Not all supremacists look like the bad guys

Two terms jumped to the top of the most-searched at Merriam-Webster dictionary following the recent deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va.: white nationalist and white supremacist.

Nationalist and supremacist are also the first suggested results on Google, appearing as options when you type the word “white,” suggesting widespread interest in the topic.

Merriam’s word nerds go one step further and do a fine job of explaining the difference between the two.

White nationalist is defined as “one of a group of militant whites who espouse white supremacy and advocate enforced racial segregation,” while white supremacist is “a person who believes that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races.”

You’ll notice Merriam-Webster’s explanation makes no mention of white hoods, Confederate flags, guns, swastikas or khakis.

Yet, as with racism, society acknowledges supremacy only when it bears these overt markers, ratified by the white majority, whether in language, in clothing or in accessories.

The Charlottesville protesters who carried torches, wielded bats and shields and chanted Nazi slogans were easily labelled supremacists. They matched the image of the bad guys seen in history books.

The rest of the time, though, it remains the burden of those affected by its oppressive machinations to prove its existence, to convince people in power that it is not simply a sin of the past.

It was heartening in these polarized times that a large number of counter-protesters who turned up to push back were white. At the same time, the nationwide indignation indicated that racial supremacy, the principle that powers the continent, continues to be recognized only at a surface level.

Still, if you were one of the liberal-minded progressives who supported the counter-protesters, this basic conversation is worth having again: what does white supremacy without the white hoods look like?

Supremacy is the invisible structure with the visible outcome of placing one group in the centre of financial, political, judicial, corporate, academic, social and cultural power. In other words, it vests one group with supreme control over society.

Earlier this year, Malinda Smith, a political science professor at the University of Alberta, compiled a “diversity gap twit-torial” listing representational deficiencies in various sectors.

She demonstrated, with links for further reading, how we end up in Canada with a majority of police forces failing to reflect their communities, visible minorities and Indigenous people under-represented in the judiciary, corporate boards and the legal profession overwhelmingly white and male.

The sad reality is if something is to be deemed systemically discriminatory, it is accepted more easily when raised or backed up by a white person; your voice carries more weight than that of your racialized colleagues. When you don’t see workplace diversity as your battle, you abandon those in need of your help.

Put simply, it’s easy to condemn people who chant “white power.”

What are you doing to equalize it?