For White People Who Don’t Know Who is Really in Charge (Or Who Think They Are)
By: Dr. Cynthia Alease Smith
Tags: White Supremacy, Bulletbybaldwin, Racism, Power, Economic Cast

For White People Who Don’t Know Who is Really in Charge (Or Who Think They Are)

If your ancestors came over to this Country, immigrated to America from some other shore after the Enslavement, then this essay is not for you unless you are genuinely interested in reading about how white supremacy in America is controlling the very people who believe that they actually have power in this country by virtue of the color of their skin.

You identify as white. You thereby identify with extremely powerful people who share your color and by proxy, you believe you have power. Let’s call these people with whom you identify, “Supreme White Power.” You believe you have the same kind of power as Supreme White Power because you enjoy a measure of benefits from Supreme White Power that allow you to live at a level of relative comfort in this country. One of the benefits is sharing in their ideology of supremacy over everything on the planet, although nothing could be further from the truth. It actually places you in a much more precarious position than it does Black people because you really believe you have the same amount of power as Supreme White Power. If you ever want to test your powerlessness against those who control your every move, try going up against “Supreme White Power” when your white body and mind is trying to gain more economic benefits, financial security or anything else other than Supreme White Power wants you to have.

The operative words for you to think critically about here are, “allow,” “measure of benefits” “relative” and “level.” Within the context of the benefits enjoyed by you, let’s now dissect these few words somewhat to help you to begin to think of what they mean in terms of your power or lack thereof. If you know what the word “allow” means, even on an elementary level, you know that in order to be allowed something, the entity doing the allowing must also have the ability to take what they have allowed away. This is the one word that effectively removes any power you might have thought you had up until now.

Measure of benefits suggests that what you do have in terms of anything has been scrutinized and measured as in the number of benefits you will or will not be allowed. Level also means a measure, in terms of how high in importance, grandeur, relevance and power those benefits can reach. Relative, within this context means in relation to others either similarly or not similarly situated. The benefits you have been afforded by Supreme White Power are what is known as economic comfort and individuality.

However, this economic comfort is limited and apportioned to you according to a measure of benefits that allow you to live at a level of relative comfort in this country. Your individuality means you can separate yourself as a collective in all other areas of your historical and existential activities and circumstances on this planet while retaining the ideology of Supreme White Power. Remember that because of what comes next.

Supreme White Power created the system that you live under. Yes. You are living under a system. While not the system of racism, it is a form of subjugation that was designed for you in this country in order to control the level of power you could ever attain. Supreme White Power has always maintained that true power in this country is relative to tangible expressions of wealth, measurable at the highest levels possible and which is derived through their own personal, economic and financial health, not yours.

Their level of this wealth and subsequent power is unattainable for anyone than the members of Supreme White Power. Therefore, the only real similarity you share with them is the color of their skin because the system they created for you will ensure that you will never be equal to them in any other way that they measure power. Furthermore, in much the same way that they use color to control both you and Black people who are living within the system of racism, this system was designed to control the vast majority of you economically and financially, which in turn, controls every aspect of your daily lives and virtually your entire existence. This system has no formal name, but it has its roots in monarchical colonialism and is a caste system based on a level measurement of economic apportionment. It is a “caste system.” Let’s call this the “Economic Class Caste.”

The vast majority of white people in this country live in two categories or levels of this Economic Class Caste system: the middle class and the lower middle class. You may fit into one of these groups or may, through the advent of lines of credit, credit cards, loans and other forms of artificial wealth, consider yourself a step above these class levels that over the years, saw lower middle, upper middle and upper classes making room for Blacks who began to move into the Economic Class Caste after the 1960s.

Supreme White Power allowed Black people inside of the Economic Class Caste that was designed originally for you and have found it in jeopardy of collapsing from time to time over the years. Therefore, they expanded the placeholders that would still ensure that you remained a step above Blacks economically. For example, too many Blacks in the middle? Take some completely out and put them into prison, or into the lower and lower middle classes. Those educated Blacks who remain in the middle? Move some middle class whites into the upper middle class and the upper middle class whites into the upper class. Still too big in the middle? Sacrifice some whites from the middle and put them into the lower middle, into jail, or into the white trash bin.

Those of you who live in the lower class level, the “white trash,” are the minority of your system and are ostracized from the rest of yourselves. You discard your trash if you are not on the inside of the trash bin, but if you are considered trash, you are probably the most angry of all of the classes and feel the worst effects of your powerlessness. You are at the bottom of the bottom rung and are at arms length of the very people you are supposed to be superior over.

You feel you lost your whiteness after the colorblind paradigm shift in post racial America stripped it and replaced it for the concept of “normal,” a state of being accepted to varying degrees by the other class levels. Your inability to escape your lower class status or move to the lower middle or middle classes further ostracized you, creating a fringe of animus that goes beyond the confederacy or whiteness.

The ideology of supremacy and your ability to embrace and express it has escaped you even as you identify with the color of Supreme White Power but feel powerless to express it without misplaced hate and violence. There are even fewer of you who live in the upper middle and upper classes, and those of you living there are receiving the top level of the measured, relative comfort allowed by Supreme White Power. This is because you are the ones who have been allowed to be in the representative positions of their power; you may be in the middle and at the top of business, local, state, or even national politics and some other selected, highly placed individuals who help to support and perpetuate the ideology of white supremacy and Supreme White Power.

Supreme White Power subjugates you and controls you. You are living in a system they created for you so they can maintain their power over you as people who identify with them on account of color and because you believe you are the same as they are.