three pillars of white supremacy

September 6, 2007 at 1:29 am (anti-oppression, anti-racism, anti-sexism, Uncategorized, women of color)

andrea smith writes a great article called : heteropatriarchy and the three pillars of white supremacy:rethinking women of color organizing.

now i have noticed that often when i suggest articles which are geared toward women of color, anyone who does not take on that identity kind of shrugs it off. as if this kind of writing cannot be relevant to them. i disagree. and this article is one of the examples of why i disagree. andrea smith is one of the principal members of incite! and if you dont know incite! you should. google it.

what are the three pillars of white supremacy? slavery/capitalism, genocide/ colonialism, orientalism/ war.

slavery/capitalism:

it is the history of slavery in the us which sets the black/white dichotomy of racial analysis. and andrereminds us that the capitalist system ultimately commodifies all workers–ones own person becomes a commodity. and that part of racism is the hierachy of commodification–that some people have become more of a commodity, a thing, a product than others. blacks being on the bottom of the hierachy and whites on top. and other peoples are told to be grateful they are not like blacks, they are not on the bottom, they are not as much of a commodity as they could be.

so slavery–sharecropper–prison industrial complex. same thing. same community. different names.

but i have heard often in workshops that the black/white dichotomy disappears other racial groups. and this is true too. everything is not black and white.

genocide/colonialism: ‘this logic holds that indigenous peoples must disappear’ yeah, it is red too. i remember being in tuwani and a friend (white chick) says that in the states i am a settler. but i really resented her saying that. i resented it because my families native heritage is strong. and the reason that people do not consider us native is because it is in the white supremacy best interest to claim as many folk as black as possible (larger base of slave labor and thus larger capitalist base) but to claim as little folk as red as possible. this is because white supremacy want the land that the red folk have prior usage claim to. fewer red folk, fewer obstacles to the land.

tobecontinued…