You don't have to be white to be a white supremacist.
By: Andre Thompson
White supremacy is operating and making efforts to keep the status quo of whiteness intact. Dr. Dennis Childs said that "we cannot mistake the skin color of who enacts a white supremacist act for it not being white supremacist. I bring this up because my school (yes MY school) UC San Diego has a white population of 22 %. This means that the rest of the student body is in some ways facilitating the anti-blackness that happens on campus. To my people of color (POC) out there thats been shooting with me in the gym this isn't a call out to you. This isn't a call out to any individual. This is a call out based on facts.
At UC San Diego there is an expectation to consume Black media by any means necessary. This became evident to me when there are Black performers on campus, Black superstar athletes on campus, and the Straight Outta Compton movie showing fiasco. When Black performers come to campus all of a sudden the campus us in support of Blackness. It's hard to get POC to come to BSU General Body Meetings describing the harmful impacts of hip hop on Black women and the homophobia and transphobia that is rampant throughout, but it was very easy to get people to show up to see Joey Bada$$, Ty Dolla $ign, and Juicy J. When we have our Kwanzaa celebration it's hard to have POC come out and support our Black professors that speak, but it's easy for them to get excited to see Steph Curry or Chris Paul at RIMAC. This culminated into the attempt to show Straight Outta Compton at UCSD without any dialogue but as a means for “entertainment”. If it wasn’t for Black students calling out our Associated Students (UCSD’s Student Government) for this bullshit the movie probably would have been shown. The backlash from the postponement was one of the most disgusting comment threads I’ve read. There were mostly non white POC criticising Associated Students (AS) and calling the Black students “babies” that need to “grow up”.
It’s hard to “grow up” when last July I was once again harassed by UC police, when racists working in the bookstore refuse to help me because they don’t think I have the money to afford the macbook I saved for, when white girls in your Anthropology class believe they know what it's like to be a Black male in higher education because they are “the only blonde girl in their Taiwanese film class.” This translated to our own VC of Student Affairs Juan Gonzales saying that he didn't see the anti-blackness on campus. This is all to the point of bringing up substantive and descriptive POC representation. Descriptive POC representation is when a person of color is in a place. This is important and allows for much progress in society. Substantive representation is when a person regardless of their race are in place fight for the rights of POC. This important for us to understand because if you are a POC and still perpetuating white supremacy you are no better than Don Lemon and Ben Carson.
I hope that people can take small steps to decolonizing their minds. Small steps could be having a conversation about the origin of a lot of the history. If most of the history you have is based off of american high school education please be open to new thoughts and ideas that are contradictory to those ingrained facts that are written by old rich white men. I say that knowing there is a privilege I have of being in college and not having to worry about day to day survival. This is not a post of elitism but rather a post about questioning everything and everybody at all times.
Andre Thompson is a 3rd Year UC San Diego Political Science major and African American studies minor, he is also the Internal Vice Chair of BSU.
