White Supremacy

The hate-ideology that white people (i.e., people with fair skin colour and of northern European descent) are superior to others and have, therefore, the right to dominate them. Most obviously rooted in the USA (reflected in the "Cowboy-Indian" mentality) it is made more virulent in recent years by the populist American politician Donald Trump, and directed, this time, particularly at the Mexicans.

The idea of racial superiority is ancient and can be found in many cultures around the world. Nowhere, however, has it found acceptance and wide-spread and obvious practice than in North America (for a time, South Africa and Australia as well). Defenceless against the technological superiority of the immigrant Whites, the indigenous Americans fell easy prey to the Whites' greed for land and resources. To salve their conscience, the Whites (Christians) found that they could resort to Scriptures in defence of their murderous treatment of the natives. Did God not command Israel—the people of God—to utterly destroy the Canaanites to claim the Promised Land? Is not the Whites the new chosen people of God? Was it not for the purpose of establishing a new Jerusalem in the New World that the Pilgrim Fathers (their fathers) left the Old World (so deeply rooted in idolatry it could no longer be saved)? As the economy in America grew, and shiploads of Africans were brought in to work the plantations, a new explanation had to be found for such savage and brutal subjection of another people. But did not Scriptures clearly divided humankind into three main groups, Shem, Ham and Japheth? Did not God say, "Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers"? (Gen 9:25) Did not God say, "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem"? (v26). Are not the Whites the descendents of blessed Shem, and the Africans the children of Canaan?

This hateful ideology found easy support elsewhere. In 1938, e.g., Winston Churchill declared,"I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong had been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly-wise race to put it that way has come in and taken their place." Churchill had, of course, to refuse to admit or accept the lie of his own declaration when Hitler decided that the Germanic race, the Aryans, was the supreme race and, Britian, like everyone else, should submit to them.

Though White supremacy finds much of its support and base among fundamentalist and evangelical Christians in the US, the ideology should be hateful to Christians everywhere. It contradicts in the most direct and blatant way Jesus' command to "love your neighbour as yourself" (Matt 22:39; Mk 12:31, 33; Lk 6:27, 35; 10:27).

From a historical and sociological point of view, White supremacy is the idealogy of the weak and frightened. All human groups go through cycles of growth and decay in time. A multiplicity of factors shape us at different times. It is during times when a group—ethnic or otherwise—perceives that it is threatened that the urge to shout becomes most urgent, both to hopefully scare those who, they feel, threaten them, as well as to shore up their own emotional energies in the face of the threat. White supremacy is, particularly at times of perceived crisis, a shouting mechanism. As Christians we are to find our security, both temporal and eternal, in Christ; not in how loud we can shout or how mightily we can muscle. If we are supreme let us show it not by threats but by love, and—in the footsteps of our Lord Jesus—lay down of our life that others may live.