Nicki Minaj, White Fragility and Me — Medium
White supremacy is a fascinating term. It’s come to represent extreme racial antipathy, the sort of overt racism practiced by the KKK and certain basketball team owners and presidential candidates. But at its core, white supremacy nothing more or less than the belief in the superiority of whiteness and the institutionalization, explicit or otherwise, of that superiority throughout society’s structures. And that doesn’t just mean the inherent superiority of white people. It also includes the superiority of white perspectives.
In moments like Grigoriadis/Minaj exchange or when these moments happen in real life right in front of us, we tend to take sides. In a standup bit, Trevor Noah describes the unique facial expression of a white person in America directly or indirectly accused of racism, how we twist and contort ourselves to try and not seem defensive while at the same time almost appearing to be on the verge of a seizure, not at any particular repulsion about racism in general but in reaction to the horror of such accusations made at us. And then we take sides, presumably to defend ourselves but in so doing, often further attack not only our accuser but the very idea that racial bias might exist at all. And where white supremacy comes into play is in putting an historical and structural thumb on our side of that argument — that there can only be one truth, about bias or anything else for that matter, and the truth belongs to white people. How can there be racial profiling by police if I’ve never experienced it? How can black people get followed around stores by mall cops, I’ve never seen that happen? How can racial discrimination be a real thing, it’s never happened to me? Well no shit it’s never happened to you, you’re white!It’s amazing we white people can think ourselves so persistently unique — in that all we have we deserve, that we’re not the beneficiaries of one drop of history or privilege — and at the same time believe our singular perspectives on the world to be universal. That, folks, is exceptional white privilege in every sense of the word.
Within this context, white fragility is the soft underbelly of white supremacy — that it’s implicitly more important to protect white people and their feelings than to address the reality of racial bias and structural racism. Take a moment to grasp the profound irony that a race which believes itself to be inherently, if unconsciously, superior simultaneously can’t handle being challenged on our identity and perspective. Of course, part of the privilege of whiteness is not having to square that circle nor defend our defensiveness in general — the burden of proof always falls on the “other.” And even then, the perspective of white supremacy means that “their” perspective can’t be right unless “ours” is wrong.