The Future is Another Country
American exclusion and criminalization of non-white people proffered a blueprint to Nazis, who engaged intimately with it in the hopes of carrying it out to its logical extent: an openly racist legal system that systematically drove out the so-called racially decrepit to foster a pure Aryan state.
While white supremacists seek confirmation of their personal racial inheritance, they are often confronted with what they regard as deeply discrediting information, such as mixed-race ancestry. This new type of genetic information creates what we call a genetic stigma—a significant gap between the person’s prior conception of themselves and the way others in the broader community perceive them.
Where do we find mainstream expression of white supremacy today? The answer emerges across the media and political landscape. One of the key markers of white supremacy is the anxiety of being replaced, pushed out in the new multicultural social order.
The comparison of Greensboro and Charlottesville makes it clear that white supremacy never left and white backlash continues to challenge equality as the country grasps for human rights.
The Activist History Review invites article proposals for our October issue, “The Road to Charlottesville.”
The Activist History Review