Originally published on Medium back when we used to have a president.
It’s hard to argue with somebody when they say “Our society needs more solutions that are based on good old-fashioned common sense.” In fact, when somebody invokes the phrase “common sense” in an argument, you might find yourself scrambling to retain credibility.
People will look at you and mutter, “That kid is a darned fool.” Then they’ll treat you as if it’s nonsense to question the wisdom of the Old Farmer’s Almanac. “Why are you talking to me about Doppler radar son, the Old Farmer’s Almanac has been the trusted source of weather since 1792. That’s the book we’ve always consulted, and it’s against common sense to do anything different!”
This example illustrates the difference between common sense and unconscious bias. Unconscious biases are fundamental beliefs that influence us from the netherworld of our subconscious minds. These might be things we were raised to think, or they might be things that are implied by our community (even if there is no evidence that they are true).
Unconscious biases exist in a psychological blind spot, and it’s difficult to penetrate the defense mechanism in order to dismantle them. I often run into enormous resistance when I say, “Let’s think about things in a different way just to see what new possibilities present themselves.” A lot of what I write is designed to agitate unconscious bias, and quite often people will defend their unconscious bias by accusing me of having no common sense.
“What you’re saying isn’t factually accurate!”
I’ll get that even when I provide multiple legitimate sources. It’s simply easier for people to believe their unconscious bias than to do the work to become better human beings.
The point is that “common sense” is a nebulous term. It’s a sanitized phrase that people assume is good because nothing is defined. The problem arises when people use the term “common sense” to defend the oppressive belief systems that persist within our culture.
America is a great country!
Everyone in the USA is so conditioned to believe this country is great that they can’t even hear factual evidence that proves otherwise. This is by design. We love to wave our flags. We love to force our kids to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. We love to thump our chests and scream “USA! USA!”
All of this contributes to our unconscious bias.
It’s to the point where you can’t even say, “Gee, wouldn’t it be great if I didn’t have to go bankrupt because of medical bills because my daughter fell and broke her arm?”
People respond with, “Why do you hate America? You should be more grateful!”
That happens when you try to discuss the obscene cost of healthcare. When you get into the topic of racism, the conversation gets even more contentious.
Naturally, the fact that the USA is “great” means that we can’t have any problems, that’s against common sense. Often, people explain it to me like I’m dumb, “You see kid, America can’t be racist because America is great. Do you get it yet? Hello McFly! Hello!”
We even get politicians like Mike Pence reinforcing this absurd unconscious bias by denying the existence of racism in this country.
But it gets worse.
The reason we never make any progress
Our social discourse on the subject of institutionalized racism and white supremacy is deliberately sloppy. Most recently there have been well-documented attacks on the idea of teaching CRT. These attacks are just the tip of the iceberg.
The truth is that we’re nowhere near having the type of discussions about racism that our society needs in order to create a better world for our children. Our study of racism is in preschool, we need a doctorate program.
When you talk about racism in the United States, you frequently encounter the same assumptions:
* Human beings have always been racist
* There has always been slavery
* There has always been white supremacy
All of these things are considered “common sense” and none of them are accurate. The problem with common sense is that it often relies on oversimplifications and oversimplifications are very easy to manipulate.
The above statements are all wrong simply by the use of the word “always.” To say something has “always” been the case is too vast of a claim to defend. We could argue all of these statements are wrong simply due to the fact that we’ve lost data from so many civilizations.
This is why we need a more thoughtful academic approach to the topic of white supremacy. We have to limit ourselves to accurate statements and not make wide generalizations based on oversimplifications that are used to justify institutionalized oppression.
Is it fair to say the modern strain of white supremacy has its roots in the USA?
US citizens are reluctant to recognize any of the atrocities of this country. Actually, this is also true of people throughout the world who have been conditioned (unconscious bias) to admire the USA.
When it comes to the issue of racism, slavery, and white supremacy, people have a bad habit of blurring all the terms together and disregarding how the meaning of those terms has changed over time. It’s a sloppy way to think. In order to make any progress you must:
* Overcome unconscious bias
* Use properly defined terms
Quite often when I’m attempting to overcome my own unconscious bias, I start by proposing something that seems absolutely absurd to me at first blush. I’ll come up with a hypothesis and then test it. If no evidence supports the idea, I’ll dismiss it. In other cases, I change my thinking.
“Let’s see how my perspective changes when I look at history this way.”
But after you’ve done the heavy lifting, unconscious bias makes people resist your conclusions even when you provide evidence. They’re so used to settling into the comfortable rut of their unconscious bias that they’ll violently dismiss historical facts.
How the US influenced modern white supremacy
Again, the concept of white supremacy is more complicated than anyone is prepared to believe. This is a result of a deliberate effort to bury the atrocities of the US by saying things like, “We don’t want white people to feel bad about themselves.”
Like any philosophy that’s been kicked around for hundreds of years, white supremacy has manifested specializations. What does that mean? It means that the phrase “white supremacy” is too vague to be of much use.
Consider a person who says, “I’m a doctor.” That tells you basically nothing. Is she a heart specialist? Is she a brain specialist? Is she a cancer specialist? Is she a surgeon? Is she a general practitioner? You don’t know!
The same thing is true of somebody who says, “I’m a lawyer.” Do they specialize in estate planning? Do they specialize in divorce? Do they practice criminal law? You don’t know!
We should think of white supremacy like the flu. Every year there is a different strain of the flu. It’s a different specialization. We’re vulnerable to pandemics that originate in other parts of the world. Some forms of the flu are worse than others.
When I say, “The US is responsible for the specific strain of white supremacy that is currently inflicting the most damage on the world,” people respond with their “common sense” reactions of, “That’s ridiculous, white supremacy has always been around.”
You need to resist the impulse to dismiss assertions that go against your unconscious bias and do the work of digging deeper.
Tracing the American strain of white supremacy
It’s irrefutable that the American continent played a part in the development of race-based slavery. Prior to 1650, many people throughout the world were enslaved for being “non-Christian” and not because of their race. However, this became a “problem” for the oppressors when the slaves converted to Christianity and then petitioned for freedom.
All of this belongs in an academic study regarding the crimes of Christianity, but our unconscious bias makes us recoil from that idea by claiming it represents a “War on Christmas.”
Partus Sequitur Ventrem was passed in 1662 by the Virginia Colony to establish that children born of slaves would be considered slaves themselves. This was considered a “necessity” because so many plantation owners were raping their slaves. So, who does this crime belong to? Is it a colonizer crime or an American crime?
It’s ridiculous to think that this deplorable decision began in 1662 and then ended, unchanged in 1865 with the end of the Civil War. Race-based slavery evolved over those two hundred years.
Insisting it was static represents the oversimplified, unconscious bias that people tap into when they discuss racism and white supremacy. It’s what they’ve been taught to think so that white people don’t have to feel “guilty.”
The truth is that Partus Sequitur Ventrem is one element in a philosophy of evil that continues to plague the world. It has undergone many permutations over time. It’s gotten worse, decent people have fought against it, but it has never been completely eradicated.
It has been allowed to linger because people lean on their unconscious bias in order to defend it.
The Civil War is a critical moment in the history of white supremacy
Americans are trained to overlook the crimes of our country, and that leads us to disregard the evidence staring us right in the face. We vastly underestimate the impact the Civil War had and continues to have on human history.
Perhaps the biggest problem is that we let the traitors go unpunished. Those traitors then skipped off into the woods, made silly hats out of white fabric, deluded themselves into thinking they hadn’t really lost and gave birth to descendants who still wield considerable political power because of the wealth their families accrued through stolen labor.
The trajectory of American racism reached its philosophical nadir with the Cornerstone Speech. This document is a seminal work of evil. Alexander Stephens considered his speech a sort of mission statement for what the Confederacy would achieve. Obviously, the Confederacy failed, but there have been many deranged individuals since then who have tried to turn this corrupt vision into a reality.
That’s modern white supremacy.
As Americans, we can’t sit around chirping about our “greatness” and disregard the influence our nation has had on this global plague.
I contend that the Cornerstone Speech represents the birth of the worst strain of modern white supremacy. Again, this is a matter of putting concepts such as a racism, slavery, and white supremacy in historical context. These things are more complicated than your unconscious bias leads you to believe. They evolve over time, they change, they become more lethal.
When the dominant culture of evil was inconvenienced
Prior to the Civil War, there was no need for the philosophy of white supremacy other than as talking points to beat down abolitionists. Plantation owners weren’t talking about white supremacy like an abstract concept, they were occupied with imposing it upon a whole society. The philosophy of evil was busy running up debt and destroying the world because that’s the only thing white supremacy can accomplish.
We have to understand that the nature of the evil we face changed when the oppressors were toppled from their thrones at the end of the Civil War. In some ways, they became worse because they were no longer preoccupied with the practical reality of running society.
This is akin to how a challenger has an advantage over an incumbent because the incumbent can be blamed for all the problems of society.
The Civil War caused a major philosophical change. The end of the plantation era created a whole new contentious reality. The worst part is that we fumbled the ball during the reconstruction era, and the white supremacist ideology was allowed to take root and grow in strength.
What we’ve done up until now hasn’t worked
People want to say, “Well, it’s not accurate to say the US created white supremacy.” However, I contend that it’s irrefutable that the form of white supremacy we encounter in the modern world can be traced back to the Civil War. Furthermore, this strain of white supremacy has continued to evolve with the USA as its epicenter.
We need to overcome our unconscious bias and recognize the source of many of the world’s problems has a direct link to the American strain of white supremacy. Even today, despite all logic, there are an absurd number of people who are loyal to Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens rather than our modern, duly elected politicians.
I believe one way or another, all modern white supremacists are still fighting the Civil War. These are people who have made the Cornerstone Speech their life’s mission. They refuse to believe they’ve lost. We can’t walk around pretending like our society is innocent because it’s not. They’re going to constantly encroach until we do something about them.
So, if your unconscious bias makes you inclined to say, “Common sense says that white supremacy has always existed,” I think it’s time for a moment of reflection. We’ve tried insisting that America is great. Look where it has gotten us. You can’t buy a house. You can’t retire. You better pray your kids don’t get sick.
As far as I’m concerned, common sense says it’s long past time to give up on a strategy that has clearly failed.
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