White supremacy's inferiority complex [View all]

[applegrove]

by Khaled Diab at al Jazeera

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/11/white-supremacy-racial-inferiority-complex-161129104031285.html

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But beyond the white privilege of the "old boy" network, there is the aspirational privilege of underprivileged whites. Like the patriarchy and the class system, race primarily serves the top dogs, not the lower classes. In fact, racial supremacy has been used since its invention to control the anger and frustration of ordinary and poor whites in two ways.

Firstly, although many whites have always been almost as economically disadvantaged as other "inferior" groups, their sense of belonging to the "superior" group helps distort their subordinate reality and absorb their frustrations.

Secondly, when these frustrations threaten to bubble over, this illusion of superiority helps to channel anger away from the real authors of white underprivilege towards softer targets, namely "inferior" ethnic, religious and racial groups.

This is what the fascists and Nazis in Europe expertly did in the first half of the 20th century, to devastating effect. Moreover, in its efforts to recapture an idealised and distorted "golden age" before "decay" set in, white supremacy bears striking similarities to supremacist Islamist and militant discourse.



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