What is White Supremacy? by Elizabeth Martínez

 *Workshop Definition* White Supremacy is an
historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and
oppression of continents, nations, and peoples of color by white peoples
and nations of the European continent, for the purpose of maintaining and
defending a system of wealth, power, and privilege.
        I.  What does it mean to say it is a system?
        The most common mistake people make when they talk about racism is
to think it is a collection of prejudices and individual acts of
discrimination.  They do not see that it is a system, a web of
interlocking, reinforcing institutions:  economic, military, legal,
educational, religious, and cultural.  As a system, racism affects every
aspect of life in a country.
        By not seeing that racism is systemic (part of a system), people
often personalize or individualize racist acts.  For example, they will
reduce racist police behavior to "a few bad apples" who need to be
removed, rather than seeing it exists in police departments all over the
country and is basic to the society.  This mistake has real consequences:  
refusing to see police brutality as part of a system, and that the system
needs to be changed, means that the brutality will continue.
        The need to recognize racism as being systemic is one reason the
term White Supremacy has been more useful than the term racism. They refer
to the same problem but:
        A.  The purpose of racism is much clearer when we call it "white
supremacy."  Some people think of racism as just a matter of prejudice.  
"Supremacy" defines a power relationship.
        B.  Race is an unscientific term.  Although racism is a social
reality, it is based on a term which has no biological or other scientific
reality.
        C.  The term racism often leads to dead-end debates about whether
a particular remark or action by an individual white person was really
racist or not.  We will achieve a clearer understanding of racism if we
analyze how a certain action relates to the system of White Supremacy.
        D.  The term White Supremacy gives white people a clear choice of
supporting or opposing a system, rather than getting bogged down in claims
to be anti-racist (or not) in their personal behavior.
        II.  What does it mean to say White Supremacy is historically
based?
        Every nation has a creation myth, or origin myth, which is the
story people are taught of how the nation came into being.  Ours says the
United States began with Columbus's so-called "discovery" of America,
continued with settlement by brave Pilgrims, won its independence from
England with the American Revolution, and then expanded westward until it
became the enormous, rich country you see today.
        That is the origin myth.  It omits three key facts about the birth
and growth of the United States as a nation.  Those facts demonstrate that
White Supremacy is fundamental to the existence of this country.
        A. The United States is a nation state created by military
conquest in several stages.  The first stage was the European seizure of
the lands inhabited by indigenous peoples, which they called Turtle
Island.  Before the European invasion, there were between nine and
eighteen million indigenous people in North America.  By the end of the
Indian Wars, there were about 250,000 in what is now called the United
States, and about 123,000 in what is now Canada (source of these
population figures from the book _The State of Native America_ ed. by M.
Annette Jaimes, South End Press, 1992).  That process must be called
genocide, and it created the land base of this country.  The elimination
of indigenous peoples and seizure of their land was the first condition
for its existence.
        B.  The United States could not have developed economically as a
nation without enslaved African labor.  When agriculture and industry
began to grow in the colonial period, a tremendous labor shortage existed.  
Not enough white workers came from Europe and the European invaders could
not put indigenous peoples to work in sufficient numbers.  It was enslaved
Africans who provided the labor force that made the growth of the United
States possible.
        That growth peaked from about 1800 to 1860, the period called the
Market Revolution.  During this period, the United States changed from
being an agricultural/commercial economy to an industrial corporate
economy.  The development of banks, expansion of the credit system,
protective tariffs, and new transportation systems all helped make this
possible.  But the key to the Market Revolution was the export of cotton,
and this was made possible by slave labor.
        C.  The third major piece in the true story of the formation of
the United States as a nation was the take-over of half of Mexico by war
-- today's Southwest.  This enabled the U.S. to expand to the Pacific, and
thus open up huge trade with Asia -- markets for export, goods to import
and sell in the U.S.  It also opened to the U.S. vast mineral wealth in
Arizona, agricultural wealth in California, and vast new sources of cheap
labor to build railroads and develop the economy.
        The United States had already taken over the part of Mexico we
call Texas in 1836, then made it a state in 1845.  The following year, it
invaded Mexico and seized its territory under the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo.  A few years later, in 1853, the U.S. acquired a final chunk of
Arizona from Mexico by threatening to renew the war.  This completed the
territorial boundaries of what is now the United States.
        Those were the three foundation stones of the United States as a
nation.  One more key step was taken in 1898, with the takeover of the
Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam and Cuba by means of the Spanish-American
War.  Since then, all but Cuba have remained U.S. colonies or
neo-colonies, providing new sources of wealth and military power for the
United States.  The 1898 take-over completed the phase of direct conquest
and colonization, which had begun with the murderous theft of Native
American lands five centuries before.
        Many people in the United States hate to recognize these truths.  
They prefer the established origin myth.  They could be called the Premise
Keepers.
        III.  What does it mean to say that White Supremacy is a system of
exploitation?
        The roots of U.S. racism or White Supremacy lie in establishing
economic exploitation by the theft of resources and human labor, then
justifying that exploitation by institutionalizing the inferiority of its
victims.  The first application of White Supremacy or racism by the
EuroAmericans who control U.S. society was against indigenous peoples.  
Then came Blacks, originally as slaves and later as exploited waged labor.  
They were followed by Mexicans, who lost their means of survival when they
lost their land holdings, and also became wage-slaves.  Mexican labor
built the Southwest, along with Chinese, Filipino, Japanese and other
workers.
        In short, White Supremacy and economic power were born together.  
The United States is the first nation in the world to be born racist
(South Africa came later) and also the first to be born capitalist.  That
is not a coincidence.  In this country, as history shows, capitalism and
racism go hand in hand.
        IV.  Origins of Whiteness and White Supremacy as Concepts
        The first European settlers called themselves English, Irish,
German, French, Dutch, etc. -- not white.  Over half of those who came in
the early colonial period were servants.  By 1760 the population reached
about two million, of whom 400,000 were enslaved Africans.  An elite of
planters developed in the southern colonies.  In Virginia, for example, 50
rich white families held the reins of power but were vastly outnumbered by
non-whites.  In the Carolinas, 25,000 whites faced 40,000 Black slaves and
60,000 indigenous peoples in the area.  Class lines hardened as the
distinction between rich and poor became sharper.  The problem of control
loomed large and fear of revolt from below grew.
        There had been slave revolts from the beginning but elite whites
feared even more that discontented whites -- servants, tenant farmers, the
urban poor, the property-less, soldiers and sailors -- would join Black
slaves to overthrow the existing order. As early as 1663, indentured white
servants and Black slaves in Virginia had formed a conspiracy to rebel and
gain their freedom.  In 1676 came Bacon's Rebellion by white frontiersmen
and servants alongside Black slaves.  The rebellion shook up Virginia's
planter elite.  Many other rebellions followed, from South Carolina to New
York.  The main fear of elite whites everywhere was a class fear.
        Their solution:  divide and control.  Certain privileges were
given to white indentured servants.  They were allowed to join militias,
carry guns, acquire land, and have other legal rights not allowed to
slaves.  With these privileges they were legally declared white on the
basis of skin color and continental origin.  That made them "superior" to
Blacks (and Indians).  Thus whiteness was born as a racist concept to
prevent lower-class whites from joining people of color, especially
Blacks, against their class enemies.  The concept of whiteness became a
source of unity and strength for the vastly outnumbered Euroamericans --
as in South Africa, another settler nation.  Today, unity across color
lines remains the biggest threat in the eyes of a white ruling class.
        White Supremacy
        In the mid-1800s, new historical developments served to strengthen
the concept of whiteness and insitutionalize White Supremacy.  The
doctrine of Manifest Destiny, born at a time of aggressive western
expansion, said that the United States was destined by God to take over
other peoples and lands.  The term was first used in 1845 by the editor of
a popular journal, who affirmed "the right of our manifest destiny to
overspread and to possess the whole continent which providence has given
us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated
self-government."
        Since the time of Jefferson, the United States had had its eye on
expanding to the Pacific Ocean and establishing trade with Asia.  Others
in the ruling class came to want more slave states, for reasons of
political power, and this also required westward expansion.  Both goals
pointed to taking over part of Mexico.  The first step was Texas, which
was acquired for the United States by filling the territory with Anglos
who then declared a revolution from Mexico in 1836.  After failing to
purchase more Mexican territory, President James Polk created a pretext
for starting a war with the declared goal of expansion.  The notoriously
brutal, two-year war was justfied in the name of Manifest Destiny.
        Manifest Destiny is a profoundly racist concept.  For example, a
major force of opposition to gobbling up Mexico at the time came from
politicians saying "the degraded Mexican-Spanish" were unfit to become
part of the United States;  they were "a wretched people . . . mongrels."  
In a similar way, some influential whites who opposed slavery in those
years said Blacks should be removed from U.S. soil, to avoid
"contamination" by an inferior people (source of all this information is
the book _Manifest Destiny_ by Anders Stephanson, Hill & Wang, 1995).
        Earlier, Native Americans had been the target of white supremacist
beliefs which not only said they were dirty, heathen "savages," but
fundamentally inferior in their values. For example, they did not see land
as profitable real estate but as Our Mother.
        The doctrine of Manifest Destiny facilitated the geographic
extension and economic development of the United States while confirming
racist policies and practices.  It established White Supremacy more firmly
than ever as central to the U.S. definition of itself.  The arrogance of
asserting that God gave white people (primarily men) the right to dominate
everything around them still haunts our society and sustains its racist
oppression. *Elizabeth (Betita) Martínez, who wrote this presentation, has
taught Ethnic Studies and Women's Studies in the California State
University system part-time since 1989 and lectures around the country.  
She is the author of six books, including two on Chicano/a history.  She
has been an anti-racist activist since 1960.  Her best-known work is the
bilingual book _500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures_, used by
teachers, community groups, and youth since 1976.  It was recently made
into an educational video, in both English and Spanish versions.  She has
been a presentor at numerous sessions of the Challenging White Supremacy
Workshop for activists in San Francisco. For those of you who are
interested in additional work by
        Elizabeth Martínez:
 
_500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures/500 Años del Pueblo Chicano_ by
        Elizabeth Martínez can be purchased for: $16 (paperback) + $2.00
shipping (NM residents only, add $.89 tax) or $35 (hardback) + $3.50
shipping (NM residents only, add $1.95 tax). _¡Viva La Causa! 500 Years of
Chicano History_, the two-part educational
        documentary video based on Elizabeth Martínez's book _500 Years of
        Chicano History in Pictures_, can be purchased for: $35
(individuals) + $3.50 shipping (NM residents only, add $1.95 tax) or $50
(institutions) + $3.50 shipping (NM institutions only, add $2.78 tax). To
order, please send your name, address, description of the item(s) you are
ordering, and check or money order to:
 SouthWest Organizing Project, 211 10th Street, SW, Albuquerque, NM 87102.
     (505) 247-8832 phone, (505) 247-9972 fax.