You don’t need to be white to support white supremacy or white privilege.
If you support the justice system, for example, which apprehends and incarcerates people of colour at higher rates than white people, hands them harsher sentences, and is more likely to reincarcerate them, then you support white supremacy. And you don’t need to be white to support the justice system.
If you support capitalism, which depends on the exploitation of people of colour and disproportionately benefits white people, then you support white supremacy. And you don’t need to be white to support capitalism.
If you support—even through so-called patriotic actions—colonial states (such as Canada and the United States), whose very existence depended on the exploitation of the lives, labour, and resources of people of colour for their establishment and maintenance, then you support white supremacy. And you don’t need to be white to support Canada.
White supremacy isn’t just being a Nazi. White supremacy is the idea that whiteness is better, that it’s a default.
White supremacy is what convinces us that it’s okay for Indigenous people to be followed around in a store because white supremacy sees indigeneity as criminal.
White supremacy is what convinces us that it’s okay for cops to card black people at higher rates than white people because white supremacy sees blackness as criminal.
White supremacy is what convinces us that it’s okay to be afraid of people of colour walking down the street because white supremacy sees non-whiteness as violent and savage.
White supremacy is what convinces us that white people pull themselves out of poverty through their own hard work because white supremacy sees non-whiteness as lazy.
And anyone can believe these things.
You don’t need to be white to believe that people of colour should be convicted of more crimes because they must commit more crimes. That there must be something inherit in non-whiteness that leads to crime—or for that matter, laziness, or poverty, or drunkenness, or any other measure where people of colour are at a disadvantage.
Just like you don’t need to be a person of colour to see that the system is inherently racist.
