White Supremacy in America: Mainstream Pathology

By John Gray, Los Angeles Harbor resident

White supremacy in America began when 20  Black Africans were unloaded at Virginia’s Jamestown in 1619. They were there as human chattel in perpetuity for the next 240 years.

Government sanctioned slavery ended in 1865 with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation to free America’s slaves. But more to a point, did white supremacy end? Well… just ask Emmett Till’s family or Ahmaud Aubery’s family.

The Civil War and the ratification of the 13th and 14th Amendments should have put an end to white supremacy. But that’s not what happened. Following the Civil War, the push for reconciliation was so strong that the war’s victors willingly lost sight of the reason the war was fought in the first place and refused to punish supporters of the institution of slavery and sedition, and Supreme Court rulings such as Plessy v. Ferguson preserved white supremacy into a generational curse.

This latest mass killing, resulting in ten dead and hundreds more mourning in Buffalo, New York is a case of more Black bodies being sacrificed at the altar of white supremacy. Same story. Different black church. Where’s the outrage? There’s been a few heartfelt prayers sent out to the survivors. But it feels like this shooting will disappear from the news, as proms and high school graduation photographs fill our social media feeds.

We know Republican politicians won’t speak out against white supremacy, god-be-damned the party of law and order. Where are all the Democrats on this issue? Where is the voice of all those Christian fundamentalists who cherish life so much? What about the news media? All are invited to stop playing mumblety-peg around the radicalization of white youth.

Sorry to sound so pessimistic, but unless there is a well-orchestrated protest by all of America’s people against white supremacy, Black bodies will continue to be sacrificed at the altar of white supremacy.

America… We are at a crossroads. Will racism and white supremacy continue to be America’s all-consuming and unsolvable problem? Is genocide America’s only way out of its own manufactured peculiar institution.

John Gray, San Pedro