Our society is infected with a disease: white supremacy. The horrific Charleston is a tragedy rooted in that national affliction, which denies racial oppression and takes for granted centuries of unearned privilege forcefully made off of the backs of black people. This hateful act did not happen in a vacuum. It happened within the context of hundreds of years of lynchings, mass deaths and violence towards black people.
For too long, white society has approached racist violence with apathy and/or political subterfuge. Many moments over the past year have been a wake-up call for white people to stand up and no longer be silent. There are things we must do in this moment. First, we must name this tragedy for what it is: an incident of white supremacist terrorism, and yet also an act that is not isolated or separate from our daily lives.
White supremacy is not just the extremists, but something infused into media, criminal justice, education and countless other mainstream institutions. It is the guiding principle under which our society operates, ensuring the comfort and privileges that white people have enjoyed since the foundation of this country.
We must center black liberation in our work, and call on other white people to end their silence and raise their voices against the continued legacy of violence that our community perpetuates against communities of color. We must pair our voices with action.
All of this is as urgent as it is timely. Let us not forget how far we still have to go, as the scars that white supremacy has left since slavery’s abolition are clearer than ever. We send our deepest condolences to the victims of the Charleston massacre, their families, the Emanuel AME Church and the community of Charleston.
As a collective that is largely made up of white women, we feel it is important to make note of the killer’s reported motives. Before taking the lives of nine people, Dylann Roof reportedly proclaimed, “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country, and you have to go.” We reject this racist violence done in our name. We will not let the “protection” of white women be used as an excuse for white supremacist violence against black people.
This weaponization of white femininity can be traced from the early days of colonization: white women forcefully took Indigenous children from their mothers in an attempt at erasure; plantation masters used protection of their wives and daughters to justify monstrous abuse of slaves; Emmett Till was murdered for looking “flirtatiously” in the direction of a group of white women.
These patterns continue today in the centering of white women, their emotions and their issues in today’s mainstream feminist movement, the broader social justice movement and even in everyday discussions about racial inequity. We recognize that six out of the nine victims in Charleston were black women – an identity routinely victimized by white supremacy. And yet, the struggles facing black women today are often erased from our national narrative.
Collectively, we must struggle to dismantle the systems of oppression entrenched in our everyday lives. The time is now. We can no longer wait. To our fellow white people, let us get to work.