From “US: The Resurrection of American Terror” by Rev. Kenneth W. Wheeler
Frances Lee Ansley defines white supremacy as “…a political, economic and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social setting.” It is this daily reenactment that is so draining and detrimental to us as Black and brown people. And although white supremacy may be Trump;s person ideology, it is also America’s ideology. It is this evil ideology that has cast an overwhelming oppressive shadow on this nation. There are days when it feels like this evil is insurmountable. The white supremacy underlying much of the ideology of those who settled this continent spawned a culture of white supremacy that continues to this day. Those who had the power to prosper also had the power to define culture, to define what it meant to be human. It is woven into all of our institutions: political, financial, sociological, educational, spiritual. As a result, we have all been made less human.
I grew exhausted by Mr. Trump’s insults and bullying. I grew exhausted by the fact that no one in his party was willing to challenge the racist animus inherent in his governing. I grew exhausted by the twisted theological view of white evangelicalism, a theology that attached itself to a white supremacist ideology and idolatry. This theology had nothing to do with the Jesus of the Gospels – the Jesus of Nazareth, a brown-skinned Palestinian Jew born into a world where the backs of his people were up against the wall of Roman oppression. I grew exhausted by the potency of white supremacy and its agency, an agency that continues to dominate and do violence to those of us whose humanity is not clothed in white skin. I was sixty-four years old when Mr. Trump became president. I thought we were long past the ugliness of Jim Crow. But Donald Trump tapped into that ugliness and gave it legitimacy once again.