American racism are bound up in each other; they are a “continuous narrative” that can be designated as “racial capitalism.”

2. Love L. Sechrest and Johnny Ramírez-Johnson, “Introduction,” in Can “White” People Be Saved? Triangulating Race, Theology, and Mission, 13.

3. Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah, Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery, 21.

4. Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of, 58-59

5. Divita, Slaves to No One, 60-61.

6. “Living the Legacy,” https://indianahistory.org/education/living-the-legacy/.

7. Wildstyle Paschall, “The Ethnic Cleansing of Black Indianapolis,” http://newamerica.org/indianapolis/blog/indiana-avenue-ethnic-cleansing-black-indianapolis/.

8. Richard B. Pierce, Polite Protest: The Political Economy of Race in Indianapolis, 1920-1970, 12.

9. Pierce, Polite Protest, 80-82.

10. 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, 162.