Meta-Supremacy
I had an interesting interaction on Mastodon[1] that led me to a few thoughts about racial supremacy, racism, and how tricky it can be to navigate that quagmire.
Background
The original posts that started that interaction (and line of thoughts) were these:
@aurynn
the default position of all white people should be: – Recognising that you're racist – And that you don't necessarily know how you're racist – And listening to people who are impacted by racism on the ways you do racist things – And trying to change
@drV
@aurynn I would probably change that to 'of all people'. I was talking to someone a while ago who worked in a middle eastern refugee camp. She said there was a pecking order that strongly depended on how pale your skin was. I'm sure even the people at the top of that pillar experienced racism from white-white people, but that didn't stop them from being racist to people down the chain.
@aurynn Also related: the very first time I ever visited Auckland I was subjected to a long rant by an Indian taxi driver about how Māori were ruining the country.
@aurynn
@drV White supremacy infects everyone 😞
It's at this point that I interjected my first response and another brief round of exchanges followed:
@zdl
@aurynn @drV
It's not always white supremacy. In China there have been social orders based on skin colour since long before anybody in China met a white person.
It's a class thing here.
Dark skin meant (means!) you work out in the sun. You were a peasant farmer. The paler your skin was, the more likely it was you were of an elevated social class.
Skin whiteners (like mercury or arsenic products) have been in use for over a thousand years here as a result, among other ways to be paler.
@aurynn
@zdl @drV thanks for your insight here. I’m not very familiar with Chinese history and I can really only speak from a position of being an unwilling participant in white supremacy, and trying to help reduce that.
@zdl
@aurynn @drV It's a laudable goal, make no mistake! Just be aware that there is some meta-supremacy when you assume everything that pattern-matches on your culture's thoughts is the same thing or is caused by your culture.
I've had to gently explain (or sometimes not-so-gently when things got strident) to well-intentioned “white man's burden” types that not everything is about white history and white sensibility; that sometimes things happen that aren't from them. It ... often goes poorly.
So, and...?
Well, this is where I first used that term “meta-supremacy”, though the thoughts leading up to that term spilling out of me have been with me for years now as I watch interaction between my newly-adopted home and the outside world.
And it boils down to this in a nutshell: It's not all about white people.
Obvious white supremacy
On the repulsive side of the fence, naturally, we have the white power types, the “ZOMG THE WHEIT RAICE IS DYEING OWT!!!!1111oneoneoneeleventy!” crowd. The openly racist racial purists, racial separatists, and other scum of the Earth. These can be safely discounted beyond monitoring and watching for them to ensure they don't cause excessive damage to the world. On the same side, but not as repulsive, are the “not all” crowd. “Not all Chinese are soulless death-mongers who eat their children, no you're different.” That kind.
Inobvious white supremacy
But on the other side of the fence we also have colonial white supremacy. Look back at this:
@drV
@aurynn Also related: the very first time I ever visited Auckland I was subjected to a long rant by an Indian taxi driver about how Māori were ruining the country.
@aurynn
@drV White supremacy infects everyone 😞
See how @aurynn assumes that Indians ranting about the Māori are because of white supremacy? It's as if brown-skinned people lack all agency in the face of the White Juggernaut™. As if brown-skinned people can't be racists themselves and only become racists when toxic whiteness is introduced. Despite, as I pointed out for China at least, the Chinese preferring fair skin long before the first white guy was a thing in China. (And no, it wasn't frickin' Marco Polo! He'd painfully obviously never set foot inside China!)
Racism in general isn't white-only. Ask any Chinese people who are part of a minority. Ask Mongols in China. Or the Yi peoples. Or the Miao. Hell even among the Han there is racism. Ask the Hakka, a Han-ethnic minority.
So why does this matter?
Well, aside from the insulting assumption that only whites have agency and thus anything brown-skinned people do is a white infection, there's a darker side to this: because the causes of racism and prejudice are likely different in other cultures, even if they superficially look similar, the treatments required to mitigate and reverse them will also likely be different. If you walk into a situation like an Indian person moaning about Māori and assume that the Indian person is just reflecting the white supremacy s/he was raised under, you're going to make things worse in trying to address this, not better.
The bottom line is that, while the second batch have their hearts in the right place, they still have an outsized view of how important whites are in the grand scheme of things, seemingly unable to see anything in the world that isn't them. While they are (far!) more pleasant as people than the first batch of racialists and open supremacists, they still have a strong negative impact on the world when not held in check. (And as I hinted at in my own response above, not all of them like being held in check or corrected. @aurynn was one of the self-reflective kind and didn't seem to mind.)
OK, ZDL, you've convinced me so how do I fix this?
This one is easy, actually. If you're seeing something outside of your experience (like racism from the Chinese), ask and, importantly, listen before you react. The Chinese subtle (and not-so-subtle) “friendly” racism toward African blacks is not from the same source as American racism toward blacks. Assuming it comes from the same place will increase the problems, not reduce them.
Find out the reality before you try to address the problem. And if that reality is hard to find, perhaps consider giving this one a pass. You can't fight every battle that crosses your path. Hold your tongue, make a note to learn, and let that one instance go until you can effectively fight the problem.
But most of all, stop assuming “white concerns” and “white behaviours” have anything at all to do with whites. Racism is a human universal fuelled by the universal human condition of xenophobia. The world is a bigger, wider (and often scarier!) place than you can possibly imagine.
[1] A Twitter-alike that is a “federated” part of the “Fediverse” among other nerd-facing terms that is largely more thoughtful and friendly a place than any corporate social media is.