Can white people in the USA be victims of racism?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Can white people in the USA be victims of racism?
Position1 of 2›: No, white people cannot be victims of racism
Argument‹4 of 4: Racism is white supremacy

White supremacy is a specific brand of racism that cannot be grouped into the same category as other types. Racism originates within this tradition. Therefore, the dictionary definition we choose to use is irrelevant. Racism describes a centuries-old belief in white domination. The same ideology that led to a thriving international slave trade, Jim Crow, the brutal murder of Emmett Till and thousands more murdered for the colour of their skin. White supremacy stands alone in its role in historical atrocities and present inequalities. Proponents include New York Times columnist Jamelle Boule and Time Political Correspondent Vera Bergengruen.

The argument

Proponents of this view argue that racism should be understood as a system of power rather than as individual prejudice, and they begin with the country's founding. The United States, they contend, was founded on white supremacy and on the belief that white people had to colonize and civilize the unknown, its people included. As the power structure currently exists in the US, white people are still the majority in positions of power, and there is a constant push from majority white groups, political and religious, to maintain this system for fear of being outnumbered by minorities. From the beginning of slavery laws to current issues regarding access to equal education, the white majority in the US has strived to maintain a dominant status as the power wielder and lawmaker. The continuity across that span is what the argument treats as decisive. If the same group has held the authority to make and enforce law from the slavery statutes through to the present distribution of educational opportunity, then the disadvantage in question is not a series of separate injuries but one arrangement maintained over time. Proponents point to enforcement as the clearest evidence of how that arrangement operates. White supremacists have been found to infiltrate the military and police forces with little to no repercussions, and incidents of domestic terrorism carried out by white people have rarely resulted in the equivalent show of force that is used on unarmed black people. This, they argue, is a clear example of America's desire to uphold white supremacy despite egregious offenses against the citizenry, while demonizing racial minorities who did little to nothing to deserve being murdered by law enforcement. On this definition racism is white supremacy, so white people cannot be its victims.

Premises

[P1]Proponents argue the United States was founded on white supremacy and that white people remain the majority in positions of power, a dominance actively maintained from slavery-era laws through present-day inequities in access to education. [P2] They point to white supremacists infiltrating the military and police with little repercussion, and to white domestic terrorism rarely drawing the force used against unarmed Black people, as evidence that racism is the structural power white people hold over minorities. [C] On this view racism is white supremacy — a system of power white people benefit from — so white people cannot be victims of racism.

Counter-arguments

Racism exists in every society in the world. If racism is defined as the oppression of one group over another on the basis of believed racial superiority, then racism is not exclusively the domain of white people or whiteness, but of any group in power who can oppress another group based on that power imbalance.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The historical claims are well documented, and what they establish is that racial hierarchy was built into American institutions and continues to shape outcomes. That is a claim about the distribution of power, and the conclusion needs a further one — that the word racism applies only to that distribution — for which no argument is given. [Rejecting P2] The examples are evidence of unequal treatment and unequal enforcement, both serious and both consistent with the ordinary definition of racism as adverse treatment on racial grounds. Nothing in them shows that individual acts against white people fall outside the term; they show that the systemic pattern runs in the other direction, which is a different claim. [Rejecting C] The conclusion defines racism as a system and then denies membership to those the system favours, which makes the position true by stipulation. It also carries the consequence the counter identifies — that racism could not exist in societies where the dominant group is not white — which most people advancing this position would not accept.

Proponents cited

Michael German
“In 2017, the FBI reported that white supremacists posed a “persistent threat of lethal violence” that has produced more fatalities than any other category of domestic terrorists since 2000. footnote3_m3uidfj3 Alarmingly, internal FBI policy documents have also warned agents assigned to domestic terrorism cases that the white supremacist and anti-government militia groups they investigate often have “active links” to law enforcement officials.”
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
“When [Trump] assures conservative evangelicals that we can all say, “Merry Christmas” now, he again equates the Christian faith with nostalgia for a white American past. Too many faith leaders continue to bless Trump’s race-baiting. They have used their public role as faith leaders to whitewash divide-and-conquer politics and policies that target immigrants, people of color and the poor.”