America Must Finally Confront The Sickness And Lies Of White Supremacy by Robert Covington Jr.
January 6th 2021 will go down as one of the worst days in American history. On this ugly, horrifying, traumatic and humiliating day, Americans and the world watched The President of the United States Donald Trump speak in front of a white supremacist crowd of domestic terrorists and seditionists and encouraged violence against the United States Congress.
Inspired by Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric to incite an insurrection, these white supremacists stormed the Capitol building and elected officials had to scramble to save their lives. The politicians were extremely lucky that these domestic terrorists did not have the violent determination of a Timothy McVeigh, a man that blew up a Federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 and killed 168 people. If so, it is entirely possible that America would have watched in real time the mass murder of the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the whole Democratic caucus, a few Republicans and the large staff that runs, cleans and support the Capitol building itself. It could have been a bloodbath of epic proportion.
The nation and the world were reminded in a stark and clarifying way that the sickness and lies of white supremacy is unavoidably dangerous, destructive and impacts us all. It is spiritually, emotionally and psychologically toxic to the soul, extremely narcissistic and selfish that informs human behavior and physically costly to human beings that are subjected to the violence that reaffirms it.
Donald Trump became president because of white supremacy. The Republican Party functions as the largest white supremacist organization in the world. The media coddles and centers white supremacy in its coverage and its refusal to name it and provide critical context from the lens of journalistic truth reinforces ignorance, misinformation and misplaced grievances.
Over the past 24 hours, there has been constant references of truth by many Americans that if this were a black group of domestic terrorists that marched on the Capitol the way the white group did, they would have been arrested and shot dead immediately. Although there are thousands of similar analogies that could make the same point, this reference can be useful for those committed to taking it to the next step in trying to understand why the nation continues to create crisis, carnage and unnecessary suffering on a micro and macro level in the name of white supremacy.
America has an opportunity to use this dark moment in history to engage in self-examination that parlays personal reflection into structural change. White Americans in particular, have an opportunity in this moment to ask themselves the hard questions and to use the events of January 6th 2021 and the last four years under Donald Trump and the Republican Party as the inflection point.
Hopefully, one of the lessons that white Americans as a group is ready to confront is that the sickness and lies of white supremacy asks of them to identify themselves as white over everything else. That their actions must be motivated primarily by this group identity and its affiliated privileges, advantages and social status in a nation that constructed racial categories to justify its legalized brutality against black people.
It’s time for the large majority of white Americans that voted for Trump for example to say, “damn, for the past ten months, Donald Trump has used the federal government and the power of his office to purposely get millions of Americans sick and played a major role in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans with his handling of the coronavirus. This is typically called murder, yet I still voted for him anyway, what does this say about me as a human being?” “How did I rationalize my decision in the face of this fact?” “Am I open to change, listening, acting and behaving differently?”
The sickness and lies of white supremacy is rooted in a core belief that you are better than another group of people and to uphold this belief, I am willing to sacrifice anything and everything if necessary. That I cannot imagine being human and driven by the common bond of our humanity. That the acceptance of other people’s suffering is normal. The tolerance of human evil is justified. The loss of life savings, my home, healthcare and job is the price that I am willing to pay if I know someone else or another group is doing worse than me. It is fundamentally an inhumane way of being in the world.
America’s democracy and Republic received another wake-up call to its fragility, viability and inability to survive if the allegiance to the sickness and lies of white supremacy continues. If the tragedy and embarrassment of January 6th, 2021 does not result in a movement for greater individual and collective transformation of this nation, nothing will. Let the uncomfortable yet needed conversations begin.
Follow me on twitter: @robcovingtonjr
