We shouldn’t water down the term “white supremacist”

We shouldn’t water down the term “white supremacist”

Bend City Councilor Gena Goodman-Campbell declined to stand and recite the pledge of allegiance at the beginning of Wednesday night’s city council meeting. She explained that she did so in solidarity with protesters and in opposition to state violence against black people in what I think is a thoughtful facebook post. If it were me, I’d stand for the pledge, but Goodman-Campbell is within her rights to choose not to do so. She has clearly put a lot of thought into the race and policing issues our country and community are grappling with, and I’m glad that she chose to express her thoughts on those things in a thorough and clear way, which one doesn’t often see from city councilors.

One thing she wrote, though, jumped out to me:

“I am committed to doing the internal work to examine my own underlying biases and white supremacist beliefs, and ultimately changing the way that I operate as a leader.” (Emphasis added).

It’s not every day you hear someone, especially an elected official, say they have white supremacist beliefs.

Merriam Webster says a white supremacist is “a person who believes that the white race is better than all other races and should have control over all other races.” I’m pretty sure no one has ever thought Goodman-Campbell was a white supremacist. If you read her entire statement, which I urge you to do, it’s clear that she strongly opposes racism. I don’t believe that she actually holds white supremacist beliefs as that term is commonly understood and used in public discourse. I don’t think she believes that the white race is superior to all other races. I don’t think she believes white people should have control over all other races.

White supremacy ideology is despicable and is rightfully thought by most Americans to have no place in our public debate. There is something of a bright line social rule to exclude white supremacists from the public forum. Two summers during college, I worked swing shift at the old Crown Pacific re-manufacturing mill in Redmond. One guy I worked with drove a red Pontiac Fiero and was an unrepentant racist. Even he, when pressed, would not accept the label of white supremacist. This was the mid-90s in Redmond and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have suffered any professional repercussions if he’d admitted he was one.

One of the most controversial things Donald Trump has said as president was to praise white supremacist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia as “very fine people.” Trump was properly blasted for that comment, including by Joe Biden in the announcement of his candidacy for president. Trump’s praise for white supremacists, and his failure to castigate their ideology along with his attempt to equate the merits of the white supremacist protesters with the anti-white supremacist protesters, is Exhibit A for  people who believe Trump is a racist. In most parts of our society, failing to reject forcefully white supremacists is a serious failing; actually holding white supremacist beliefs is verboten, and properly so.

So why on Earth would Goodman-Campbell say she holds white supremacist beliefs if she doesn’t? There’s a theory, I’ve learned, that traits such as perfectionism, a sense of urgency, and individualism “are damaging because they promote white supremacist thinking.” Perhaps Goodman-Campbell was referring to something like that.

The problem is, that’s not how the vast majority of people define white supremacy. I don’t know whether the Charlottesville protesters exhibited a sense of urgency, but they sure thought black people were inferior to them. The Department of Homeland Security has deemed white supremacist groups a terrorist threat, and not because those groups are annoyingly perfectionist. It’s because they are so filled with hate that they sometimes kill people of color.

Any definition of white supremacist beliefs that includes Goodman-Campbell is a definition so watered down as to render the term useless. As it is, that term is very useful in describing those people whom our society largely deems unworthy of legitimate participation in our public discourse. We should not fritter away that hard-won success by redefining the term to include people who don’t actually believe white people are superior to other races and should subjugate them.