The Myth of the Magical, All-Powerful White Man

Or Debunking the Fallacy of White Supremacy

I’ve come to understand that there are certain Black people who believe that white men have super powers, supposedly genetically-inherited, superior intellectual mind-control techniques that they use to oppress people of color around the globe. If I understand their assertions correctly, they believe that white men are capable of controlling the minds of brown people universally and conversely no one is able to get into their minds, no one is able to control them because everyone else is under their spell, hypnotized by their . . . whiteness I guess. Their whiteness is theoretically impenetrable and renders mere people of color helpless to combat their evil machinations. It seems that this small faction of Black people believe that white men possess genetic predisposition to rule the world and, oddly enough and quite contradictorily, they believe that it is the secret mission of white men to become Black, or at least commandeer Blackness because they feel jealous of it. I’m led to believe that they accomplish their mission with their superior intellect, secret societies, and agendas passed down from white brethren to white brethren to intricately know the minds of Black folks and to beat us at our own game. I’m here to say that NOTHING could be further from the truth.

Dr. Frances Cress Welsing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Cress_Welsing is the preeminent black scholar of these types of assertions. If she is not the originator of them, she certainly is the benchmark Black people use to quote and or paraphrase their “white supermen” theories. I think it should also be noted here that the vast and overwhelming majority of Black people believe completely differently than the above-mentioned theories. Sadly, most Black people believe in the fallacy of white supremacy but they don’t have a clue that they do. Most Black people say color doesn’t matter and sign on hook, line, and sinker for any cliché that white people cast at them. Most Black people wouldn’t know how to question the status quo if you paid them. That’s not because we are inherently stupid, it’s a byproduct of our enslavement where we were taught not to question white people or anything they tell us. People of color have to believe in the fallacy of white supremacy, lest you get those pesky minorities who try to buck the system and talk about racism and the inherent privileges white people have simply by virtue of their skin color.

First, let’s break it down and establish some truths in these fallacious white supremacist concepts. There is UNQUESTIONABLY a fallacy of white supremacy that dictates, rules, and poisons the entire world. It seems that the smallest population of people have been able to order, control, dominate, oppress, and manipulate the earth’s resources so that they control and “own” damn near everything. I say the fallacy of white supremacy implicitly because it is nothing more than illusion. It’s a fallacy that they are superior, it’s not a fallacy that they have been able to take their inflated belief in self and transform that into global domination. Does average white Joe or Sally believe that they are better than people of color? Yes, that’s how the game is perpetuated. Average white Joe or Sally has to believe that history started with their arrival on the planet, that white people are the originators of the arts and sciences. They have to believe that whites made every technological advancement. If they don’t sign on for the belief that whites were smarter, stronger, more capable, more civilized, more refined, more god-like than any other people, then the whole house of cards starts to fall. Average Joe and Sally White has to believe that there is something inherent about them that makes them better, that makes them more deserving of peace, justice, and liberty than anyone else on the planet. God is a white man thus white men have to be given more insight, more leadership ability, more spiritual stuff, right? The air white people breathe has to be more sacred, the land they live on has to be more consecrated, more blessed, more protected than anyone else’s land. Greece has to be the birthplace of the humanities, Columbus has to be the greatest explorer, Shakespeare has to be the best composer, Rocky has to be the best fighter, Jesus has to have blue eyes and blonde hair, and white people have to believe that to be true from the time they are born in order for the fallacy of white supremacy to thrive. White has to be right or the entire fallacy of white supremacy crumbles like a crunchy taco shell on Cinco de Mayo at an all you can eat Mexican buffet.

Ever watch the news right after some white person has gone on a killing spree and killed everyone they could? The neighbors all say the same thing. “Oh, he was so nice. You just don’t think something like that can happen in this neighborhood.” That, dear ladies and gentlemen, is the fallacy of white supremacy at work. It is the belief that crime only happens in Black/Latino neighborhoods. It’s the belief that Psycho Joe, as everyone in the neighborhood calls him, is a good ole boy regardless of the fact that he kills the neighborhood cats and drinks their blood because he has white blood. You see, whiteness equals good in this society. It’s what children are taught in school, it’s what’s reflected in the media, it’s the thread that’s woven into the very fabric of how the perceptions of how the world is viewed. White men who get to decide what is and what isn’t racist comes purely from the fallacy of white supremacy. It’s the notion that they don’t have to consider anyone else’s experience or perspective because what they see, and think, and believe has to be right.

Are there secret societies that have been formed to keep people of color oppressed? Yes. Do those men have super abilities, do they have access to mind control techniques that keep people of color hypnotized in order to exact their plans of global domination? Not exactly. What those secret societies posses are members who are egotistical and greedy and intent on keeping their illegitimate power. Their ego is born from this belief that white men are special, that they have rights and privileges no one else is deserving of. Their ego is what drives them to steal, rape, kill, and oppress. Their ego makes them narcissistic bastards who sit around and try to figure out ways to control the money and power so that it doesn’t get into the hands of brown, yellow, or (what’s left of) red people. It is nothing more than their ego that makes white men think that they have more inherent value than anyone else that has created this false sense of superiority. Their ego is greater than most white men but it’s certainly not genetic and it’s not indication that they want to be Black or have a need to oppress people because they feel insecure because they lack melanin.

From where did this warped sense of self originate? How did white people first come to believe that they had dominion over the colored people of the planet? I have no earthly idea. I can’t even begin to speculate. I do know that it has infected every country, every place white people have been for thousands of years. What I can do, however, is tell you how the fallacy of white supremacy has been able to flourish and metastasize in this country over the last 400 years. There’s no magic to it, there’s no genetics involved, there’s no secret societal agenda, it’s pure psychology. Understanding the mind and how it works holds the key to understanding how and why white people in this country have been able to dictate and dominate the minds of people of color for over four centuries.

Europeans saw the beautiful brown bodies of the indigenous people of the land that is now known as Africa and believed that they were inferior savages. They assumed they themselves were inherently superior and that is was their right to capture, kill, kidnap, enslave, and own those people. That belief, what they thought was truth and knowledge and undisputable fact, is what created the system of racial slavery in the US that has been unequaled in the world before or since. They believed that their skin was better, their hair was better, their features were more attractive; they believed that their language, arts, customs, religion, and practices had more validity than anything Africans could contribute. They had a deep-seated need to control and subjugate and veritably crush the wills of those people of color.

Africans who were enslaved, those who survived the middle passage were and transportation to the United States were emotionally, psychologically, spiritually healthy people. They were capable of making choices and decisions on their own, forming their own opinions, knowing what it was to be a human being outside of their enslavement. Slaves born in this country, those who never knew freedom, were never privileged enough to know anything other than what the system of slavery taught them. Slaves born into they system believed from birth that whites were superior, that Blacks were inferior, and that anything and everything that was good was white. Every black child born into slavery learned the same lessons, that white was right and that black was equivalent to evil.

Conversely, every white child born in this country was the beneficiary of being born in a system that told them that every thing about their life, their world, their entire existence that they were superior to anyone with color. (Rather, anything, because they didn’t see slaves as humans) The prevalence of racism and the systems, laws, and beliefs enacted during slavery set the stage for every white child to not only believe they were superior but it was validated (at least in their minds) because anything and everything of accomplishment was achieved by white people.

Fast forward and the beliefs held by the children of slave owners and the children of white people in general, whether they owned slaves or not, have been passed down from generation to generation. The key instruments in building a child’s self esteem are to shower them with praise and reinforce to them that they have an inherent worth. Having books, and TV shows and movies that show children people that look like them builds a sense of self. Reading children stories where all the heroes are white perpetuates the fallacy of white supremacy. Teaching children that God in heaven looks like them validates that white is the baseline, the standard by which everything else has to be measured. White children, never having read a book about Black people, never having heard a story of African accomplishment, never conceiving that anyone other than white people contributed anything to society will grow up with an inherited and false sense of superiority. White children never have to wait until the one night of the week when the “white shows” are on, they never have to wait for the white movie to come out. They have access to centuries of images of themselves that show them in a positive and healthy light. So while Blacks have inherited and passed down a slave mentality (even though we don’t acknowledge or admit it) whites have passed down a slave master mentality.

Slave master mentality is the mindset of white people who have never once had to question that people like them have been the masters of finance, industry, medicine and the arts. Slave master mentality is the mindset of people who have never once in their lives felt that their skin color was a liability, something that they had to denounce in order to be accepted. Slave master mentality is the belief systems passed down from generation to generation that allows white people to accept that the final authority, the last word, the law from on high is going to come from a person who looks like them. It’s that diseased sense of self, that inflated super ego that has created Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin and George W. Bush. It’s what lead Pat Buchanan to say, and moreover BELIEVE, that this country was built by white men. It’s that isolation from a world where people of color are equal, that inocular vision which creates the ego of white people who think that it’s okay to be racist, that they can say whatever they want, to whomever they want, without repercussion, without censure because they have a birthright to do so. The fallacy of white supremacy is perpetuated on the beliefs of white men who think that they have more right to money, power, and control than anyone else.

While I recognize and acknowledge that the pervasive and overwhelming mindset of white people in this society, EVEN those who claim to not have a racist bone in their body, is based on the fallacy of white supremacy, it is just that . . . a fallacy. White people are not truly superior, they have no super ability to understand the minds of people of color and mastermind techniques to keep us oppressed. What keeps us oppressed is our inability to understand and comprehend our history, our inability to be introspective and examine our dysfunctions and their origins, and our fear of admitting that we might be flawed (through no fault of our own mind you). It is far easier for us to worship a blonde haired, blue eyed Jesus than to change the belief that we’ve learned from childhood, passed down to us from our parents, and their parents and their parents before them that black is ugly and bad. What keeps them in power is their belief that they are superior. They believe it so they behave in ways that reflect their beliefs. They start wars, they dictate and manipulate, they work diligently to keep people of color from taking their power or from becoming equal because what’s been taught to them by their parents, what their great grandparents taught their grandparents is that white people have more value. Even if the message isn’t overt, even if the message doesn’t come from behind the percale softness of a poly-cotton white sheet, the result is the same. Any white child born in this society has been the beneficiary of an educational, medical, judicial, legal, and social system that has placed whiteness on a pedestal, as an entity deserving of worship and praise. When white people try to silence any discussion of racism, it’s because they believe that they have a right to say what’s valid, what’s true, what’s right in the world, that no other experience other than their own has weight. They see the world through white colored glasses. In that world, everything comes back to the fact that they have been validated, reinforced, and reminded every single solitary day of their lives that white people are great. They’ve never once had to live in a time or place where white people are not seen as the origin of everything good in the world.

So in order for white people, the few elites who do have global power and control, to remain in power, for them to maintain the status quo, people of color have to be complicit in their agenda. There has to be a population of Black people who believe that there are white men who possess super-human, secret Echelon infrastructure powers to control and dominate people of color. Once we accept that the fallacy of white supremacy is based on nothing more than the narcissistic, self-centered and childlike behaviors of men with inflated egos who have the same flaws, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities as everyone else, then and only then can we start restructuring a world where everyone is equal. Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney can no longer be secret society masterminds but they are little boys who were told over and over that the Lone Ranger was good and that the injuns were bad. They cease to be keepers of keys to sacred texts that were created in ancient times to mesmerize the people of color around the globe to goose step to their tune of supremacy. It is in truth and understanding that we see them as individuals who were told that God was a white man and that they were literally created in his image and likeness. Left unchecked, the ego can be a dangerous tool. Understanding that illusion is the key to our liberation. The fallacy of white supremacy can be dismantled and destroyed with knowledge of self, re-writing our stories to include people of color, and dismantling the notion that white men are somehow in possession of tools that will allow them to control us. Every human being has the ability within them to crush the inflated ego of self and shine the light of truth, justice, and peace on the shadows of injustice that have plagued the world.

Copyright 2009 Scottie Lowe of AfroerotiK