White Superiority Production

*For purposes of this article, “white superiority”, or “white supremacist”, is also meant to include mysogyny, homophobia, sexism, bigotry, and white nationalism.  

I’m thinking about the men whose task it was to write the new laws for this country. From scratch. We were finally splitting from the British. Yay! We had the opportunity to create whatever we wanted. To make the rules. Have it our way.

It is also true that most of the founding fathers were slave owners. It’s hard to fathom, with today’s brain, how human beings could look at another human being as their “property”, and consider that normal. Slaves were thought of as less than human. Or, at the least, humans who were “less than” enough to justify treating this most inhumane way.

This was the societal baseline at the time of the founding. For some, it still is. 

But, it wasn’t like today, where some white people may walk around with a vague sense of their standing in the world’s pecking order (at the top, of course). No, in those days, the 1700’s, white people walked around with tangible “proof” of their superiority being acted out in front of them, with actual human beings used as props in their white superiority production.

It was baked in. Hard. 

For the founders to have included such blatant racism and sexism in our founding documents goes to the pervasive “world view” at the time and how deeply ingrained it must have been for so many people to have “gone along”. Because, make no mistake, they went along. 

When we learned about the founding in school, there was the mention of slavery, but not too close a look at just how racist and inhumane the slave owners, and all of society, actually were. We didn’t look at how utterly unfair and unjust it was during the founding. Or, every step of the way since. And still. 

Much of this country’s energy has been spent in this massive struggle between that overarching sense of white superiority* and those advocating for equal rights and protections for everyone. 

Since 1776, it’s been a perpetual game of catch up, with the white supremacists* doing everything they can to stamp on any hands trying to make their way up the ladder of “Liberty and Justice for All”.  

What we’re seeing today, from the Republican party, is an emboldenment of that centuries long belief that white people ARE superior. That electing a black president put EVERYTHING at risk (we are soooo lucky he didn’t take all our guns! whew!), and that we’re in desperate need of de-blackifying Obama’s presidency in order to get this country “right” again. 

A fake outrage has been cultivated for years on the right about everything Obama (and Clinton), and all that purposeful planning paid off in 2016. By the thiiiinnest of margins, but it paid off, such as it is. We’ve had time to see donnie in action now, to see exactly how he responds in times of stress, or when the country needs leadership, or healing. Or, how he represents us around the world.

He’s failed. Miserably. And, he’s failed to prove that he’s mentally capable of doing his job, to remember what he has said from one day to the next. Or, to even care. But, what he’s done very well is to give hope, give rise to the shrinking segment of society that still holds on to that long ago societal baseline where white people were “proved right” on a daily basis, with actual human beings used as props in their white superiority production.

The only true defense against this awakened, emboldened racist thinking is to vote. Get out and vote these racists out of office. That means voting out the president. Voting out Moscow Mitch. Voting out as many Republicans in the Senate as necessary to get control of all three branches of government once again.

This time, if we show up and vote, we won’t have to waste time reaching across the aisle. We know what they have to offer, and it’s nothing we need. Go alone and make the changes needed to level the playing field, to be fair to those on the bottom of the economic scale, instead of distributing our countries’ wealth upwards to the 1%. Again.

Vote Blue. No Matter Who.