The other night my step-son showed me this paper that his teacher had handed out in his junior college English class. I knew I had seen it somewhere before. After a quick Google search of “White Supremacy Pyramid,” I remembered where I had first seen it. It was in an article written in January by our very own Donn Marten for Downtrend.
This pyramid was first introduced as a “component of assistant professor Erin Stutelberg’s Diversity and the Self class,” at Salisbury University. It was met with great controversy as Mr. Marten’s article shows. But now it’s raised its ugly head again at a junior college in small town in Oregon. I’m withholding the name of the school and the name of the student who presented it to me to protect him from potential liberal backlash. As he quickly learned, there’s no future in arguing a conservative viewpoint in the liberal education system. He normally just starts “doodling and tunes out when this type of discussion begins.” But here is the “Pyramid of White Supremacy” which is just slightly different from the original version. I just wish I had been in that class when this was presented.
Now let’s take a good look at this pile of shit. I’m not going to take the whole thing apart log by log, because there’s just too many logs here to make it worth my time. The premise of this pyramid it is that the entire structure would collapse if the bricks (here it’s logs, as in said shit pile), at the bottom were removed. So what it’s saying is that something as innocuous as not challenging a racist joke will eventually lead to the top of the pyramid, which is lynching.
White Savior complex
Now how could that be racist?
. . . with the help in some contexts perceived to be self-serving.”
Oh. So white people only want to help non-whites because it makes them feel good about themselves, or as Teju Cole puts it in the same article, “The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.” There couldn’t possibly be any white person trying to help non-whites just because they want to. We’re all selfish and have hidden agendas.
Color Blindness
Uh oh, I guess I’m a white supremacist because this is how I’ve always looked at things. I don’t judge people strictly on the color of their skin. I judge by their actions; how they behave. I am or have been friends with Chinese, Iranians, blacks, Mexicans, Armenians, Japanese, etc. etc. But this chart and the Huffington Post thinks I’m a piece of shit because of it:
Colorblindness foists whiteness on everyone.
Colorblindness strips non-white people of their uniqueness.
Colorblindness suppresses critically important narratives of oppression.
Colorblindness assumes everyone has the same experience here in America.
Colorblindness promotes the idea that non-white races are inferior.
I don’t think any of that is remotely true but if you want to explore that drivel in depth, click the link. I don’t care what the “great pyramid” or HuffPo claims. I’m going to continue to judge people on a case by case basis, not by skin color.
“It’s just a joke!”
You know, sometimes it IS just a damned joke. If you can’t find humor in a joke, and are so sensitive that your’re going to cry racism over it, you need to lighten up . . . and no, that was not a racist remark. Haha. I had an old friend, a black man. He had a white wife. Every now and then she and I would tell him racist jokes. I mean, REALLY racist jokes. And you know what would happen? Laughter would ensue, from all sides. This was a black man who experienced ACTUAL RACISM as a child, growing up in North Carolina during the Jim Crow days. He wasn’t offended by our jokes and they certainly never led to me lynching him or anyone else as the pyramid would lead us to believe.
Claiming Reverse Racism
There is no such thing as “reverse racism.” There’s just racism. And any race can be guilty of it.
Merriam-Webster defines racism as – a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
Nowhere in that definition does it say racism is exclusively the property of whites. And contrary to what Sobantu Mzwakali says, “Black people can never be racist – we never had the tools or power to institutionalize racial oppression.” It doesn’t say anything about needing tools or power for it to occur. It’s a belief. Growing up in the Los Angeles area there were many neighborhoods that I could not venture into because I was white. Why? Because there was a good chance of being killed by blacks if you did. Because of my skin color. Explain to me how that’s not racist.
Not Challenging Racist Jokes
See “It’s just a joke” above and get over this. But here’s a few racist jokes that need challenging:
Q: Why shouldn’t white people go swimming?
A: Crackers get soggy when wet.
Q: What’s white and fourteen inches long?
A: Absolutely nothing!
Q: What’s the difference between a white man and a snake?
A: One is a evil, cold-blooded, venomous, slimy creature of Satan, and the other is a snake.
Q: How many white people does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None they’re all too busy smoking meth out of it.
Help! Help! Those jokes are racist and I need someone to defend me. Woe is me.
Tokenism
Tokenism is the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to be inclusive to members of minority groups, especially by recruiting a small number of people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of racial or sexual equality within a workforce.
I agree with this because I think people should be hired based on their ability to do the job not their race. But woe to the employer who finds that the most qualified candidates are white because now their workforce would definitely be labeled as racist. This is a no-win situation.
Racist Mascots
You mean like that horrific Redskins logo which was “proposed by Walter Wetzel, a former Blackfeet tribal chairman and prior president of the National Congress of American Indians?”
Or maybe this one? Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish:
It clearly shows that the Irish are a violent people with certain distinguishing facial features. So racist. But why isn’t anyone calling for it to be banned?
This one?
Blond haired, blue eyed, peoples who’s history has “compelling evidence that they were mass murderers, whose atrocities were the equivalent of those carried out by SS divisions invading Poland 75 years ago.” How dare you compare my ancestors to those scum! That’s racist!
Wait, this one!
Clearly a pirate. Pirates were sea-going criminals who were “bloodthirsty thieves, brutal rapists, and vicious murderers, concerned only with indulging their every whim and amassing as much wealth as possible, forever living at the expense of others.”
Dang. I don’t want my race associated with the likes of them! Racist! Yet no one is crying and throwing a fit over that one either.
Cultural Appropriation
Shouldn’t you should be flattered that another race sees something in your own that they admire and want to adopt? You know, like how so many black women like to straighten their hair and dye it blonde. Or that so many black men are playing professional basketball and football, sports that were invented by white men?
Oh, but blacks can’t be guilty of cultural appropriation because they define it as “a concept in sociology dealing with the adoption of the elements of a minority culture by members of the dominant culture.” So you want to remain separate as blacks and not integrate into the “great melting pot” of America? Would you prefer that the definitely racist Jim Crow laws be reinstated? Because you had that kind of separatism at one time. You didn’t like it, remember? You should rethink this one.
Bootstrap Theory
Yes, because minorities don’t have the white privilege to do such a thing. Except that they have done such things:
Frederick Douglass was born into slavery, separated from his mother at a young age, taught himself to read in secrecy, and was beaten severely when his attempts at learning were found out. He rebelled and finally escaped after numerous attempts, became the leader of the abolitionist movement gaining notoriety for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing.
Michelle Obama spoke about how the lives of both her father and President Obama’s grandmother showed that even if one starts out with little money, hard work and effort can lead to better lives for the next generation.
How about ex-Houston Oilers great and Hall of Famer Earl Campbell who “rose out of the ashes of poverty to become a force on the football field.”
What about Oprah Winfrey, Sean Combs, Nicki Minaj, Tyler Perry, Snoop Dog, Jay Z, Colin Powell, Mike Tyson, LeBron James, and countless other African-Americans who have achieved similar feats. They all succeeded via hard work and perseverance. It’s possible. It’s not racist.
“Don’t blame me. I never owned slaves.”
Yes, DON’T blame me because I never did. Nor has anyone else since June 19, 1865. It seems word got to Texas late that the slaves had been freed. Slavery was a terrible thing but it’s been over now for a long time. Get over it! No one alive today was ever a slave. It didn’t happen to you and I didn’t do it. You aren’t owed anything.
Expecting POC to teach white people
“Every time a white person asks me a question about racism, I tense up. I know fuckery is probably following because rarely does that person come from a place of sincerely wanting to learn about it. People of color don’t owe you any type of conversation about race. Keep in mind that some of us just don’t want to talk to you. We don’t trust you with our stories. We don’t trust you with our emotions. We don’t trust you with our truths.”
Then don’t expect white people to be able to fix what you see as the problem. But they’re only wanting do that because they’re in it to make themselves feel good as was stated in white savior complex.
Fearing POC
You can easily solve this. Stop commiting the majority of crimes and people won’t fear you.
English Only Initiatives
Is it so unreasonable to expect citizens of a country where the vast majority speaks English to learn that language? You should WANT to do it just for your own betterment. How do immigrants ever expect to succeed if they can’t even communicate with anyone? If I moved to another nation where a language other than English was spoken, I’d damn sure do the best I could to learn how to speak it, just for my own survival.
Anti-Immigration Policies
I’m all for immigration if those immigrants are LEGAL. Illegal aliens? Round them up and ship them out. They are criminals. Illegal immigration is illegal.
Police Brutality
Follow commands, don’t run, don’t resist and it rarely happens.
Confederate Flags
You’d better check yourselves on this. Even the liberal ADL isn’t so quick to call this a hate symbol. And you don’t want them on your asses.
Today, the use of the Confederate flag is often controversial. While a number of non-extremists still use the flag as a symbol of Southern heritage or pride, there is growing recognition, especially outside the South, that the symbol is offensive to many Americans. However, because of the continued use of the flag by non-extremists, one should not automatically assume that display of the flag is racist or white supremacist in nature. The symbol should only be judged in context.
Denial of White Privilege
Ah, that good old white privilege. You know, it seems the harder I work, the more privileged I get.
And watch this “POC,” Jay Fayza, tear the white privilege narrative to shreds.
Denial of Racism
Who’s denying the existence of racism? It exists. And it exists on all sides. If you don’t believe it exists, then you’re simply retarded.
MAGA
Bullshit, pure and simple. Show me any evidence of the racism in making America great again. There isn’t any. The liberal media tries and tries to invent it, but it really doesn’t exist. What this really is, is liberals hate the man who won the presidency under this slogan and every tactic they’ve tried to take him down has failed. And what do liberals always do when they’re losing an argument? Cry racist and strut around like they won.
Mass Incarceration
Never mind that blacks (13% of the population) committed 52% of the murders in America in 2016 and 54% of the robberies, along with other crimes well out of proportion to their population numbers, it’s not their fault. It’s the faulty racist justice system. But where’s the proof of that? I don’t see it.
So if you don’t want to be incarcerated, what are our options here? Turn you lose if you’re convicted? Immediate execution? I don’t think either of those are solutions, but I do have one that I feel is rather reasonable. Stop breaking the law!
Racial Profiling
See the crime stats above and get back to me afterwards.
School to prison pipeline
Behave yourselves in school and they won’t throw you out. Do you really believe that in this day and age of “everything is racist,” that a (likely) liberal educator is going to expel a minority student without just cause? Think about that long and hard.
Police Murdering POC
I did an article on this already. But let’s talk about what murder is. It is “The unlawful killing of another human being without justification or excuse.”
Yet CNN states that,
“Between 2005 and April 2017, 80 officers had been arrested on murder or manslaughter charges for on-duty shootings. During that 12-year span, 35% were convicted, while the rest were pending or not convicted.”
That’s what? 28 murders over 12 years? And that’s all people, not just “POCs.” Police are not MURDERING people of color at the genocidal rate you like to claim. All the other shootings were declared justifiable and therefore not murder.
Now we finally get into what the pyramid calls overt racism. And I have to say that most of these things are pretty overtly white supremacist. I’m going to take racial jokes out of there because we already covered that. But the rest looks right to me. The KKK, hate crimes (but those work both ways as well), burning crosses, Neo-Nazis, Swastikas, sure. All of those are pretty overtly racist. Lynching? Not necessarily. Plenty of whites have been lynched throughout history as well, so there’s that. And considering that the last time a black man was lynched was in 1981, I don’t think that’s really an issue we need to worry about anymore.
This leads us to the dreaded “N-Word.” We are not 5 years old here, so I’m just going to say it . . . nigger. To many here, I daresay the vast majority, that is not a word used to label an entire race. It’s a word used to describe the negative behavior of certain members of that race. Would I call the three black men who stole a car containing a six year old boy just hours before he was to graduate kindergarten and shot him to death niggers? Yes. Would I call the family of that same boy who was apparently raising him right, sending him to school, and caring for him any such thing? Absolutely not, and shame on me if I even thought it.
It’s in the same vein that I would call the white woman who killed her seven month old baby a filthy piece of white trash.
Mexicans twice tried to kill me. Afterwards I referred to those two as spics or beaners. Yet at the same time, two of my best friends are Mexicans. One’s a Vietnam Veteran who I wrote about here, the other is ex-Army Special Forces and a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy. Would I ever call either of them such things? Never. Do I hate the entire race because of the actions of two of its members tried to kill me? Obviously not. They are just words to express distaste for their actions.
I had two really good black friends for a while. One ended up smoking too much crack and stole the television and VCR that I lent him, left his wife in the middle of the night, and flew back to Atlanta, abandoning his wife and 2 year old child. A nigger. Did I ever call the black guy that was my best friend for several years and would have died for me nigger? Nope. Although when he was pleased with me, he’d often call me, “My nigga.” And again, I do not hate the entire race because of the actions of a few. I’m not a white supremacist simply because I might use racially charged words now and then.
I think the difference I’m trying to convey here is pretty well explained in a scene from the movie “Glory.” It was about the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment in the Civil War. It was composed of black soldiers. Denzel Washington played Trip, and Morgan Freeman was his sergeant, Rawlins. Trip was accusing Rawlins of selling out on his race . . .
Trip: Oh, I see, so the white man give you a couple a stripes, and suddenly you start hollerin’ and orderin’ everybody around, like you the massa himself! Nigger, you ain’t nothin’ but the white man’s dog!
[He starts to walk away, Rawlins stops him and slaps him]
Rawlins: And what are you? So full of hate you want to go out and fight everybody! Because you’ve been whipped and chased by hounds. Well that might not be living, but it sure as hell ain’t dying. And dying’s been what these white boys have been doing for going on three years now! Dying by the thousands! Dying for *you*, fool! I know, ’cause I dug the graves. And all this time I keep askin’ myself, when, O Lord, when it’s gonna be our time? Gonna come a time when we all gonna hafta ante up. Ante up and kick in like men. LIKE MEN! You watch who you call a nigger! If there’s any niggers around here, it’s YOU. Just a smart-mouthed, stupid-ass, swamp-runnin’ nigger! And if you not careful, that’s all you ever gonna be!
And therein lies the difference between being black and being “the N-Word.”
As I explained, the top of this pyramid is pretty overtly white supremacist. I’m not going to even try to explain those things away because they shouldn’t be explained away. But that bottom half of the pyramid is a bunch of invented horse dung. It’s time that the people of color who subscribe to this sort of thing to stop making excuses and feeling sorry for themselves. It’s time to “ante up and kick in like men.”
Originally published at Fleeting Freedom on April 29, 2018
