Hate Crimes Always Have A Logic: On The Oak Creek Gurudwara Shootings

Quite eloquent – though only in asides do you mention the other half of the damning equation of what Gloria Steinem has so brilliantly named “supremacy crimes” : that w/o exception all the perps are male. Does it go without saying?

That last paragraph is truth. I only hope that we can turn it in to power.

“Whites might actually have to start distancing themselves from white supremacy.”

This will never happen so long as they can keep making white supremacist crimes the actions of isolated individuals while they all benefit from the attitudes and structures that allow those crimes to happen in the first place.

As a middle-aged white male I can only hope that all my fellow white males get a chance to read this piece and understand it in the context I’m afraid none of us have personal experience with.

Men, yes. And mostly white. That doesn’t absolve the rest of us from responsibility. Like a time-traveling vampire, White Supremacy gets some of its power from its future victims. As the piece describes, hiding out as the “model minority” will only work for so long. As soon as White Supremacy decides to “out” you, all those years of accepting, ignoring, and fomenting hatred of non-whites is going to catch up with you. Similarly, the people in these racist white mens’ lives who allow them to create and maintain this lifestyle – their mothers, wives, daughters; the people who sell them guns, the people who sell them swastika flags and tattoo spider webs on their flabby arms – all of these people are supporting these antisocial white male agents. Horrible crimes like this are not just the result of some lone white racist guy. If you know that guy and don’t actively try to stop him, its on you too.

As a White person reading this, I have seen annals of white supremacy growing up-perhaps even unconsciously partook in them. White supremacy is a sickness found within my government and larger Culture. We have to realize we are sick and start fighting the impulses that exist in us. We have to look for narratives within our culture that do not condone racism, colonization or imperialism. It’s starting with me. It’s starting now.

Feminism, unfortunately, can and has been racist. Demonizing brown men in order to “rescue” brown women erases the agency of women in other countries. See here:

http://www.racialicious.com/2011/04/07/quoted-houria-bouteldja-on-white-women-and-the-privilege-of-solidarity/

Amazing how the media is going out of its way to give this killer the benefit of the doubt. In this article, they repeat several times that they don’t know, and may never know, whether his white supremacist views have anything to do with him walking into a Sikh temple and shooting at people:

http://news.yahoo.com/gunman-opened-fire-wisconsin-sikh-temple-exhorted-other-080012688.html

Excellent piece. Sadly, most white Americans who read this will say “WTF, I didn’t kill anybody, murder is wrong and sad,” and feel that that is the end of their obligation/involvement in such crimes.

This particular story has struck a deep chord in me. I’m a South Asian female and my boyfriend is in the US infantry. Any time I read about the connection between the army as an institution and racism I want to dismiss it in my mind because I love my boyfriend and I can’t see him harboring any of those racist feelings that caused this shooting. However, (shocker) it does exist and it is disturbing. A particular incident that stands out in my mind is when another soldier commented that I looked like a suicide bomber in my boyfriend’s gear. At first, I laughed it off but as I began to think about the ramifications of that comment I got angry. My boyfriend demanded an apology but I still haven’t received a genuine one. I don’t know how, as a peace and conflict studies major, I became wrapped up in this society of hate and how I came to defend it but I’m tired of watching what I say and laughing off ignorance. My boyfriend is proud of me for standing up against racism but the truth remains that in the army, he is one in a million. The issue of dismantling the foundations of hate in the army is a gargantuan task but it needs to be done. But to get rid of it all would rob my boyfriend and thousands of families of their livelihoods. My love of peace and my dependency on war is a war in itself that’s been haunting me.

thank you, for putting so eloquently into words, what has been gnawing at me for some time.

I got a few people angry at me over the past couple of days by saying there is a connection to mass shooters, who are overwhelmingly white male, and white male privilege. I think the anger comes from my saying this in relation to this latest mass shooting, because the shooter was a neo-Nazi and most whites are horrified to be associated in any way with neo-Nazis. I get that, as I’m white and nothing makes me lose my cool like being in the same room as a neo-Nazi whose mouth is moving with words coming out.

But I understand my rage at neo-Nazis because I have confronted how I as a white person, engage in and benefit from a culture that created them, a culture of white privilege. It’s everywhere, and it ipat virutally our every thought and action. I was just reading today an great article on Jezebel about gender and race in the Olympics that pointed out how femininity is often assumed to be white femininity. How many of us white people have ever thought about that? Asa white woman, I don’t really have to–I’m the default. The rest of you woman have to measure up to me. And if you don’t, I get to shun you and define you by how you’re not like me. And when there’s a whole lot of me’s doing that to a bunch of you’s, I get to define your life and your identity. That’s more than privilege–that’s power.

So white privilege begets white power, and white power begets whites who want to defend that power. Ergo, white privilege begets cults of white power, like the neo-Nazis. We whites don’t like that idea, that we in our passive participation in a culture that sustains white privilege may be helping sustain a culture that breeds extremists. No, that’s what Muslims and South Asians and South Americans and Africans and Iranians do. Not us good, morally superior, civilization-spreading white folks. We don’t breed extremism. We just were behind two World Wars, some of the bloodiest civil wars ever fought, some impressive attempts at genocide, racially-fueled colonialism on every continent save Antarctic, the atomic bomb, arms races like the Cold War, Christian fundamentalism…but not extremism. And certainly not militarized or pro-gun extremism that would lead to our soldiers or vets turning to neo-Nazism, right?

What’s more is white privilege is patriarchal, so it’s really all about white males and the authority they get for society for the sake of being male. White males who grow up getting messages that they are who matter grow up thinking they are suppose to be in power. And when they aren’t, when they are faced with the reality that as individuals, they’re as insignificant as anyone else, that’s pretty disconcerting and in less balanced minds, can lead to something pretty ugly. (Not surprisingly, white supremacist groups are overwhelmingly male, and like the Third Reich, typically revere an ideal of white masculinity that is central to their beliefs.) Like Hugo Schwyzer said in his article written after the Aurora shooting (http://jezebel.com/5928584/why-most-mass-murderers-are-privileged-white-men?popular=true):

“White men from prosperous families grow up with the expectation that our
voices will be heard. We expect politicians and professors to listen to
us and respond to our concerns. We expect public solutions to our
problems. And when we’re hurting, the discrepancy between what we’ve
been led to believe is our birthright and what we feel we’re receiving
in terms of attention can be bewildering and infuriating. Every
killer makes his pain another’s problem. But only those who’ve marinated
in privilege can conclude that their private pain is the entire world’s
problem with which to deal. This is why, while men of all races
and classes murder their intimate partners, it is privileged young white
dudes who are by far the likeliest to shoot up schools and movie
theaters.”

But of course it’s not limited to just young white dudes, and it’s not limited to schools or theaters–but also Holocaust museums, restaurants, college campuses, places of work and places of worship.

So, yes, I do think we white people need a come to jesus talk with ourselves and our culture and how it relates to cults of white (male) supremacy. I don’t expect it will be easy–as a feminist, I know how hard it is to get people to think about patriarchy, let alone the intersection of race and patriarchy. But it’s not like these white supremacist dudes just got these ideas about male authority and white power out of thin air, you know? And we white folks often don’t realize how white privilege lets us get away with thinking we’re the default white person who’s separate from the whites we disapproval of, as opposed to being on a spectrum of attitudes about being white in which we’re all related. As I said in response to the anger directed at me in the past couple days on this topic: When you see yourself as the default, it’s easy to compartmentalize others. When you see yourself on a spectrum, you see the relation.

These so called lone wolves and the hate groups that spawn them have been feeling especially emboldened since the 1990′s. That’s because the platform that David Duke used in his attempt to become governor of Louisiana-became the official platform of the Republican Party. We forget that the anti-gay and anti-abortion stance are also tenets of white supremacists. Journalist Russell Bellant tried to warn us with his 1991 book ” Old Nazis The New Right And the Republican Party.”

There is virtually no difference to what one may read on Stormfront to what one may read in the National Review. John Derbyshire was indicative of that. Since the election of Barack Obama, the Republican Party has displayed some of the most degrading, despicable acts of racism. The GOP revealed this year just how profoundly devoted they were to racist ideology. They permitted two white supremacist to speak at this years conservative convention, known as CPAC.

It’s all so very dangerous. Not only has Republican Party racism been propagated and encouraged by their media stooges (Fox News & Right-wing radio) the rest of the Mainstream Media has been complicit as well. Make no mistake about it, the Republican Party is the largest and most dangerous hate group in America. Let me say it again! The Republican Party is a hate group!

If you think the bigoted climate the Republicans have created in this country is not a factor in the violence- you are a fool. The Southern Law Poverty Center, NAACP, NOW, Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, along with all civil rights groups should join together and condemned and repudiate the Republican Party- for its bigotry. But most of all, those of us who believe in equality for all, should end this madness, before it’s too late.

White people! (I am white.) “We’re not ALL like that!” is a form of derailing and does NOTHING to fight white supremacy. Instead of “I’m oppressed too!”, we should take these critiques of white supremacy to our communities, to other white people. For more on this: http://racismschool.tumblr.com/post/23071081102/were-not-all-like-that

Walia said: “Whites might actually have to start distancing themselves from white supremacy.” Why are you choosing to interpret this as an attack on you?