white inferiorists

this article is from the “Words Matter” series, which explores y(our) relationship to words and language

How speech acts obscure the facts in the quest for potency

Bhasha - language , from the Sanskrit root ‘Ba’ - to light, shine, illuminate

“We cannot have a healed society, we cannot have change, if we do not reclaim & repair the human spirit.” - Angel Kyodo Williams

“We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.” - Thich Nhat Hahn

“Words are deeds.”  - Ludwig Wittgenstein

In a time when the line between famous and infamous has blurred, the recent uttering of antisemitic poison by Ye olde troper West, a celebrated singer, spawned a subsequent fiasco.  A Black man invited a racist man of Hispanic ancestry to a former resident of the White House’s house, introducing the avowed asexual known for denying suffering on a massive scale and pleasure on a personal one.  The guest vacuumed his immigrant origins with an anti-immigrant stance and the trio shared a meal.  All three got attention but no one's embedded contradictions got tended, including the fourth guest elephant in the room: their shared desire to acquire supreme status.  

Was the gathering unconscionable, unconscious or both?  

The collective response came in castigating spurts. Those on the side of righteous condemned the act but absolved themselves of any contribution to the problem, focusing instead on hating the haters in search of self-love, otherwise known as ‘supremacists.’ 

Yet, there is nothing supreme about a belief that leads to dehumanizing brutality. No matter what the level of active cruelty, we must stop referring to those who affiliate with viciousness by using a  word whose roots connote hierarchical excellence.

Abolishing the word won’t immediately eradicate the behavior attached to it, but replacing it with a more accurate term that exposes its weaknesses can eliminate its allure and eventually alter conduct.  

Words erase or create viable options.  In the case of the s word, they empower our fellow human beings to disempower our fellow human beings.  By definition a supremacist is one who has reached a singular summit that rises above all others.  Grammatically and existentially speaking, there can be no such plural things. Imagine having multiple bestists, or bestacists.  If the adjective supreme could be nominalized then Supreme Court justices would be supremacists, or supremists, something few speakers would choose.  

Titles entitle.  A ‘boss’ has privileges an ‘employee’ doesn’t.  Title nouns often encapsulate the relationship between the entitled and their actions vis a vis others. A firefighter, for example, fights fires, referring to a person who chooses to battle the elements to protect people and property from harm.  Surgeons perform surgery, understood as the educated act of treating injury in people for the restoration of health. Actors act, often across multiple mediums but their core action involves embodying another person’s experience to encourage sparks of common humanity in the audience.  

The s word, however,  behaves differently.  Unlike other title nouns, it refers away from its relationship with people and points back to itself, successfully erasing the traces of vulnerability that compelled it into existence.  

The word connotes supremeness and induces fear, rather than highlighting the actual fear of inferiority that propels it. It is a trickster term assuming a legitimized front while the insecure culprit hides behind hijacked connotations of exaltation and glory,  enabled by a self-appointed and self-anointed label that we inadvertently strengthen with every pronouncement.

So what exactly does an s-er do, besides adopt a doctrine of hierarchical hues to elude the cludes of their own distress?  

A ‘supremacist’… supremacizes?

Supremacizing - posing as something supreme - is an act of evasion.  The verb shelters a  subject whose fragile sense of self-worth relies on deflation, suppression and exclusion of others for inflation, expression and inclusion of self.  Eitherorness reigns, and the land of ‘and’ becomes nonexistent.  A supremacizer has a festering sore that resists topical treatment.  The pus is repugnant but the wound is underneath, escaping emotional detection behind a word that shields the tender truth lurking in its host’s system.  What feeds the need to not need each other no doubt lies underneath the hoods and it is there we must go for repair, instead of perpetuating a profusion of delusion by using it conclusively without pointing out the self-doubt that fuels it.

The word becomes even more nonsensical when paired with its common adjective.  Unlike a paramedic firefighter, an orthopedic surgeon, or a commercial actor, all of which specify domain of action, a ‘white supremacist’  auto deems themself supreme and… whiticizes?  In a grammatical bait and switch, the noun buffers itself with an adjectival decoy and deflects any action it engenders.  Meanwhile our proliferation of the term aggrandizes the aggrandizer,  tacitly accommodating their semantical ruse.

Every time we write or say it,  we amplify its incarnation.  We bolster its bluster rather than offer any real support to the unexamined shadows of personality and suppressed shame that spawn its skewed view of humanity.  Linguist and political activist George Lakoff  studies how language intersects with our brains to make meaning of things,  and how “repetition strengthens the synapses in the circuits of the brain that people use to think.”  (Don’t Think of An Elephant, 2004)  Enough said repeatedly.

Rather than reiterate what we seek to obliterate,  we need to confer new terms that will turn things around and reorient us toward our shared humanity.  Language is a spectacularly creative act.  Our words are the single most potent resource we have to create harmony. They can illuminate why we go awry.

What if rather than calling s-acism like it isn’t- something akin to ascendance,  we instead chose a word that exposed the rejection of introspection and fear of connection embedded in its current form?  

Or at the very least, a word that inhibits deflection and sparks a corrective reflection?

What if we chose a word that reinstated the holistic view that a human is more than a hue?  A word that disclosed the real foe as internal.

What we already know is that people who love themselves tend not to harm others, and hurt people justify hurting people.  Yet when one of us suffers from perceptual perversion, all of us are prone to its reverberations. Hate is not free speech, it costs everybody unity.

By invoking language that elucidates the root of truth underneath the protective sheath, we can stimulate fresh perspectives and move past the impasses that have made us a nation of stagnation.  Injecting precision allows a new vision to come through our Words.  In the case of the s word, some accurate alternatives that could weaken the appeal of the unreal are

-white inferiorists, those who infer inferiority in an attempt to confer superiority upon themselves.  Their sense of worthiness is contingent upon a rank scale which purports to measure merit with a hue-mometer, a baseless barometer for intrinsic value.  White inferiorists inferiorize - misperceiving ‘in fear I rise.’ 

-white ignoracists,  those who insist on ignorance by ignoring the reality that we are all in this together, like each other or not.  That human value is inherent, not inherited.  

-white insecurists, those who seek to secure a sense of self-worth by letting their inner fears interfere with universal law,  that by dint of our existence Life equally wanted us All.  Driven by insecurity, they become proficient at deeming others deficient.

By acknowledging the pain that drives disdain and inhumane refrains,  we can begin to melt the cemented stances that have temporarily paralyzed our partnering potentials. If we wield words that widen our perceptual lenses, we can compassionately include the desperation-driven distortions of humans longing to belong.

A white ‘nationalist’ is a frightened irrationalist trying to impose order on an emotional world that makes no sense.  When survival of self-esteem is at stake, most of us cannot be talked out of our beliefs, so rather than convict s-ers for their convictions,  may we lay bare their constrictions and address the buried shame that feeds the impulse to maim and humiliate.  And open a new way of seeing and being together.

Before there were s-cysts, there were misappropriated words that attracted them,  greased their grievances, fueled their fears, reeled them in and gave meaning to their meanness.   If we can pinpoint and dismantle the guise, create a word and world where vulnerability is on the rise as a respectable and acceptable ability we prize, humanizing becomes a given.

We are all a vital part of the whole.

Can we name it, tame it and finally reframe it for our collective benefit?

Words lead the way…