White Supremacy Isn't a Threat to Black Folks

Last night I got into it again on Twitter. Maybe you’re thinking, “Michael, you fool!” To which I would simply say, “Yes.”

Here’s what happened. A guy I follow named Zeek Arkham posted the following:

Zeek is an African-American police officer who hosts a pro-gun podcast, on which I recently appeared to defend my position that the Second Amendment should be repealed.

Stupidly – and I really do mean stupidly – because I should have thought my response out better than I did, I fired back:

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Michael, you fool!

My larger point was correct but the framing was dumb as hell because it instantly put me in a position where I had to defend my assertion that Jewish people - and ME specifically - are targets of white supremacists. The truth is, I’m not personally worried about my safety but I’m definitely worried about the Jewish community as a whole since, you know…

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My hasty response derailed the larger, and more important conversation of whether or not white supremacy is a growing problem in the United States, and around the world – WHICH IT IS.

So instead of having that conversation, I spent most of my time pulling up studies about the growing instances of antisemitic attacks, physical and otherwise. Predictably the response was that all of my sources were discredited. My sources were the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the White House, the New York Times, PBS, the ADL, SPLC, and others.

Instead of continuing to rehash that argument, I want to go back and respond to Zeek’s argument again, this time with a little more dispassion:

“I truly believe the overwhelming majority of us don’t care who the other person is or what they look like.”

Disagree.

I believe most of us would like to think of ourselves this way, but all of us make snap judgments about other people based on their appearance. For example, I am likely to form an instant judgment about you if you parade around wearing a red baseball hat with the words “Make America Great Again.” That judgment will be negative. Does it mean that we can’t get along? Of course not. But I am going to be incredibly wary dealing with you, and I should be. Because you’re an idiot.

Moreover, most of us want to be judged based on our appearance. The reason we wear certain clothing or hairstyles or have tattoos or piercings is because we are trying to send a message to other people. The message might be an invitation or a warning or a way of communicating with other people who share our values. Some aspects of our appearance, like skin color, or the fact that I am very handsome, may be immutable, but it would be naive to say that we don’t make “care” what other people look like. We obviously do.

Very handsome

Disagree. This point is anodyne to the point of meaninglessness. But it points to, I think, an important point of distinction between two different ways people have of looking at the world. Some believe that there really is such a thing as a “good person” or a “bad person.” I don’t.

I think people do good things and bad things because people are not moral transistors. We are complex beings who behave in complex ways. Moreover, your “good” may be my “bad,” such as in the case of, say, storming the United States Capitol. (Bad, in my opinion.)

“White supremacy isn’t a threat to Black folks. Black folks aren’t a threat to White folks.”

Setting aside the obvious absurdity of the first point for a second, I think the framing of this sentence is really interesting. He’s structuring his point to say that white supremacy doesn’t threaten black people, but then contrasts it by saying that black people don’t threaten whites. In other words, he’s making an apples-to-apples comparison, but using “white supremacy” as a stand-in for all white people. Instead of saying white folks aren’t a threat to Black folks, he uses the much more loaded term white supremacy. Why?

Obviously I can’t speak for Zeek, but I think the point he’s trying to make is that Black people fear white supremacy in the same way that he thinks white people fear Black people, and that white supremacists pose the same level of non-existent threat that Black folks present to whites. Which is a heavy thing to unpack.

I’ll deal with the second point first. I agree that no racial group presents any kind of overall threat to any other racial group. I agree that most people, regardless of any immutable characteristic they may possess (very handsome), just want to get along and, for the most part, be left alone to shake their thang.

The first point is so bizarre, however, that it’s hard to even find the words. White supremacy, by definition, is a threat. Anytime your belief system privileges you over EVERY OTHER GROUP, that’s a threat. White supremacy isn’t just a threat to Black people or Jewish people, but to everybody who doesn't fit their fluid definition of what being white even means. For example, you might be white and transgender, but I can guarantee you that you’re not going to find much love from white supremacists.

Further, white supremacy doesn’t necessarily mean white extremist violence. White supremacy shows up in all kinds of ways. Redlining, for example. Redistricting. Voter suppression. It shows up in all kinds of discriminatory policies that uplift white people over other groups. But, yes, it also presents itself as a growing domestic terroristic threat. We saw it in the Buffalo shooting, the Pittsburgh Tree of Life shooting, the Colorado Springs shooting, and the recent Allen,Texas shooting (although to be fair, if we believe Elon Musk, there’s no proof that one had anything to do with white supremacy despite shooter’s GIANT FUCKING SWASTIKA TATTOO on his chest.) In fact, according to the ADL, 100% of mass killings linked to extremists in 2022 were committed by right-wing extremists with an “unusually high proportion perpetrated by white supremacists.”

No proof this guy is a white supremacist.

But we’re also seeing the mainstreaming of white supremacist ideas, such as the Great Replacement Theory. Giggly Nazi Nick Fuentes, who had dinner with Donald Trump, has multiple “groypers” serving as staffers in Rep. Paul Gosar’s office. You might recall that Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene both spoke at a white nationalist conference in 2022. Do you think that conference centered around the idea that “Good people are good people and bad people are bad people regardless of color”?  

Obviously, I wasn’t there, but I’m going to hazard a guess: no?

If White supremacists aren’t a threat to Black folks, why does the White House say that they are the biggest domestic terror threat facing us? Are they just making it up? According to the people responding to me on Twitter, yes. So, I’ll just leave it with this: who are you going to trust? The FBI, ATF, Homeland Security, and the White House – or @ncognito12041?

I mean, I can’t say I love the government but at a certain point you have to trust the people you pay to tell you shit to tell you shit, even if you don’t like what they’re telling you.

Finally, Zeek said:

“We all have way more in common than we think.”

To which I say, “Amen.”