Understanding Polite White Supremacy

Understanding Polite White Supremacy 

In The Subtle Linguistics of Polite White Supremacy (Brown, 2015), we learn about the early stages of polite white supremacy. We see it moving from overt, as when chattel slavery was the economic engine of the United States, to its more covert forms, as evidenced by whiteness dominating power roles while denying this power.

Image derived from an image found at www.uucsj.org

While the horizontal line across this pyramid depicting overt and covert white supremacy shifts over time, the illustration is critical to debunking the myth that only the KKK, the Proud Boys, or stated White Supremacists perpetuate the supremacy of whiteness.

Yawo Brown illustrates this code, sometimes as invisible as the air we breathe. yet much more violent. This code is perpetuated in our institutions across the United States. Brown defines the three ingredients of polite white supremacy: comfort, control, and confidentiality.

Leaders and teams are working to bring about liberation, justice, and racial equity. Seeing and understanding polite white supremacy is crucial to working for equitable outcomes by race and by other marginalizing factors.

We can’t work for liberation if we can’t see oppression.

Unless we are specifically working for liberation, we are perpetuating a hierarchical system based on race and other factors which place some people firmly in the margins and centering others, all the while claiming that we are not willing participants in its occurrence. 

Do you want to work for the liberation of all? Why? What does The Subtle Linguistics of Polite White Supremacy help you see plainly about the code that keeps a hierarchical system by race violent yet doggedly claiming it’s subtly? How do you see these codes play out in your organization’s policies, practices, or outcomes?