What’s in it for me? Learn about the real cost of white supremacy – and how you can fight it.
When far-right groups stormed the US capitol in November 2020, white supremacy took center stage.
Groups like the Proud Boys paraded around with Confederate flags, becoming the face of racism in the United States.
But the truth is, racism preceded the Proud Boys and the Trump presidency.
It’s intricately woven into the history of the United States, going right back to the very founding by European colonists who created racial hierarchies to justify slavery and centuries of racial discrimination.
In these blinks, you’ll learn how the racist history of the United States permeates every aspect of political and public life today.
You’ll discover how politicians intentionally stir up racist resentment in order to get white people to vote against their own economic interests.
Most importantly, you’ll learn how to fight for change.
By tackling white supremacy directly and targeting inequality, we can all reap the benefits of the solidarity dividend.
White Americans have been fooled into believing in a zero-sum paradigm.
In these blinks, you’ll find out why public pools across the US were filled with dirt in the 1950s; how Somali refugees saved an ailing industrial town in Maine; and what racism has to do with climate change.
Imagine a bucket full of crabs desperately trying to escape to freedom.
If the crabs climbed onto each other’s backs, they could easily scale the walls of the bucket.
But, instead, they keep pulling each other down in a blur of thrashing pincers, going absolutely nowhere.
In today’s America, many people find themselves in as desperate a situation as those crabs.
Trapped by economic insecurity, crumbling public facilities, and environmental crises, most Americans are under strain.
And, yet, the vast majority of white Americans voted for an unapologetically pro-rich, climate-change denier in the last election cycle, who’s demonstrated that he’ll only exacerbate these problems.
Why on earth would white people act against their own interests in this way?
Because they believe that gains to Black people come at a cost to them.
The key message here is: White Americans have been fooled into believing in a zero-sum paradigm.
Psychologists Maureen Craig and Jennifer Richeson have explored how racial resentment affects white people’s political views.
As part of a study, they presented respondents with newspaper articles about how racial minorities would reach the majority by 2042.
People who saw these changing demographics as a threat to their own status were much more likely to adopt conservative views on hot-button political issues like raising the minimum wage or banning fossil fuels.
Conservative politicians have understood this psychology for a long time.
They’re expert at evoking racial fears and resentment in their electorate.
For example, funding for benefits is framed as hand-outs for Black people who can’t be bothered to work.
Green energy bills are framed as forsaking white miners.
Objectively, fears that white people are under attack make no sense.
White households have, on average, 13 times as much wealth as Black households.
White people outnumber Black people in homeownership and are vastly overrepresented in government and high-status jobs.
So, why are they so scared of losing out?
To really understand the zero-sum paradigm, you need to trace a line right back to the founding of the US – to the European colonists who enslaved African people and stole indigenous land to found a new country.
They needed a moral rationale for their behavior.
So, they invented a racial hierarchy, with Black people at the bottom.
That hierarchy allowed them to justify slavery, which funded the creation of modern America.
White people literally made their fortunes on Black loss.
The idea of equality so unnerves white people because they’re scared that this zero-sum paradigm will be reversed, and they’ll be the ones losing out this time.
But, as you’ll see in the next blink, nothing could be further from the truth.
Racism has chronically eroded public services.
Picture the scene: a glistening public swimming pool that was once the pride of Montgomery, Alabama, is filled up with dirt so that no one can use it.
The reason?
In 1959, a court had ruled that the pool had to be desegregated and that as a public commodity it had to be open to all members of the public, including Black people.
Across the country, civil rights groups were gaining major wins in court cases challenging the legality of segregated public services.
But instead of allowing for integrated public pools, officials chose to destroy the public pool system entirely.
Some pools were leased to private clubs which stipulated whites-only membership.
Others were allowed to slowly deteriorate for lack of investment.
And yet others, like the pool in Montgomery, were closed down entirely.
When the “public” included Black people, white people stopped supporting public services.
The key message here is: Racism has chronically eroded public services.
Following the Great Depression in 1933, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt introduced the New Deal.
Under this program, the government underwrote affordable mortgages, strengthened job security, and supported the poor through extensive social programs.
Up until the 1950s, 70 percent of the white populace supported these public programs.
But there was a caveat: Black people were excluded almost every time, whether through explicit legal clauses or insidious policies like redlining.
This refers to maps created in the 1930s determining which areas were deemed risky by banks.
Areas with large numbers of Black residents were routinely marked as being risky.
This meant that most Black homebuyers were ineligible for state-subsidized New Deal mortgages.
New Deal policies created a thriving white middle class.
But when Black people fought for a piece of the pie during the civil rights protests of the 1960s, everything changed.
White support for an activist government dwindled to around 35 percent, where it remains today.
Why would white people suddenly turn against public programs that had benefited them for so long?
Because they were scared of what would happen if Black people also had access to the same opportunities.
White economic privilege has been around for so long that it’s completely invisible.
White wealth now appears to be the result of a superior work ethic or “bootstraps mentality,” rather than the result of generous – and discriminatory – public policies like the New Deal.
If Black people could be uplifted through the same public programs white people enjoyed, this economic hierarchy could be upended, and with it, the artificial racial hierarchy.
So instead of swimming together, white people drained the pools – to the detriment of everybody.
Racism is destructive to democracy in the United States.
When armed protestors laid siege to the US capitol to protest the results of the 2020 elections, many commentators lamented the unprecedented attacks on US democracy.
But these attacks aren’t new.
Democracy is, at heart, the idea that all citizens can have a say in how their country is run by voting in elections.
Yet, this ideal has always been threatened.
In the US, Black people were not considered to be citizens for a long time.
And, today, racist voter suppression laws attack democracy by making sure that hundreds of thousands of people are unable to vote.
The key message is: Racism is destructive to democracy in the United States.
From the start, the US constitution was designed to help wealthy white men have the most influence.
In the very first elections, only white male landowners were allowed to vote.
Even after the Fifteenth amendment made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, states found creative ways to suppress Black voters.
For example, Mississippi introduced poll taxes – a two-dollar fee for voting, roughly equivalent to 57 dollars today.
They also introduced other barriers like literacy tests, and assessments of “good character” before citizens were allowed to vote.
This effectively excluded most of the Black population.
But it also excluded a whole class of poor white people who didn’t have ready cash to pay the poll taxes.
These voter suppression tactics, adopted by many Southern states, were a death knell to democracy.
By 1944, poll tax states had only 18 percent voter participation, compared to a national average of 69 percent.
Unfortunately, these kinds of voter suppression tactics are no historical curiosity.
They exist today in a different form.
For example, all voters need to be registered, but voter registration laws are confusing and differ between states.
In red states like Texas, lawmakers have required that voters have specific photo IDs, stating that gun permits are acceptable while college IDs are not.
Seeing as gun-owners are 80 percent white, these laws are blatantly discriminatory and designed to create bureaucratic hurdles for Black voters.
Other states, like Ohio, have started systematically deregistering voters who didn’t vote in previous elections.
Voter suppression laws were designed with Black voters in mind, but the tactics of conservative politicians have expanded to also target young white voters.
Why else would North Carolina have eliminated a program that automatically registers high school students?
Or relocated polling sites, so they wouldn’t be near college campuses?
Voter suppression threatens the very heart of what a democracy is: the idea that everyone has a seat at the table.
Racial resentment undermines unions and pits workers against each other.
In 2017, workers at the Nissan car manufacturing plant in Canton, Mississippi, had the opportunity to vote on whether they wanted to join a union.
The potential benefits were enormous: joining a union meant they could fight collectively for better healthcare and retirement benefits, higher wages, and a safer workplace.
And, yet, in spite of years of all these benefits, white workers voted against starting a union, by a margin of 500 votes.
Why would these workers vote against their own interests?
Because they’d fallen for a very old trick.
They’d been led to believe that opportunity for Black workers would come at the cost of their own.
The key message here is: Racial resentment undermines unions and pits workers against each other.
These fears weren’t completely unfounded.
In fact, Nissan factory bosses had made sure that white workers who toed the line received beneficial treatment.
For example, while Black workers sweated over the dangerous assembly line, white workers did the cushier, safer jobs like inspecting cars before they left the factory floor.
Fighting for equal treatment would level the playing field.
But it would also dramatically improve working conditions and salary for everyone.
So why were white workers willing to throw away their chance for fundamentally better employment conditions in exchange for a few perks?
Unions haven’t always been so racially divided.
In fact, multiracial union organizing achieved the enormous gains we take for granted today, like the 40-hour workweek, and retirement benefits.
In the 1950s, one in three American workers belonged to a union.
But in the early 1960s, this figure began to drop and unions started to lose their bargaining power.
Not coincidentally, this coincided with the civil rights protests in the 1960s, which were endorsed by some of the most powerful unions.
Politicians and corporate lobbyists started using race politics to sow dissent in unions, portraying them as protecting lazy Black workers who simply don’t want to work hard.
Today, only one in 16 American workers belongs to a union.
While the example at Canton could make us very pessimistic about the possibilities for cross-racial organizing, another workers’ movement brings hope.
In 2012, fast food workers from all over New York started protesting for higher wages – the “Fight for 15.
” This movement puts racial unity at the center of its campaigns.
The results have been extraordinarily effective – cities across the country have voted to raise the minimum wage to $15.
Working together really does pay off.
You can’t fight climate change without fighting racism.
We’ve all seen the images of hurricanes crashing along the shores of the US, of wildfires consuming swathes of forests, and of emaciated polar bears sitting on melting ice caps.
Climate change is portrayed as having one main enemy: greedy corporations who bribe politicians to support the enormous fossil fuel industries.
We don’t usually think of racism as having much to do with political inaction on climate change.
But we’re missing an important part of the picture.
The key message here is: You can’t fight climate change without fighting racism.
It’s not coincidental that white opposition to climate change measures increased when Obama became president.
Conservative politicians branded Obama as being willing to sacrifice white jobs – like mining – to further his environmental agenda.
It became, once again, a zero-sum game.
The environment versus the economy, with racist undertones.
In fact, race is a key indicator of whether you’re willing to fight global warming.
Opinion polls have shown that less than 25 percent of the white people interviewed are concerned about climate change, in contrast to 70 percent of Black people.
White people who expressed racial resentment were much more likely also to be climate change denialists.
Almost without exception, the political and corporate leaders opposing climate change action are wealthy white men.
Even if they do believe in the impact of global warming, their zero-sum logic makes them think they can protect themselves from the fallout.
To some extent, that’s true.
Landfills and incinerators are positioned almost exclusively in Black neighborhoods – so-called “sacrifice zones.
” The health consequences of pollution therefore disproportionately affect Black people.
But here’s the thing: we all live on the same planet.
Toxins that seep into the earth and fill the sky can’t be neatly contained to the “sacrifice zone.
” Hurricanes shatter wealthy communities as well as poor ones.
When it comes to climate change, there is no zero-sum game.
There’s loss all-round.
And the only way to combat it is through multiracial organizing.
Initiatives like the Green New Deal represent powerful coalitions of activists of all races, united in opposing the fossil fuel industry.
The Standing Rock protests were led by Native American leaders and supported by a broad group of people.
These movements have been so powerful precisely because these groups have recognized the role of racial resentment in climate change, and taken proactive steps to fight it.
Segregation hurts all communities.
When you think of communities which are suffering from racial segregation, your mind probably goes to low-income neighborhoods full of people of color who are neglected by the government and can’t access good schools or social services.
The predominantly white suburbs, full of large houses and pristine gardens, may seem to be unscathed by the consequences of segregation.
And it’s true that white communities escape the police oppression and neglect endemic to Black neighborhoods.
But there are other costs to segregation that affect them too.
The key message here is: Segregation hurts all communities.
In the United States, segregation is no accident.
It’s been carefully designed over centuries.
The Homestead Act of 1862 offered free land stolen from Indigenous communities to American Citizens.
Black people, of course, didn’t qualify as citizens.
Over 46 million white descendants still benefit from the wealth gained from this land.
The Jim Crow laws that reigned from the late nineteenth century further entrenched this segregation through discriminatory housing laws and redlining.
While today it’s no longer legal to blatantly block Black people from buying in white areas, economic segregation is still enforced thanks to exclusive zoning laws.
These allow communities to ban the building of apartment blocks, and to stipulate how big homes should be.
Given the economic legacy of centuries of racist laws, this makes white neighborhoods economically unaffordable for most Black buyers.
But the ramifications don’t end there.
These laws have prevented the construction of affordable housing and driven prices up, creating a massive crisis in housing for all poor and middle-class Americans.
Segregated suburbs lead to segregated public schools.
This is harmful not only for children of color.
White children, too, suffer from the isolation and cultural homogeneity.
Studies have shown that white children develop better critical thinking and problem-solving skills at integrated schools.
What’s more, they develop the vital tool of cultural competency.
In an increasingly multicultural country – and world – learning to collaborate with people who look different to you is a vital skill.
But it’s one that increasingly isolated white people miss out on.
In fact, 75 percent of white people in the US report that their social circle is entirely white.
The potential value of integrated neighborhoods is almost without limit.
But to achieve that, we have to work actively to undo a racist geography centuries in the making.
We need targeted solutions to redress centuries of structural racism.
When the coronavirus spread with a vengeance in the United States in early 2020, people described the pandemic as being “color blind.
” Indeed, it seemed like no one could escape the reaches of the virus – rich or poor, politician or waitress.
But very soon it became clear that while the virus might be color blind in terms of who got infected, its victims weren’t all being affected in the same way.
Black and Latinx people were much more likely to die from the virus, due to working dangerous frontline jobs, living in places with more air pollution, and lacking medical insurance, among many other factors.
The key message here is: We need targeted solutions to redress centuries of structural racism.
People of color have died in disproportionate numbers thanks to a long legacy of discriminatory, racist policies.
This is the reality of life in the United States in the year 2020.
While everybody loses from racism, people of color lose the most.
So while cross-racial solidarity is important, it doesn’t mean that everyone should be treated the same.
White people who claim they don’t see race are actually putting on blinkers to the effects of structural racism.
The only way we can foster a strong, integrated society that works for everybody is by explicitly acknowledging the effects of racism and trying to redress the harm that’s been done.
How can we do that?
Tailor economic policies to combat racial inequality.
Take the example of homeownership.
Today, Black people still lag way behind white homeowners, thanks to redlining, and other discriminatory practices.
Leveling the playing field would go a long way to bridging the wealth gap.
But that won’t be achieved through “color blind” mortgage tax breaks that end up privileging the already wealthy.
Instead, you need policies that explicitly target inequality.
For example, instead of ignoring the shameful redlining maps of the 1930s, you can use them as a guide to show you which areas to focus on first in providing affordable mortgages and startup capital.
Zero-sum logic would declare that these interventions are wildly unfair to white people.
But, as we’ve seen, what benefits the most oppressed also benefits the rest.
Apart from the enormous social gains, there are enormous economic benefits.
If the US government explicitly targeted inequality through programs like this, it would mean that the economy could grow by as much as 8 trillion dollars by 2050, thanks to an expanded and revitalized middle class.
Integration and cross-racial organizing create enormous solidarity dividends.
The small city of Lewiston, in Maine, was becoming a ghost town in the 1990s.
Once a bustling industrial hub, the city was hollowed out when factories closed and jobs were sent overseas.
More and more people left in search of work elsewhere, creating a vicious circle.
Soon, most of the storefronts along the main street were vacant.
This gloomy story has a happy ending.
Today, Lewiston is a thriving city once more.
The factory jobs never returned, but an influx of immigration has meant that new entrepreneurs have moved into the storefronts, creating new jobs and leading to the creation of new schools.
The key message here is: Integration and cross-racial organizing create enormous solidarity dividends.
Thousands of immigrants from Somalia and other African countries now call Lewiston home.
If white Lewiston residents had embraced the zero-sum logic that said Black people’s gain can only come at their loss, they would have been very upset by this fact.
But instead, many long-time residents embraced the newcomers.
Events like the Unity Barbecue have become a meeting place for people of all backgrounds.
Multiracial activist groups have rallied thousands of people to fight for – and win – an expansion of Medicare in the state and reforms to combat the opioid crisis.
Lewiston residents have experienced an enormous solidarity dividend.
This shows that white people won’t lose when Black people gain.
In fact, everyone will benefit.
The enemy to economic uplift isn’t the African refugee, the Black single mother, or the Mexican worker harvesting your tomatoes.
The enemy is the very small elite which is colluding to strip everyone – Black and white – of their quality of life.
These are the corrupt officials polluting your air, the politicians deciding you don’t deserve to access good healthcare, the corporations paying starvation wages.
The 1 percent of the population which is now wealthier than the entire middle class.
This elite minority is heavily invested in sowing racial resentment and pitting us against each other.
It knows that solidarity across race lines is powerful, and therefore very dangerous.
But in spite of the barrage of racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric spouted by the likes of Fox News, more and more are seeing through the lies.
Multiracial coalitions are working to create environmental and economic policies that benefit the many, instead of the few.
They’re working towards a world full of glistening public pools, which are open to every child who wants a swim on a hot summer’s day.
The key message in these blinks: Tens of millions of Americans are suffering as a result of economic policies designed to gut public resources and funnel wealth towards the top 1 percent – a billionaire class that is as wealthy as the entire middle class combined.
Final summary
Yet white people continue to support politicians who favor billionaires over them.
We can’t understand this illogical behavior without understanding racial identity politics, and how conservative politicians fan the flames of racism for their own gain.
By confronting white supremacy, Americans of all races can unite to transform their country into a place of opportunity and prosperity.
Actionable Advice: Learn more about the fight for equality.
Want to learn more about grassroots organizations actively fighting racism and economic injustice?
Check out groups like Color of Change, the People’s Action Network, Faith in Action, or Integrated Schools.
Or look for local organizations in your area.
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