WMNS 1103 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: White Supremacy, Andrea Smith (Academic), Heteropatriarchy
31 May 2018
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Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy: Rethinking Women of Color
Organizing by Andrea Smith
The Color of Violence Chapter 6
• Oppression Olympics- we’re too busy fighting over who is more oppressed
• The premise behind “women of color” organizing is that women from communities
victimized by white supremacy should unite together around their shared oppression- this
includes Native women, Black women, Muslim Women, Latina women and Asian
women. This presumes that all of these communities have been impacted by white
supremacy in the same way and that we can share similar liberation strategies.
• Liberation strategies of these five groups often run into conflict.
• Three pillars of white supremacy:
1. Slavery/Capitalism: blackness becomes equated with slavability. Forms of slavery
may change but the logic itself remains and serves as the anchor of capitalism. we
can look at the criminalization of Blackness as a logical extension of Blackness as
property.
2. Genocide/Colonialism: indigenous people must disappear so that non indigenous
people can claim the land. Non Native people imagine themselves as the rightful
inheritors of everything the “vanished” Indians left behind. Genocide anchors
capitalism and allows non Native people to feel they can rightfully take
indigenous peoples’ land. In the United States, democracy is the practice that
covers up genocide.
3. Orientalism/War: the process of the West defining itself as a superior civilization
by painting everything else as “exotic.” This marks certain people or nations as
inferior and dangerous.
• We are not only victims in white supremacy but complicit in it as well in order to survive.
People of color organizing must be premised on strategic alliances within the larger
political economy that aren’t solely based on shared victimization. This would help
develop resistance strategies that don’t keep the system in place.
• There is not only a black/non black binary but also an indigenous/settler binary and a
foreign threat binary.
• One failure of people of color organizing is the “US-centrism” or believing that what’s
happening over there is less important than what’s happening domestically and failing to
see how the U.S. maintains these systems of oppression.
• The colonial world order depends on heteronormativity. For us to colonize people whose
societies aren’t based on a hierarchy, colonizers must first create this hierarchy through
instituting patriarchy. We need a model based on relationships and mutual respect, not
rank orders.
• We need to re envision the politics of solidary in a way that goes beyond simply
multiculturalism.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Heteropatriarchy and the three pillars of white supremacy: rethinking women of color. Non native people imagine themselves as the rightful inheritors of everything the vanished indians left behind. Genocide anchors capitalism and allows non native people to feel they can rightfully take indigenous peoples" land. People of color organizing must be premised on strategic alliances within the larger political economy that aren"t solely based on shared victimization. For us to colonize people whose societies aren"t based on a hierarchy, colonizers must first create this hierarchy through instituting patriarchy.
