White Supremacy

White supremacy is the racist belief that White people (sometimes known as Caucasians) are superior to people of other races and should therefore hold a dominant position in society. Followers of White supremacy promote an ideology that describes the social, political, and economic domination of White people over all other races. As race is a social construct and different groups have differing definitions of the term, who is considered "White" and which racial or cultural groups are specifically targeted as "inferior" can vary, both geographically and over time. For example, in the nineteenth century, anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States meant that even some light-skinned people of European ancestry, such as Irish and Italian immigrants and Jewish people, were discriminated against by many White supremacists. Nevertheless, Whiteness is most widely associated with stereotypically northern European physical traits, particularly light skin; in turn, White supremacists most commonly discriminate against people of African, Indigenous American, or Asian ethnic heritage, among others.

White supremacist ideologies can be traced to European colonialism and the practice of slavery. Although most Western nations abolished slavery in the nineteenth century, culminating with the US Civil War (1861–65), racism remained deeply entrenched in society in the United States and elsewhere, with varying degrees of overtness and legal sanction. Internationally, White supremacist ideologies were a major factor in World War II (1939–45), as Nazi Germany promoted the pseudoscientific ideal of a White Aryan "race." Although Nazism faded over the next few decades, White supremacist ideologies continued to exist in various parts of the world, notably including among neo-Nazis groups and in South Africa under apartheid. A significant resurgence of White supremacy around the world was noted beginning in the late 2010s, which many scholars suggested was linked to nationalist backlash against globalization.

History of White Supremacy: Colonial Era

The foundation of White supremacy dates to the colonial era. During the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, White Europeans made their way across the Atlantic Ocean in search of new land to settle. When they reached destinations in the Americas, Africa, and Asia-Pacific, they found them populated with indigenous peoples. Looking to profit from the fertile land and its resources, the White settlers attempted to make these nonwhite peoples adopt their ways. Imperialist attitudes supported the notion that White European cultures were superior to the traditions of indigenous peoples. When native communities failed to cooperate, White settlers used violent measures to take control of the land.

White colonialists also sought to dehumanize peoples of color in order to justify economic exploitation through enslavement. The concept of race was little-used before the 1500s, and there is little evidence of early large-scale, systemic discrimination based on skin color. Similarly, slavery existed throughout human history, but was originally not primarily driven by perceived racial differences. This changed with the rise of the transatlantic slave trade in the sixteenth century. That trade was driven by economic pressure for cheap labor in the colonized Americas, and racism and White supremacy evolved largely to provide moral cover for the inhumane practice of slavery that provided such labor. Slavery and racism thus fed each other in a feedback loop, giving root to both overt and covert White supremacy—that is, both open hatred of people of color and more subtle systemic discrimination ingrained in the very fabric of society.

Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writings by political leaders and social scientists expanded on the idea of White supremacy as people began to look at the world in new ways. A number of philosophical thinkers believed it was the "white man's burden," as Rudyard Kipling termed it in the 1899 poem of the same title, to "civilize" other races. Some took it even further and held that a divine being had conferred White superiority. This belief led to the systematic exploitation of other races to promote White prosperity. Other theorists believed that science proved the biological and intellectual superiority of White people, a concept later termed "scientific racism." Evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin wrote in his book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) that the "civilized" race of Caucasians would more than likely exterminate the "savage races" of the world. While all these theories avoided the truth that race is a social construct that does not align with actual scientific data on genetic variation among humans, they nonetheless proved deeply influential.

Postcolonial Era

White supremacist ideologies were popular during the postcolonial period in the United States, particularly as justifications for the practice of slavery. Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860 on a Republican Party platform that had promised not to interfere with slavery in the Southern states but opposed its expansion to new states or territories, following a decade of rising tensions over the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and whether the institution of slavery should be extended to or outlawed in new US territories. At that point, eleven states seceded, beginning with South Carolina. The secession launched the US Civil War, in which the North (the US federal government, or the Union) was pitted against the South (the Confederate States of America, or the Confederacy). Though the Union prevailed and slavery was abolished, Black Americans continued to experience unfair treatment.

White settlers also decimated the Indigenous American population over the course of a few centuries. Many prominent White Americans supported the eradication of American Indians, arguing that the White race was entitled to the American continent. The nineteenth-century philosophy of manifest destiny, while not explicitly racial, did emphasize the supposed "special virtues" and "divine destiny" of an American people that was synonymous with whiteness, positing an inherent superiority over the original occupants of the land. Well-known and well-respected Americans were not afraid to voice their support of White supremacy, among them The Wizard of Oz (1900) author L. Frank Baum, who wrote editorials supporting the total annihilation of American Indians in the 1890s.

The Jim Crow laws, established shortly after the Civil War, mandated racial segregation in the southern United States through the 1960s. During this period, White supremacy found a great deal of support, particularly, though not exclusively, in the South. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a violent group of White supremacists, carried out aggressive acts primarily against African Americans throughout the postwar era and well into the twentieth century. The KKK, now considered a hate group, reemerged in the 1950s and continued to hold a small but steady membership for many decades after. Other White supremacist groups of that era included the Knights of the Camellia, the White League, and the Red Shirts.

Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa

Across the Atlantic Ocean, a different kind of White supremacy overtook the country of Germany in the early mid-twentieth century. The Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler in the 1930s and 1940s, advocated the superiority of a purported race of White people called Aryans. Aryans were considered a distinct, separate race, and the goal of the Nazi party was to maintain the "purity" of this race by forbidding procreation between Aryans and others, such as Jews. The Nazis practiced genocide by imprisoning and later killing millions of Jews and others—including Romani, gay and lesbian people, and those with physical disabilities—in concentration camps. Nazism came to an end when the Allied forces defeated the Germans in 1945. However, neo-Nazi and white-power "skinhead" organizations continue to promote the ideology of a superior Aryan race into the twenty-first century in multiple countries.

Just after the Nazis lost power, political parties in South Africa instituted a strict form of racial segregation between White and Black people known as apartheid. During this period in South African history, lasting from 1948 to 1994, the minority White population became the ruling class. Apartheid legislation classified people into racial groups, with White citizens enjoying the most freedom. Millions of nonwhite South Africans were treated cruelly during this time and were forced to relocate to segregated neighborhoods.

The law made it clear that White South Africans were of a higher social class than Black people. The judicial system was known to grant a nonwhite person "honorary White" status for various political reasons, conferring on the honorary White person most of the rights and privileges as White South Africans. Apartheid was abolished in the 1990s, but its supporters continued to jeopardize South African politics in the decades following.

Into the Twenty-First Century

The world saw a surge in White supremacist activity in the early twenty-first century. In addition to the KKK and neo-Nazis, neo-Confederate and White nationalist groups gained traction as well. Many analysts connected the international resurgence of White supremacy to growing resentment of globalism, itself driven by economic insecurity and the cultural changes of the information age. At the same time, the growth of digital communications, particularly the internet and social media, provided White supremacists with new opportunities to organize and spread their ideology.

In the United States specifically, researchers suggested there was considerable racist backlash to the 2008 election of Barack Obama, the first Black US president. This was amplified by the broader culture wars that had become inextricably linked with US politics. Many progressives, including those aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement, sought to broaden the definition of White supremacy beyond overt racism and into issues of systemic discrimination that they claimed underpinned much of society. This generated intense backlash from opponents of critical race theory, who felt accusations of racism were made too freely and were potentially stifling free and productive discourse. Meanwhile, many conservative politicians embraced what had previously been fringe right-wing views in order to energize their largely White voter base. This was exemplified by Donald Trump, who successfully ran for the US presidency in 2016 with a platform that was widely seen as using racist dog-whistle tactics. KKK members and other White supremacists openly supported Trump's rhetoric and policies, and Trump was often criticized for his reluctance to strongly disavow White supremacy and racial violence. In Europe, similar trends were seen amid widespread backlash against immigration, including substantial waves of migrants from the Middle East.

Along with racist, anti-immigrant, and anti-Semitic rhetoric, modern White supremacists often espoused Islamophobia and homophobia. Such groups employed the internet to recruit members, organize rallies and flash mobs, and spread subtle, encoded propaganda anonymously, without fear of reprisals such as public shaming or even employment termination. College and university campuses became common targets of propaganda. Extremist watchdog groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) noted a sharp rise in the number and influence of hate groups in the late 2010s and into the 2020s. Many of these were right-wing extremist groups, like the Proud Boys and supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, whose views could be complicated but often aligned with White nationalism and White supremacy.

Violence spiked as well. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation attributed forty-nine murders between 2000 and 2016 to White supremacists, for example, while the SPLC reported that White supremacists killed forty people in the US and Canada in 2018 alone. Among the most notable attacks in the 2010s were the 2015 murder of Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina; the 2017 killing of an antiracist counterprotester at a rightwing rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; and the 2018 mass shooting at a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, synagogue. The ideology also inspired a March 2019 shooting in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Many of the insurrectionists involved in the violent January 6, 2021, storming of the US Capitol were associated with White supremacist groups or views.

Some researchers have suggested that the global COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020 also boosted White supremacist groups. The sudden appearance of the highly contagious viral disease and strict government efforts to stop its spread created fertile ground for misinformation and resentment of authorities, often feeding into White nationalist propaganda. The fact that COVID-19 was first identified in China also led to a wave of anti-Asian racism and general xenophobia in the US and some other countries.

Bibliography

Beirich, Heidi. "The Year in Hate: Rage against Change." Intelligence Report, Spring 2019. Southern Poverty Law Center, www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2019/year-hate-rage-against-change. Accessed 24 May 2019.

Faul, Michelle. "What Life Was Like in South Africa during Apartheid." Business Insider, 9 Dec. 2013, www.businessinsider.com/what-life-was-like-in-south-africa-during-apartheid-2013-12. Accessed 11 Oct. 2017.

Fredrickson, George M. White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History. Oxford UP, 1981.

"Historical Foundations of Race." National Museum of African American History & Culture, Smithsonian, nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/historical-foundations-race. Accessed 6 Aug. 2021.

Jenkins, John Philip. "White Supremacy." Britannica, 11 Dec. 2024, www.britannica.com/topic/white-supremacy. Accessed 16 Dec. 2024.

Kohn, Marek. "Did Charles Darwin Believe in Racial Inequality?" The Independent, 29 Jan. 2009, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/did-charles-darwin-believe-in-racial-inequality-1519874.html. Accessed 11 Oct. 2017.

"L. Frank Baum's Editorials on the Sioux Nation." English and Comparative Literary Studies, U of Warwick, www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/second/en213/term1/l‗frank‗baum.pdf. Accessed 11 Oct. 2017.

Miller, Robert J. Native America, Discovered and Conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, and Manifest Destiny. Praeger Publishers, 2006.

"The Origins of White Supremacy." Civil War Era NC, North Carolina State U, cwnc.omeka.chass.ncsu.edu/exhibits/show/second-redemption/white-supremacy. Accessed 16 Dec. 2024.

Painter, Nell Irvin. "What Is Whiteness?" The New York Times, 20 June 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/opinion/sunday/what-is-whiteness.html. Accessed 23 Oct. 2017.

Powell, Michael. "'White Supremacy' Once Meant David Duke and the Klan. Now It Refers to Much More." The New York Times, 17 Oct. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/10/17/us/white-supremacy.html. Accessed 6 Aug. 2021.

Smith, Alex Duval. "Why F. W. de Klerk Let Nelson Mandela Out of Prison." The Guardian, 30 Jan. 2010, www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/31/nelson-mandela-de-klerk-apartheid. Accessed 11 Oct. 2017.

Stack, Liam. "Over 1,000 Hate Groups Are Now Active in United States, Civil Rights Group Says." The New York Times, 20 Feb. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/us/hate-groups-rise.html. Accessed 24 May 2019.

"Understanding the Scope and Profile of White Supremacy Hate in the US." PBS NewsHour, NewsHour Productions, 8 Aug. 2012, www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/social‗issues-july-dec12-hate‗08-08. Accessed 11 Oct. 2017.

"White Supremacy." Anti-Defamation League, www.adl.org/resources/glossary-terms/white-supremacy. Accessed 16 Dec. 2024.

"Whiteness." National Museum of African American History & Culture, Smithsonian, nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiteness. Accessed 16 Dec. 2024.

Winter, Jana. "FBI and DHS Warned of Growing Threat from White Supremacists Months Ago." Foreign Policy, 14 Aug. 2017, foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/14/fbi-and-dhs-warned-of-growing-threat-from-white-supremacists-months-ago. Accessed 24 May 2019.