White Supremacy

By An Old Friend

I recently saw a video interview of Cornel West wherein he said something about "fighting white supremacy" — Pres. Choom al-Islam isn't doing enough of that, so he's been "niggerized."

Ah, yes, here: Youtube.
"Legacy of white supremacy." "Spotlight on white supremacy." "White supremacy is as American as apple pie." And on and on.

And it occurred to me, "Well if you think white supremacy needs to be fought, doesn't that mean that you think it exists?"

But what someone says off the cuff doesn't necessarily carry that kind of conclusive weight, and I'm not about to suffer reading through West's "production" for written confirmation.

Not to worry! In just now reading this piece by Kevin Williamson disputing Ta-Nehesi Coates's book on reparations, I noticed this:

It is true, as Mr. Coates argues, citing Lyndon Johnson, that “Negro poverty is not white poverty,” at least as measured by many critical metrics — concentration, mobility, various life outcomes controlled for income, etc. But though he spends a great deal of time documenting economic issues, those are not, in the end, Mr. Coates’s interest here: “Reducing American poverty and ending white supremacy are not the same,” he declares. That there is some question-begging going on there — whether “white supremacy” really describes a significant motive force in American public life — goes without saying, but it shouldn’t.

So Williamson quoted written evidence that Coates recognizes white supremacy. (Ending it would presumably mean handicapping it into mediocrity.)