The Warped Justice of White Supremacy

When people ask me how many siblings I have, I tell them that biologically, I only have one younger brother, but we grew up with five older cousins and were all treated like siblings. Our shared set of grandparents provided much-needed supplemental parenting for the lot of us, and frequently we found ourselves waking up in the same bed and seated around the same breakfast table anyway.

I was about four when our eldest sister-cousin Trina*, 10 years my senior, was walking down the street and got into an altercation with a little girl who lived in the next block. Infuriated by the little girl’s sass and perceived disrespect, but righteous enough to know that she was too old and too big to be fighting “other peoples’ bad-a$$ kids,” Trina resolved to return with one of our two younger and smaller sister-cousins Jasmine* or Aaliyah*, both five years her junior. The one she was looking for Jasmine, the one built like a boulder, was nowhere to be found so she settled for Aaliyah the twig-like option, already somewhat small for her age. Aaliyah and Trina trudged up the street looking for the little girl with the smart-a$$ mouth. Eventually they found her.  

As the story goes, the neighbor girl began to get the best of Aaliyah, ending up on top. Trina could not abide this little girl’s pugilistic prowess (and no doubt was compelled by her protective instinct to come to her family’s aid) so she braved the fray of flying fists and physically placed our flailing (and failing) Aaliyah on top.  

This is how I understand white supremacy: it is a system firmly established over generations and reinforced by violence and violation which affirmatively acts as often as possible to ensure that whiteness predominates. When whiteness falters at the hands of the other, it — like Trina — reaches in with brute force and unfair size advantage to place whiteness — like our Aaliyah — on top. It is not without its own internally informed and self-serving sense of justice, but it absolutely refuses to consider a reality beyond its own solipsism. It refuses to understand how incomplete and “blind” justice creates pathology, extra expense, and injustice for everyone else, even its own.  It refuses to see that from the perspective of the person of color--in this case, the neighbor girl--partial justice might as well be no justice at all. 

The author flanked by both Jasmine* (left) and Aaliyah* (right) circa 1979...right around the time the altercation with the neighbor girl occurred.