the real white supremacy

i just read this fabulous essay from the black commentator (a great source for radical, critical thinking, in case you haven't heard of it): "race, place and freedom: a katrina classroom memoir".

the author, paul street, a history prof at northern illinois university, frames the essay with a quote from black philosopher charles w. mills:

"one of the most important, though most subtle and elusive, aspects of white supremacy," notes mills, "is the barrier it erects to a fair hearing. It is not merely that people of color are trying to make a case for the economic and juridico-political injustice of their treatment; it is that they are additionally handicapped in doing so by having to operate within a white discursive field.

"the framework of debate is not neutral: it is biased by dominant white cognitive patterns of structured ignorance, an overt or hidden white normativity, so that at the basic factual level, many claims of people of color will just seem absurd, radically incongruent with the sanitized picture white people have of u.s. history. ... typically white and typically black realities - in terms of everyday experience with government bureaucracies, the police, and the job market, housing, and so forth - are simply not the same."

this is the white supremacy of 2006. white folk easily shrug that label -- i don't own a confederate flag, use the "n" word, pay dues to the kkk. but i do live in a society whose official history reflects people who look like me, whose government is ruled by people who look like me, and in which i am actively discouraged from encountering in meaningful ways people who don't look like me (through housing patterns, economic segregation, the labeling of discussions of race as "impolite" and "improper", etc.)

the "typically white reality" makes no room for "the typically black reality" -- that would be too hard, involve too much self-reflection, require too many changes. it would be messy. and painful. we don't realize the system is broken, because for us, in the short-term, anyway, the system seems to work pretty well.

i have to go to a meeting. more on this later.