Not That Kind of White

White supremacy

I can’t tell you how many times I was asked the same question while teaching American Literature:

“If there is a Black History Month, why isn’t there a White History Month?”

My usual response? Because every month is White History Month. History is written by the victors — and colonizers. Much of the American history and literature we learned for generations erased the contributions of marginalized groups.

A strange fact is that much of the history and literature I learned in the South was written by the losers, not the victors. I learned an entirely incorrect version of history because my textbooks and curriculum were shaped by The Daughters of the Confederacy — I didn’t understand that until college.

That was purposeful.

For a few decades, we have made a conscious effort to highlight the experiences of minority groups in curriculum — no such effort is required for the majority because their experience is always present.

I think it is incredibly important to teach rural kids the literature and history of marginalized groups. Many of my former students lived in White spaces with limited travel experiences.

So, I applied for scholarships to learn what I had not been taught, and I traveled the country every summer to learn to be a better teacher. I studied slavery in New York and Mount Vernon and Atlanta and Charleston.

My students had the advantage of learning the history I had never learned. I had the confidence to teach the hard truth.

You can imagine, after so many years teaching an inclusive curriculum, I am horrified daily by the naked White supremacy I see coming from the Trump regime and many Republicans in general.

I have lived under a GOP supermajority for over two decades, and these lawmakers often slide into racism and try to cover their tracks by attacking the rest of us as being “woke” or “DEI warriors.”

It is projection.

A moment I will never forget is when a Missouri Representative stood on the House floor and spoke on “Irish slavery” to dispute the suggestion that Black folks have no exclusive claim to slavery and that both Black and Irish slavery should be taught in Missouri schools. He obviously failed American History as he did not understand chattel slavery and that most Irish immigrants were indentured servants, not enslaved people.

Indentured servitude is not an ideal situation, but it is not comparable to chattel slavery.

You know my infamous Senator Josh Hawley, who held up a fist on January 6, but you may not know my other Senator, Eric Schmitt, who is an open White supremacist. When comparing the two men, I am left to say Schmitt is even worse than his insurrectionist counterpart. Hawley is a Christian nationalist. Schmitt is both a Christian nationalist and a White supremacist.

In a speech titled “What Is an American,” Schmitt wrote:

America is not “a proposition” or a shared set of values, rather it is a country for White people descended from European settlers, whose accomplishments should not be diminished by acknowledging the people that some of them enslaved, the Native Americans they killed, or anyone else denied equal rights at the founding.

Schmitt went on to say that the real Americans are those who settled the country, denying both the people who lived here centuries before colonization and the Black people who were forced here on slave ships.

I am horrified by the speech — Schmitt references Missouri so many times that I want to scream. He is reinforcing the White supremacy that I specifically taught my students to watch for…to listen for. To speak out against.

Senator Schmitt even went so far as to make light of George Floyd’s killing. The entire speech had a “blood and soil” feel. It makes me sick. I am embarrassed to be his constituent.

I opened my news app yesterday to see that JD Vance gave a speech at the Turning Point USA Summit in which he said, “In the United States of America, you don't have to apologize for being white anymore.”

My God. I am so tired. And I am White.

I can only imagine what it feels like to be a person of color in America and hear the daily racism. To feel racism. To exist in this country when our government is attacking Black and Brown folks. Disappearing them. Killing them.

So, I fight to elect people who do not espouse racist views and do not want to harm immigrants.

But I also do work in my own family. My children and grandchildren are White. They deserve the truth of the country of their birth. They should know what the Trump regime is doing in the name of White supremacy. So, I teach them.

I took my teenage daughter to Charleston. We visited the regular sites, and then I took her to the sites of the enslaved who were shipped across the world to be enslaved for their labor. She saw the slave pen downtown. I took her to Fort Sumter, where she listened to a Park Ranger tell her the main reason for the Civil War.

Slavery.

No, it wasn’t Northern Aggression — it was slavery. And if she ever has any doubt, she should read the South Carolina Declaration of Secession, which clearly states that the state broke from the union because of “An increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery.”

I took her for a walk to Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The site of a brutal racist massacre. I explained what a White supremacist did to nine Black people who were praying in their own church…people who invited their murderer in with the love and compassion of their faith.

He murdered them because of the color of their skin and because he didn’t understand history. He thought Black people were given preferential treatment in this country. He had a profound lack of understanding that led him to murder.

The Trump regime is pushing this misunderstanding of history onto another generation, and we can’t sit by while it happens. Teaching hard history to White people is the business of other White people. Teaching about racism should not fall on the marginalized groups who are the target of racism.

Racism is a White problem…not the other way around.

It’s on people who look like me to do the hard work of challenging the naked White supremacy we see in our country.

We know the lies. We have to teach the truth.

~Jess