Andrea Smith

Scenario #1
A group of women of color come together to organize. An argu- ment ensues about whether or not Arab women should be included. Some argue that Arab women are “white” since they have been classified as such in the US census. Another argument erupts over whether or not Latinas qualify as “women of color,” since some may be classified as “white” in their Latin American countries of origin and/or “pass” as white in the United States.

Scenario #2
In a discussion on racism, some people argue that Native peoples suffer from less racism than other people of color because they gen- erally do not reside in segregated neighborhoods within the United States. In addition, some argue that since tribes now have gaming, Native peoples are no longer “oppressed.”

Scenario #3
A multiracial campaign develops involving diverse conpunities of color in which some participants charge that we must stop the blacklwhite binary, and end Black hegemony over people of color politics to develop a more “multicultural” framework. However, this campaign continues to rely on strategies and cultural motifs developed by the Black Civil Rights struggle in the United States.

These incidents, which happen quite frequently in “women of color” or “people of color” political organizing struggles, are often explained as a consequence. “oppression olympics.” That is to say, one problem we have is that we are too busy fighting over who is more oppressed. In this essay, I want to argue that the precedents are not so much the result of “oppression olympics” but are more about, we have inadequately framed “women of color” or “people of color” politics. Truth is, the premise behind much “women of color” organizing is that women of color communities victimized by white supremacy should unite together around shared oppression. This framework might be represented by a diagram of five overapping circles, each marked Native women, Black women, Arab/Muslim, Latinas, and Asian American women, overlapping like a Venn diagram.

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This framework has proven to be limited for women of color and people of color  organizing. First, it tends to presume that our communities have been impacted by white supremacy in the same way. Consequently, we often assume that all of our communities will share similar strategies for liberation. In fact, however, our straregies often run into conflict. For example, one strategy that many people in US-born communities of color adopt, in order to advance economically out of impoverishedcommunities, is to join the military. We then become complicit in

oppressing and colonizing communities from other countries. Meanwhile, peo- ple from other countries often adopt the strategy of moving to the United States ro advance economically, without considering their complicity in settling on the lands of indigenous peoples that are being colonized by the United States.

Consequently, it may be more helpful to adopt an alternative framework for women of color and people of color organizing. I call one such framework the “ThreePillars of White Supremacy.” This framework does not assume that racism and white supremacy is enacted in a singular fashion; rather, white supremacy is constituted by separate and distinct, but still interrelated, logics. Envision three pillars, one labeled Slavery/Capitalism, another labeled Genocide/Capitalism, and the last one labeled Orientalism/War as well as arrows connecting each of the classes together.

Slavery/Capitalism

One pillar of white supremacy is the logic of slavery. As Sora Han, Jared Sexton, and Angela P. Harris note, this logic renders Black people as inherently slave- able-as nothing more than property.’ That is, in this logic of white supremacy, Blackness becomes equated with slaveability. The forms of slavery may change- whether it is through the formal system of slavery, sharecropping, or through the current prison-industrial complex-but the logic itself has remained consistent.

This logic is the anchor of capitalism~lhatis, the capitalist system ultimately commodifies all workers-one’s own person becomes a commodity that one must sell in the labor market while the profits of one’s work are taken by someone else. To keep this capitalist system in place-which ultimately commodifies most peo- ple-the togic of slavery applies a racial hierarchy to this system. This racial hier- archy tells people that as long as you are not Black, you have the opportunity to escape the commodification of capitalism. This helps people who are not Black to

accept their lot in life, because they can feel that at least they are not at the very bottom of the racial hierarchy-at least they are nor property; at least they are not slaveable.

?he logic of slavery can be seen clearly in the current prison industrial com- plex (PIC). While the PIC generally incarcerates communities of color, it seems to be structured primarily on an anti-Black racism. That is, prior to the Civil War,

nost people in prison where white. However, after the thirteenth amendment vsa passed-which banned slavery, except for those in prison-Black people pre- fiouslyenslaved through the slavery system were reenslaved through the prison ,ystem. Black people who had been the property of slave owners became state

property, through the conflict leasing system. n u s , we can actually look at rhe criminalization of Blackness as a logical extension of Blackness as property.

Genocide/Colonialism

A second pillar of white supremacy is the logic of genocide. This logic holds that indigenous peoples must disappear. In fact, they must always be disappearing, in order to allow non-indigenous peoples rightful claim over this land. Through this logic of genocide, non-Native peoples then become the rightful inheritors of all that was indigenous-land, resources, indigenous spirituality, or culture. As Kate Shanley notes, Native peoples are a permanent “present absence” in the US colonial imagination, an “absence” that reinforces, at every turn, the conviction that Native peoples are iiideed vanishing and that the conquest of Native lands is justified. Ella Shoat and Robert Stam describe this absence as “an ambivalently repressive mechanism [which] dispels the anxiety in the face of the Indian, whose very presence is a reminder of the initially precarious grounding of the American nation-state itself.. .. In a temporal paradox, living Indians were induced to ‘play dead,’ as it were, in order to perform a narrative of manifest destiny in which their role, ultimately, was to di~appear.”~

Rayna Green further elaborates that the current Indian “wannabe” phenom- enon is based on a logic of genocide: non-Native peoples imagine themselves as the rightful inheritors of all that previously belonged to “vanished” Indians, thus enti- tling them to ownership of this land. “The living performance of ‘playing Indian’ by non-Indian peoples depends upon the physical and psychological removal, even the death, of real Indians. In that sense, the performance, purportedly often done out of a stated and implicit love for Indians, is really the obverse of another well- known cultural phenomenon, ‘Indian hating,’ as most often expressed in another, deadly performance genre called ‘gen~cide.”’~After all, why would non-Native peoples need to play Indian- which often includes acts of spiritual appropriation and land theft-if they thought Indians were still alive and perfectly capable of being Indian themselves? The pillar of genocide serves askhe anchor for colonial- ism-it is what allows non-Native peoples to feel they can rightfully own indig enous peoples’ land. It is okay to take land from indigenous peoples, because indigenous peoples have disappeared.

Orientalism and War

A third pillar of white supremacy is the logic of Orientalism. Orient;
defined by Edward Said as the process of the West defining itself as a supt.llur civilization by constructing itself in opposition to an “exotic” but inferior “Ori- ent.” (Here I am using the term “Orientalism” more broadly than to solely signify what has been historically named as the Orient or Asia.) The logic of Orientalism marks certain peoples or nations as inferior and as posing a constant threat to the well-being of empire. These peoples are still seen as “civilizations”-they are not property or “disappeared”-however, they will always be imaged as permanent foreign threats to empire. This logic is evident in the anti-immigration movemenrs within the United States that target immigrants of color. It does not matter holy long immigrants of color reside in the United States, they generally become tar- geted as foreign threats, particularly during war time. Consequently, Orientalism serves as the anchor for war, because it allows the United States to justify being in Ia constant state of war to protect itself from its enemies.

For example, the United States feels entitled to use Orientalist logic to justify racial profiling of Arab Americans so that it can be strong enough to fight the “war on terror.” Orientalism also allows the United States to defend the logics of slavery and genocide, as these practices enable the United States to stay “strong enough” to fight these constant wars. What becomes clear then is what Sora Han states- the United States is not at war; the United States is war.4 For the system of white rupremacy to stay in place, the United States must always be at war.

Because we are situated within different logics of white supremacy, we may misunderstand a racial dynamic ifwe simplistically try to explain one logic of white supremacy with another logic. For instance, think about the first scenario that )pens this essay: if we simply dismiss Latinolas or Arab peoples as “white,” we fail to understand how a racial logic of Orientalism is in operation. That is, Latinolas and Arabs are often situated in a racial hierarchy that privileges them over Black people. However, while Orientalist logic may bestow them some racial privilege, they are still cast as inferior yet threatening “civilizations” in the United States. Their privilege is not a signal that they will be assimilated, but that they will be marked as perpetual foreign threats to the US world order.

Organizing Implications

Under the old but still potent and dominant model, people of color organizing was based on the notion of organizing around shared victimhood. In this model, how- ever, we see that we are victims ofwhite supremacy, but complicit in it as well. O u r survival strategies and resistance to white supremacy are set by the system ofwhite supremacy itself. What keeps us trapped within our particular pillars of white supremacy is that we are seduced with the prospect of being able to participate in the other pillars. For example, all non-Native peoples are promised the ability

to join in the colonial project of settling indigenous lands. All non-Black peoples are promised that if they comply, they will not be at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. And Black, Native, Latino, and Asian peoples are promised that they will economically and politically advance if they join US wars to spread “democracy.” Thus, people of color organizing must be premised on making strategic alliances with each other, based on where we are situated within the larger political economy. Thus, for example, Native peoples who are organizing against the colonial and genocidal practices committed by the US government will be more effective in their struggle if they also organize against US militarism, particularly the military recruitment of indigenous peoples to support US imperial wars. If we try to end US colonial practices at home, but support US empire by joining the military, we are strengthening the state’s ability to carry out genocidal policies against peo- ple of color here and all over the world.

This way, our alliances would not be solely based on shared victimization, but where we are complict in the victimization of others. These approaches might help us to develop resistance strategies that do not inadvertently keep the system in place for all of us, and keep all of us accountable. In all of these cases, we would check our aspirations against the aspirations of other communities to ensure that our model of liberation does not become the model of oppression for others.

These practices require us to be more viligant in how we may have internalized some of these logics in our own organizing practice. For instance, much racial justice organizing within the United States has rested on a civil rights framework that fights for equality under the law. An assumption behind this organizing is that the United States is a democracy with some flaws, but is otherwise admirable. Despite the fact that it rendered slaves three-fifths of a person, the US Constitution is presented as the model document from which to build a flourishing democracy. However, as Luana Ross notes, it has never been against US law to commit genocide against indigenous peoples-in fact, genocide is the law of the country.

The United States could not exist without it. In the United States, democracy is actually the alibi for genocide it is the practice that covers up United States colonial control over indigenous lands.

Our organizing can also reflect anti-Black racism. Recently, with the out- growth of “multiculturalism” there have been calls to “go beyond the blacklwhite binary” and include other communities of color in our analysis, as presented in the third scenario. There are a number of flaws with this analysis. First, it replaces an analysis of white supremacy with a politics of multicultural representation; if we just include more people, then our practice will be less racist. Not true. This model does not address the nuanced structure of white supremacy, such as through these distinct logics of slavery, genocide, and Orientalism. Second, it obscures the cen- trality of the slavery logic in the system of white supremacy, which is based on a black/white binary. The blacklwhite binary is not the only binary which character- izes white supremacy, but it is still a central one that we cannot “go beyond” in our racial justice organizing efforts.

If we do not look at how the logic of slaveability inflects our society and our thinking, it will be evident in our work as well. For example, other cordnunities of color often appropriate the cultural work and organizing strategies of African American civil rights or Black Power movements without corresponding assump- tions that we should also be in solidarity with Black communities. We assume that this work is the common “propertyn of all oppressed groups, and we can appopriate it without being accountable.

Angela P. Harris and Juan Perea debate the usefulness of the black/white binary in the book, Critical Race Theory. Perea complains that the blacklwhite binary fails to include the experiences of other people of color. However, he fails to identify alternative racializing logics to the black/white paradigm. Meanwhile, Angela P. Harris argues that “the story of ‘race’ itself is that of the construction of Blackness and whiteness. In this story, Indians, Asian Americans, and Latinostas do exist. But their roles are subsidiary to the fundamental binary national drama. As a political claim, Black exceptionalism exposes the deep mistrust and tensions among Ameri- can ethnic groups racialized as nonwhite.”

Let’s examine these statements in conversation with each other. Simply say- ing we need to move beyond the blacklwhite binary (or perhaps, the “blacklnon- black” binary) in US racism obfuscates the racializing logic of slavery, and prevents us from seeing that this binary constitutes Blackness as the bottom of a color hier- archy. However, this is not the only binary that fundamentally constitutes white supremacy.There is also an indigenouslsettler binary, where Native genocideis central to the logic of white supremacy and other non-indigenous people of color also confirm”a subsidiary” role. We also face another Orientalist logic that fundamentally ;onsritutes Asians, Arabs, and Latinolas as foreign threats, requiring the United Sr~testo be at permanent war with these peoples. In this construction, Black and Narive peoples play subsidiary roles.

Clearly the black/white binary is central to racial and political thought and practice in the United States, and any understanding of white supremacy must rake it into consideration. However, if we look at only this binary, we may misread race dynamics of white supremacy in different contexts. For example, critical race theorist Cheryl Harris’s analysis of whiteness as property reveals this weakness. In Critical Race Iheory, Harris contends that whites have a property interest in the preservation of whiteness, and seek to deprive those who are “tainted” by Black or Indian blood from these same white property interests. Harris simply assumes that rhe positions of African Americans and American Indians are the same, failing to consider US policies of forced assimilation and forced whiteness on American Indians. These policies have become so entrenched that when Native peoples make political claims, they have been accused of being white. When Andrew Jackson removed the Cherokee along the Trail of Tears, he argued that those who did not want removal were really white.7In contemporary times, when I was a non-violent witness for the Chippewa spearfishers in the late 1980s, one of the more frequent slurs whites hurled when the Chippewa attempted to exercise their treaty-protected right to fish was that they had white parents, or they were really white.

Status differences between Blacks and Natives are informed by the different ~conomicpositions African Americans and American Indians have in US society. African Americans have been traditionally valued for their labor, hence it is in the interest of the dominant society to have as many people marked “Black,” as possible, thereby maintaining a cheap labor pool; by contrast, American Indians have been valued for the land base they occupy, so it is in the interest of dominant society to have as few people marked “Indian” as possible, facilitating access to Native lands”. Whiteness” operates differently under a logic of genocide than it does from logic of slavery.

Another failure of US-based people of color in organizing is that we often back on a “US-centricism,” believing that what is happening “over there” is as important than what is happening here. We fail to see how the United States system of oppression here precisely by tying our allegiances to the interests of US empire “over there.”

Heteropatriarchy is the building block of US empire. In fact, it is the building block of the nation-state form of governance. Christian Right authors make these links in their analysis of imperialism and empire. For example, Christian Right activist and founder of Prison Fellowship Charles Colson makes the connection between homosexuality and the nation-state in his analysis of the war on terror, explaining that one of the causes of terrorism is same-sex marriage:

Marriage is the traditional building blocl<of human society, intend- ed both to unite couples and bring children into the world ... There is a natural moral order for the family ... the family, led by a rnarried mother and father, is the best available structure for both child- rearing and cultural health. Marriage is not a private institution designed solely for the individual gratification of its participants. If we fail to enact a Federal Marriage Amendment, we can expect not just more family breakdown, but also more criminals behind bars and more chaos in our streets.”

Colson is linking the well-being of US empire to the well-being of the heteropatri- archal family. He continues:

When radical Islamists see American women abusing Muslim men, as they did in the Abu Ghraib prison, and when they see news cov- erage of same-sex couples being “married” in US towns, we make this kind of freedom abhorrent-the kind they see as a blot on Allah’s creation. We must preserve traditional marriage in order to protect the United States from those who would use our depravity to destroy us?

As A n n Burlein argues in Lift High the Cross, it may be a mistake to argue thac the goal of Christian Right politics is to create a theocracy in the United States. Rather, Christian Right politics work through the private family (which is coded as white, patriarchal, and middle class) to create a “Christian America.” She notes that the investment in the private family makes it difficult for people to invest in more public forms of social connection. In addition, investment in the suburban pri- vate family serves to mask the public disinvestment in urban areas thac makes the suburban lifestyle possible. The social decay in urban areas that results from this disinvestment is then construed as the result of deviance from the Christian family ideal rather than as the result of political and economic forces. As former head of the Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed, states: “‘The only true solution to crime is to restore the family,”10 and “Family break-up causes poverty.”” Concludes Burlein, “‘The family’ is no mere metaphor but a crucial technology by which modern power is produced and exercised.”’*

As I have argued elsewhere, in order to colonize peoples whose societies are nor based on social hierarchy, colonizers must first naturalize hierarchy through insri- tuting patriarchy.13 In turn, patriarchy rests on a gender binary system in which only two genders exist, one dominating the other. Consequently, Charles Colson is correct when he says that the colonial world order depends on heteronormativ- ity. Just as the patriarchs rule the family, the elites of the nation-state rule their citizens. Any liberation struggle that does not challenge heteronormativity canlior substantially challenge colonialism or white supremacy. Rather, as Cathy Cohen contends, such struggles will maintain colonialism based on a politics of second- ary marginalization where the most elite class of these groups will further their aspirations on the backs of those most marginalized within the community. Through this process of secondary marginalization, the national or racial justice struggle takes on either implicitly or explicitly a nation-state model as them!

point of its struggle-a model of governance in which the elites govern the rest through violence and domination, as well as exclude those who are not members of “the nation.” Thus, national liberation politics become less vulnerable to being coopted by the Right when we base them on a model of liberation that fundamen-

Itally challenges right-wing conceptions of t h e w . We need a model based on community relationships and on mutual respect.

Conclusion

Women of color-centered organizing points to the centrality of gender politics within antiracist, anticolonial struggles. Unfortunately, in our efforts to orga- nize against white, Christian America, racial justice struggles often articulate
an equally heteropatriarchal racial nationalism. This model of organizing either hopes to assimilate into white America, or to replicate it within an equally hierar- chical and oppressive racial nationalism in which the elites of the community rule everyone else. Such struggles often call on the importance of preserving the “Black family” or the “Native family” as the bulwark of this nationalist project, the f a d
ily being conceived of in capitalist and heteropatriarchal terms. The response is often increased homophobia, with lesbian and gay community members con- strued as “threats” to the family. But, perhaps we should challenge the “concept” of the family itself. Perhaps, instead, we can reconstitute alternative ways of living together in which “families” are not seen as islands on their own. Certainly, indig- enous communities were not ordered on the basis of a nuclear family structure-is the result of colonialism, not the antidote to it.

In proposing this model, I am speaking from my particular position in indigenous struggles. .Other peoples might flesh out these logics more fully from different vantage points. Others might also argue that there are other logics of white supremacy are missing. Still others might complicate how they relate to each other. But I see this as a starting point for women of color organizers that will allow us to reenvision a politics of solidarity that goes beyond multiculturalism, and develop more complicated strategies that can really transform the political and economic status quo.?

The premise behind much “women of color” organizing is that women from communities victimised by white supremacy should unite together around their shared oppression.  This framework might be represented by a diagram of five overlapping circles, each marked Native women, Black women, Arab/Muslim women, Latinas and Asian-American women, overlapping like a venn diagram.

This framework has been proven to be limited for women of color and people of color organizing.  First, it tends to assume that our communities have been impacted by white supremacy in the same way.  Consequently, we often assume that all of our communities will share similar strategies for liberation.  In fact, however, our strategies often run into conflict.  For example, one strategy that many in US-born communities of color adopt, in order to advance economically out of impoverished communities, is to join the military.  We often become complicit in oppressing and colonizing communities in other countries.  Meanwhile, people from other countries adopt the strategy of moving to the United States to advance economically without considering their complicity in settling on the lands of indigenous peoples that are being colonized by the United States.

Consequently, it may be more helpful to adopt an alternative framework for women of color and people of color organizing.  I call one such framework “The Three Pillars of White Supremacy.”  This framework does not assume that racism and white supremacy is enacted in a singular fashion; rather, white supremacy is constituted by separate and distinct, but still interrelated, logics.  Envision three pillars, one labelled Slavery/Capitalism, another labelled Genocide/Capitalism, and the last one labelled Orientalism/War, as well as arrows connecting each of the pillars together.

*Orientalism/War/Capitalism

…I would argue that the three primary logics of white supremacy in the US context include: (1) slaveability/anti-black racism, which anchors capitalism; (2) genocide, which anchors colonialism; and (3) orientalism, which anchors war.

Under the old but still dominant model, organising by people of colour was based on the notion of organising around shared victimhood. In this model, however, we see that we are not only victims of white supremacy, but complicit in it as well. Our survival strategies and resistance to white supremacy are set by the system of white supremacy itself. What keeps us trapped within our particular pillars of white supremacy is that we are seduced by the prospect of being able to participate in the other pillars. For example, all non-Native peoples are promised the ability to join in the colonial project of settling indigenous lands. All non-black peoples are promised that if they conform, they will not be at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. And black and Native peoples are promised that they will advance economically and politically if they join US wars to spread “democracy”. Thus, organising by people of colour must be premised on making strategic alliances with one another, based on where we are situated within the larger political economy. Coalition work is based on organising not just around oppression, but also around complicity in the oppression of other peoples as well as our own.

It is important to note that these pillars of white supremacy are best understood as logics rather than categories signifying specific groups of people. Thus, the peoples entangled in these logics may shift through time and space. Peoples may also be implicated in more than one logic simultaneously, such as peoples who are black and Indigenous. This model also destabilises some of the conventional categories by which we often understand either ethnic studies or racial-justice organising—categories such as African American/Latino/Asian American/Native American/Arab American. For instance, in the case of Latinos, these logics may affect peoples differently depending on whether they are black, Indigenous, Mestizo, etc.