Honestly, it'd be nice if white people could just stop for once, be inclusive, and spread some love and peace around. I'm an optimist, I believe that it will happen one day, but the fact that that day can't be tomorrow because of such bigotry and hatred can be a tad depressing. Anyways, this is an essay about white dominance in the United States of America, hope it makes you think. More tomorrow at eight AM as usual.
White Dominance by Mackinley Clevinger, March 10, 2016
The United States of America came into being quite recently relative to the rest of the world, the culture of its native population not as advanced technologically as that of Europe and many other countries that would soon invade and populate the large mass of land that would become the Americas. Because of how the country developed, a vast variety of cultures besides that of the people already living there entering into that space together, the America we know now is not an original culture like that of the many European countries or Asia. The United States of America’s culture is built from the people who created it, an artificial culture that has, since, grown into a unique and fascinating thing.
Its culture doesn’t belong to any one race of people, but exists more as the assemblage of many, influenced by the Native Americans, the Europeans that swarmed to that land, Asian immigrants, and the Africans that arrived there in large numbers due to the slavery that ran rampant for several centuries. America’s consideration as a melting-pot of culture is one that is well-earned, the amount of complexity and differentiation in culture you can find across the massive expanse of land proving true that many different influences came together to form a variety of cultures which are bundled together and called America. However, there has been an idea prevalent throughout all of this, no matter the time or the events, which many people allow to influence their actions in regards to anyone who does not belong to a certain racial class.
These findings show that America is, at the time of these studies being performed in 2014, predominantly of the white race and of the Christian belief system, and this truth shows quite prominently in how America acts towards people of a differing race or religious belief. The history of America is built on the subjugation, mistreatment, and, at times, the near wiping-out of an entire culture or race, and while the populace and the country has grown socially and morally since those times that aren’t, relatively, that far away from the present, the long-held and deep-set resentment and mistrust of anyone that is different is still painfully present in today’s culture, easily found in any part of America, whether geographically or socially.
To begin with, up until a few decades ago, there was a deep animosity held by many white people towards African Americans, a hate that is still alive in the hearts of many people despite the work of the Civil Rights Movement to bring equality of the races in the eyes of the law. Besides belligerence and bullying in social circles, there remains a bias in legal matters towards black people. Despite the population of African Americans being considerably lower than that of white people, the NAACP found that black people are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of white people, African Americans making up nearly half of the total population of over two million people in jail. Combined with the number of Hispanics in jail, that would make up fifty-eight percent despite being a staggeringly smaller population size than that of the number of white people in America.
This is not due to any kind of idea that these groups commit more crime than white people, however. Fourteen million white people have admitted to illegal drug use, while approximately three million black people have done the same, and yet despite the fact that white people commit this crime five times as often as black people, African Americans are incarcerated for drug offenses at ten times the rate of white people. This kind of racial bias and unfair treatment between races extends beyond matters of the judiciary; the unemployment rates for African Americans is double that of white people at any age according to the United States Department of Labor in January of 2016, nine percent of black people being unemployed versus only four percent among white people.
This kind of racism and bias stem from America’s long history with African Americans, the presence of many current-day black people stemming from their ancestors being enslaved for much of America’s history, until it came to an end in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation and then a few more years of fighting in the American Civil War. There was a considerable amount of resentment held by the Confederates before and after that war, which was directed towards the North as well as towards the focus of that war, the black slaves. After they were legally freed, they were held to be second-class citizens both socially and by law until the aforementioned Civil Right Movement of the mid to late nineteen-hundreds that finally won equality in the eyes of the law, but not in the minds of many Americans who refused to move on socially. Unsurprisingly, many of these Americans who have not moved on are the largest demographic making up America, white Christians, which gives them considerable power socially and legally to make life difficult for African Americans.
Much of America’s, and the world’s, history stems from the same kind of conflict and disagreement seen in the Civil War that led to America’s mistreatment of black people for so long, and these conflicts typically took place between people of varying religious belief or differing racial background. Christianity and non-Christian beliefs have had conflicts all throughout history; in fact, these conflicts are basically what most European history is, and as seen by America resenting African Americans after the Civil War, we as a species are quite capable of holding a grudge. America was founded and populated largely by Europeans, so their culture is the backbone of American culture today, giving them an imperialistic nature alongside mistrust of non-Christian belief systems. Recent actions by extremist groups in events quite well-publicized and much used for political fear-mongering have demonized the Islamic faith especially, breeding incredible levels of mistrust for Muslims in today’s society.
This mistrust for Muslims is so great that the mere knowledge that someone is Muslim leads to them being escorted off of planes, attacked and, at times, even killed in streets, and having their places of worship burnt to the ground. These are not events that happened in the nineteen-hundreds that have toned down in time, these are events that are happening in the year 2016 every week, because the dominant social group of the United States of America feels threatened by the Muslim community due to extremist action that has taken many American lives and been the center of recent militaristic actions by the United States in Syria and other countries in that region. They’re scared, and they’re lashing out, trying to raise barriers of fear between themselves and anyone who isn’t like them, blinding themselves to the fact that these extremists are targeting everyone, especially the very social group that the white population of America has become scared of.
The culture of Muslims in America is becoming one of fear, not for the extremist groups that are targeting them, but for their neighbors who are lashing out in fear. Fear that because they are different, that they don’t believe the same things or look the same as the white Christians that make up most of America, they are going to be targeted and further demonized, that they are not going to be safe in their own homes any longer and may need to leave the country that their family had lived in for generations because, suddenly, they were no longer American to the majority of Americans. The fear and hate towards Islam exists not because America was attacked and hurt, but because they were hurt by someone different than what they consider themselves to be.
There is a hypocrisy in the outcry of America towards the few isolated cases of extremist action attributed to the Islamic faith, in that it’s an obsession over the smaller issue if you’re going to look at causes for mass death on American soil. It’s obsessed over because they can lay the blame on someone who isn’t themselves, which is why mass shootings performed by white males, the largest demographic in America, have been ignored and allowed to continue on while the entire nation goes into a frenzy at the mere thought of an Islamic terrorist attacking. From 2001 to 2013, the number of gun deaths within America is a staggering 406, 496, a number including homicide, suicide, and accidental death. In that same span of time, including overseas and terrestrial acts of terrorism, only 3,380 people have died, the majority of that value coming from one day now fifteen years ago, the fall of the World Trade Centers. The racial demographic that committed the most of that over four-hundred-thousand gun-related deaths weren’t African Americans or Muslims, but white people, and yet a relatively minute demographic is held to be the greatest threat to the lives of Americans because of an even smaller grouping that does not in any way represent the will or wishes of that religious grouping, just as Christianity is not upheld in its beliefs by these gun-toting lunatics that are prevalent in society.
The culture that has formed in America today is dominated by white people and their flawed and bigoted view on the people around them and the rest of the world. The bias and racism that moves the largest demographic of the United States of America has allowed for political policy and social actions that decry and damage the status and lives of anyone not considered by their peers to be white and of the Christian faith to take hold and make life harder for everyone in the fear-driven quest to protect themselves from a non-existent threat. Terrorists are bad, no one denies that, but Muslims are not terrorists. The Islamic faith does not breed terrorists that want the downfall of your way of life, the actions of a country that doesn’t understand the consequences of their actions in regard to foreign countries has created that group, and the actions of the white population is creating a society that doesn’t allow for anyone that is different to coexist, both in public policy and in how social interaction assumes them to be dangerous, treating them as a threat for no reason beyond biased fear.
America does not belong to the white people, nor to the Christian faith. It doesn’t belong to any one race or religion; no demographic has or should have control of the vast body of government that leads the world in many regards, especially in military power. America is the sum of its many parts, cultures, and peoples, and the resentment that is building from past conflicts and a misunderstanding of basic concepts regarding religious ideology and extremist groups is putting the country on a course towards fully demonizing anyone that is not its chief demographic, deporting anyone that is not of that ilk, and holding a violent foreign policy towards the countries that receive and harbor those races and religions. The unfair treatment of its people based on the color of their skin, incarcerating certain groups more than others and not treating them the same in every other walk of life needs to come to an end, because it is, plain and simple, corrupt and wrong. There is no rational argument for doing these things, and the white population of America needs to realize the power they hold in that country and use it more responsibly for the betterment of themselves and their brethren that share the land they live in.