My dad once said he didn’t want to get a puppy because all that happens is that you come to love the puppy and then you feel terrible when it dies.
I think that oversimplification about what it means to have a pet encapsulates the essence of the white supremacy mindset.
Adopting a puppy is more than just condemning yourself to grief after an inevitable loss. Adopting a puppy is one of the ways you can learn to have a healthy connection to another living thing.
You raise your puppy, you learn about it, you name it, you have a whole lifetime of experiences together. Even after the puppy is gone, you can recall those happy memories with fondness until the end of your days. Our life is all about creating connections with puppies, with friends, with spouses, and with children.
The toxic mind virus of white supremacy cannot survive unless you sever all your healthy connections. It is an ideology of torment and solitude. It is a belief system that encourages selfish individualism over community.
Unfortunately, this belief set has been fused with the fundamental ideology of what it means to be an American.
One characteristic of white supremacy is that it reduces all relationships down to a transactional level. You think only about how much it costs to feed a puppy and take it to the vet. But you never balance this deficit against what you gain from all the joy and love you get to experience.
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That’s one of the essential deceits that allows white supremacy to endure. You can’t put a number on the good things in life, so people can be tricked into believing they don’t really exist. By the time they realize they are miserable, they feel it’s too late to change.
Now, my dad wouldn’t have thought of himself as a white supremacist. Quite the opposite in fact. He thought of himself as a staunch defender of human rights. He thought of himself as a provider and a leader and a respected figure in the community.
But in truth, he was none of these things. In truth, he was an authoritarian who refused to recognize any facts that contradicted his self image.
That too is a characteristic of white supremacy. It’s a constant whisper of self-delusion that emphasizes ego over reason.
I grew up in a conservative rural community where lessons on white supremacy were a daily feature of the curriculum. Nobody acknowledged that we were being indoctrinated with a hate ideology, but that’s what was happening.
Our teachers were absolute authority figures that we had to obey without question. They, in turn, had to respect the principal. We were taught a whitewashed version of history. All the boys in the textbooks had strong bodies and square chins. All the girls wore dresses that went past their knees, and they turned their eyes away demurely.
In the United States of America, people are indoctrinated with white supremacy without any awareness that it is happening. They are forced to learn the ideology without their consent. It’s pushed upon them when they are young and innocent and powerless. White supremacy always targets children because they are the most vulnerable.
Children want to please their parents and their teachers, so they are the easiest to betray.
I recognize, too, that my father was a victim of this cruel indoctrination. Like me, he listened to these lessons and assumed this was simply the way of the world. We weren’t given any alternatives. There is no diversity in a curriculum that teaches white supremacy.
Somehow, I managed to break away from this worldview, but it wasn’t easy. In fact, I’ve been working on this project for 50 years, and I’m still uncovering ways the mindset of white supremacy has sabotaged me.
Although the ideology itself is basic to the point of being absurd, the indoctrination mechanism is astoundingly complex. Asking a person who has been infected with white supremacy to visualize integrity, is like asking a fish to visualize what it must be like to live on land.
You have literally never been exposed to the tools which could be used to form a decent society. But that just means you have to conceptualize them and forge them yourself.
It isn’t easy, but neither is life.
Growing up, I instinctively knew that abusive authoritarians were not worthy of respect, and I did everything I could to undermine them. I had a strong sense of justice, and I did not hesitate to stand up to the threats of my abusers when I knew I was right.
They labeled me as an iconoclast, a smart-ass, or the class clown. It was during my school days that I discovered humor is the best weapon to use against fascism. Authoritarians crumble when the whole class starts laughing at them. They meekly retreat to lick their wounds.
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I beat them back again and again. Even so, despite all my efforts, the assumptions of white supremacy were deeply embedded into my psyche. I was a good student, but I struggled at college. I didn’t have any issues understanding the content, but I couldn’t forge strong relationships.
Ultimately, that’s how white supremacy retains its power. It leaves us isolated, lonely, and desperate. Eventually, even the most defiant of the bright young kids find themselves returning to whatever miserable situation they managed to escape.
I escaped again and again and again. I failed again and again and again.
I read every book I could find. I studied hard. I moved abroad. I got married. I had kids.
Even after all of that, I still have bad habits to unlearn.
My wife is from South America, but getting married doesn’t mean you’re not a misogynist or a racist. Marriage gives you the opportunity to forge a strong relationship, but the white supremacy mind virus will work to undermine that too.
There’s a reason there are so many divorces in this country. Our people don’t have access to the messages they need to hear in order to succeed.
Little by little, I’ve been able to purge myself of the hate conditioning that was installed into my psyche against my will. Little by little, I was able to break down the walls that prevented me from having loving and fulfilling relationships with the people in my life.
Little by little…
But it takes a long time.
The first step is recognizing what you want out of life. That’s easy, because I think all people want the same things. We want to live lives of integrity. We want to earn the trust and affection of those that are closest to us. We want to set a good example for our children. We want to help the people around us, not hinder them.
White supremacy is nothing but a hindrance. It breeds conflict. It speaks with biting sarcasm. It drives people away and leaves you to fester with nothing but hate to keep you company.
You’d think this would be an easy mindset to give up. But try and talk yourself out of having a cold. Healing doesn’t work that way. It takes time, care, and dedication.
Your path will not look the same as mine. But in hearing about mine, it might give you some insight. If you stick around, I’ll help to identify the various characteristics of white supremacy. Once you start to see them, I trust you’ll be able to identify other characteristics for me. This is a collective effort. There are no geniuses. There are no superior people. We all come together to help each other. All our lives matter. We are one.
White supremacy targets children. If we equip our children with critical reason, compassion, and integrity, we can inoculate them against the dangers. We can give them a chance at a happier life.
But before we begin, let me offer a final warning. Some of the most toxic characteristics of white supremacy have been hidden within the beliefs and traditions you revere above all others. That should be obvious. Naturally the best place for evil to hide is where people don’t think to look.
Brace yourself. Even with that warning, it’s going to be a shock to your system when you see how deep the rot goes.
Congratulations for reading this far and for taking on this noble task. You’ve found a community now. You’ve done the hardest part which is recognizing a need to do better. Now all it takes is time and support, and you have both. Strength to you, and thank you for your courage and your kindness!
Note: Will Fullwood and I are working on a project where we compare stories about growing up while facing the pressures of white supremacy. Through this exercise, we hope to gain insight into how the mechanism of indoctrination targets the children of the United States. We might even combine this effort into a book, so please let me know if you’d support something like that! We need all the support we can get 😊!
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