By Wong Tai-Chee

In the recent China-US relations talks held in Alaska, the Chinese representative Yang Jiechi urged the United States to manage first its own race relations and internal affairs, and not to worry about China's ethnic issues. As we all know, the United States, known for its claims over freedom, democracy and racial equality, has always had an endless stream of racial conflicts in the country. The United States which has a white majority in its population, has a long history of bad race relations. White supremacy thinking is not only widespread in the country, it is also manifested in its foreign relations, attracting adverse reactions as a consequence from many foreign countries. This article traces the historical roots of white supremacy, with special reference to the United States.

From an ideological point of view, the origins of white supremacy can be traced back to the 17th century when Europe entered the era of Enlightenment. After leaving the Dark Ages, the European Renaissance brought along with it a world-leading developmental concept, characterized by more scientific, highly rational and logical humanism. With the improvement of productivity and the leapfrog development in technology and navigation skills, the white European world surpassed the largely stagnant Arab Islamic civilization and the ancient China and India of the East in various fields. With this change and the development of commerce, a stronger class of merchants emerged in the European society. They used their wealth to fight against feudal lords whose influence began to decline, and they assisted their respective governments by playing an important role in colonial expansion which at the same time helped them gain their commercial interests.

Modern colonial expansion requires a theoretical argument, and it is convenient for those in power who are in charge of national policy to use any such theory to persuade their own people with the rationality of colonization in order to achieve an overall cooperation and better results. Undoubtedly, this rationale could be used to justify the theory of racial superiority. Beginning in the 19th century, the United States, which was dominated by European white immigrants, showed its racial supremacy to the fullest for three reasons. First, white immigrants had to face the resistance of the Native American Indians. The violent confrontation used was based on the argument of self-defence, the rights of conquerors, and advanced-cum-superior civilization to replace the backward and old civilization.

Second, along the southern parts of the East Coast United States, where white immigrants moved into, there is a subtropical climate suitable for growing cotton. Given that cotton was one of the most important industrial raw materials after the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, it became the most important economic resource in the American South. But cotton cropping was then a labour-intensive operation. In order to reduce production costs, white manor owners and slave traders managed to traffic black Africans who still led a traditional livelihood into slaves, to work cheaply in the cotton fields.

Third, many legislations since the founding of the United States were based on white superiority theory. For example, the Federal Naturalization Act passed in 1790 stated that only white people could become American citizens. In many states before World War II, non-whites were denied the right to vote and were unable to hold public office. As Professor Leland Saito of the University of Southern California said: "Throughout the history of the United States, racial blood has long been used by whites to legalize and create differences for social, economic, and political exclusion."

Before World War II, the notion of white supremacy was also flooded with American primary and secondary school textbooks. Teaching materials designed by mainly Teutonic immigrants from north-western Europe praised the contribution of white culture towards the making of American freedom, democracy and superior lifestyle. Common linguistic usage was to trace white immigrants’ superior culture, their "discovery" of the New World, their "colonization and conquest of the Native Americans", and their hard work towards social development. However, these textbooks avoided at best the contributions of non-whites, and the historical past of black plantation slaves and the oppressive treatment of the Indians.

The descendants of Teutonic immigrants from north-western Europe (the main ethnic groups from England, Germany, the Netherlands, and the Nordic countries) are the most powerful in American politics and a group that has long considered themselves superior to other southern and eastern European whites. Relatively speaking, the majority of this category of white Protestant followers are the most prominent American right-wing racists. At the beginning of the last century, when the wave of Nazi racism was set off in Germany, these right-wing racists won certain extent of spiritual support that helped their continued support of the KKK movement. On the other hand, the Nazis also appreciated the racial discrimination policies implemented by the southern states of the United States at that time, such as regulations that blacks must give up their seats to whites on buses.

The weird and contradictory thing is that the sense of superiority essentially needs material support to appear truly great. The fact is, not everyone among the whites is rich, many are indeed poor and struggling to survive. This group of whites have a sense of inferiority in the face of the overall American society where disparity between the rich and the poor is widening. To counter their inferiority complexes, they need an artificial and false sense of racial superiority most to balance their dissatisfaction with their own unfortunate destiny. This explains why there were so many white people who supported Trump when he stirred up white racism and populism before! Such whites welcome Trump to deal with illegal immigrants from Latin America and regulate the entry of Muslims from the Middle East. It is well understood that in Trump's subconsciousness, using white superiority to comfort the disadvantaged and poor among the whites could achieve a certain degree of support!

According to statistical data in 2018, there were more than 600 organizations in the United States that were embedded with white superiority. In view of the potential harm of these organizations to society, the US Internal Security Agency had to modify their overall counter-terrorism strategy to include them in their list of supervision. Regarding the individual cases of shooting and killing of ethnic minorities in the United States in recent years, the Agency does not rule out completely connections with such organizations. The heating up and deterioration of domestic race relations in the United States these days could have also impacted the United States’ diplomatic relations with non-white countries abroad.

(Wong Tai-Chee has his B.A and M.A degrees in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Paris, and earned his PhD in Human Geography from the Australian National University. After teaching 20 years in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, he retired in 2013. He then worked as Distinguished Professor for two years at Guizhou University of Finance and Economics, China, and as Dean and Professor at the Southern University College, Johor until the end of 2018. He was Visiting Professor to University of Paris (Sorbonne IV), Visiting Fellow to Pekin University, Tokyo University and University of Western Australia. His main research interests are in urban and economic issues, and more recently on Malaysian politics. Besides his 15 self-authored and edited book volumes, he has written over 100 academic articles and published widely in international journals.)