Editing White supremacy

{{Short description|Belief in the superiority of white people}}
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{{Use American English|date=June 2025}}
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'''White supremacy''' is the belief that [[white people]] are [[Supremacism|superior]] to those of other [[Race (human classification)|races]].<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/white-supremacy |encyclopedia=britannica |author=John Philip Jenkins|title=white supremacy|access-date=2022-08-14|date=2021-04-13|archive-date=April 27, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220427101628/https://www.britannica.com/topic/white-supremacy|url-status=live}}</ref> The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any [[Power (social and political)|power]] and [[White privilege|privilege held by white people]]. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine of [[scientific racism]] and was a key justification for [[European colonialism]].<ref>{{cite web|author=American Association of Physical Anthropologists|author-link=American Association of Physical Anthropologists|title=AAPA Statement on Race and Racism|website=American Association of Physical Anthropologists|access-date=19 June 2020|date=27 March 2019|url=https://physanth.org/about/position-statements/aapa-statement-race-and-racism-2019/ |quote=Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination.|archive-date=January 25, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220125163036/https://physanth.org/about/position-statements/aapa-statement-race-and-racism-2019/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>"Ostensibly scientific": cf. Theodore M. Porter, Dorothy Ross (eds.) 2003. The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 7, The Modern Social Sciences Cambridge University Press, p. 293 "Race has long played a powerful popular role in explaining social and cultural traits, often in ostensibly scientific terms"; Adam Kuper, Jessica Kuper (eds.), ''The Social Science Encyclopedia'' (1996), "Racism", p. 716: "This [''[[sc.]] scientific''] racism entailed the use of 'scientific techniques', to sanction the belief in European and American racial Superiority"; ''Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Questions to Sociobiology'' (1998), "Race, theories of", p. 18: "Its exponents [''sc. of scientific racism''] tended to equate race with species and claimed that it constituted a scientific explanation of human history"; Terry Jay Ellingson, ''The myth of the noble savage'' (2001), 147ff. "In scientific racism, the racism was never very scientific; nor, it could at least be argued, was whatever met the qualifications of actual science ever very racist" (p. 151); Paul A. Erickson, Liam D. Murphy, ''A History of Anthropological Theory'' (2008), p. 152: "Scientific racism: Improper or incorrect science that actively or passively supports racism".</ref>

As a [[political ideology]], it imposes and maintains cultural, [[Color line (racism)|social]], [[Racial segregation|political]], [[Pseudohistory|historical]] or [[institutional racism|institutional]] domination by white people and non-white supporters. In the past, this ideology had been put into effect through socioeconomic and legal structures such as the [[Atlantic slave trade]], [[European colonialism|European colonial]] labor and social practices, the [[Scramble for Africa]], [[Jim Crow laws]] in the United States, the activities of the [[Native Lands Act 1865|Native Land Court]] in New Zealand,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ray |first=William |date=2022-06-03 |title=Season 2 Ep 6: Native Land Court |url=https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-aotearoa-history-show/story/2018844576/season-2-ep-6-native-land-court |access-date=2023-08-25 |website=[[RNZ]] |language=en-nz |archive-date=December 2, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231202183417/https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-aotearoa-history-show/story/2018844576/season-2-ep-6-native-land-court |url-status=live }}</ref> the [[White Australia policy|White Australia policies]] from the 1890s to the mid-1970s, and [[apartheid]] in South Africa.<ref>{{cite book |last=Wildman |first=Stephanie M. |url=https://archive.org/details/privilegereveale00wild |title=Privilege Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America |publisher=NYU Press |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-8147-9303-9 |page=[https://archive.org/details/privilegereveale00wild/page/87 87] |url-access=registration}}</ref><ref name="Helms 2016 6–7">{{Cite journal |last=Helms |first=Janet |date=2016 |title=An election to save White Heterosexual Male Privilege |url=https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/schools/lsoe_sites/isprc/pdf/Helms%20LPT%202016%20(1).pdf  |journal=Latina/o Psychology Today |volume=3 |issue=2 |pages=6–7 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170514172609/https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/schools/lsoe_sites/isprc/pdf/Helms%20LPT%202016%20(1).pdf |archive-date=2017-05-14}}</ref> This ideology is also today present among [[neo-Confederates]].

White supremacy underlies a spectrum of contemporary movements including [[white nationalism]], white separatism, [[neo-Nazism]], and the [[Christian Identity]] movement.<ref>{{Cite magazine|last=Brody|first=Richard|date=2021-04-09|title="Exterminate All the Brutes," Reviewed: A Vast, Agonizing History of White Supremacy|url=https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/exterminate-all-the-brutes-reviewed-a-vast-agonizing-history-of-white-supremacy|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210409233933/https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/exterminate-all-the-brutes-reviewed-a-vast-agonizing-history-of-white-supremacy|archive-date=2021-04-09|access-date=2022-01-28|magazine=[[The New Yorker]]}}</ref> In the United States, white supremacy is primarily associated with [[Aryan Nations]], [[White Aryan Resistance]], and the [[Ku Klux Klan]]. The [[Proud Boys]] are considered an implicitly white supremacist organization, despite denying their association with white supremacy.<ref name="Kutner2020">{{cite journal |last=Kutner |first=Samantha |date=2020 |title=The Allure of Hyper Masculinity and Cryptofascism for Men Who Join the Proud Boys |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/resrep25259.pdf |journal=International Centre for Counter-Terrorism |page=1 |jstor=resrep25259 |access-date=July 30, 2022 |archive-date=April 19, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230419225944/https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/resrep25259.pdf |url-status=live}}</ref> In recent years,{{When|date=April 2026|reason=more specific time frame needed}} websites such as [[X (social network)|X]] (formerly Twitter), [[Reddit]], and [[Stormfront (website)|Stormfront]] have contributed to an increased activity and interest in white supremacy.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Daniel|first=Jessie|url=https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1371&context=hc_pubs|title=Twitter and White Supremacy: A Love Story|date=October 19, 2017|website=[[CUNY]] Academic Works|access-date=December 9, 2018|archive-date=April 6, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220406235839/https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1371&context=hc_pubs|url-status=live}}</ref>

Not all white-supremacist organizations have the same objectives, and while some may uphold a [[Nordicist]] ideal of whiteness, others are more broadly white supremacist, including members of [[Southern European]] and [[Eastern European]] descent.<ref name="Flint 2004, p. 53">{{cite book |last=Flint |first=Colin |title=Spaces of Hate: Geographies of Discrimination and Intolerance in the U.S.A. |publisher=Routledge |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-415-93586-9<!--0-415-93586-5--> |page=53 |quote=Although white racist activists must adopt a political identity of whiteness, the flimsy definition of whiteness in modern culture poses special challenges for them. In both mainstream and white supremacist discourse, to be white is to be distinct from those marked as nonwhite, yet the placement of the distinguishing line has varied significantly in different times and places.}}</ref> Different groups of white supremacists identify various racial, ethnic, religious, and other enemies,<ref name="Flint 2004, p. 53"/> most commonly those of [[Sub-Saharan Africa]]n ancestry, [[Indigenous peoples]], people of [[Asia]]n descent, [[multiracial people]], [[Middle East and North Africa|MENA]] people, [[Jews]], [[Muslims]], and [[LGBTQ+]] people.<ref>{{cite news |title='Jews will not replace us': Why white supremacists go after Jews |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/08/14/jews-will-not-replace-us-why-white-supremacists-go-after-jews/ |newspaper=The Washington Post |access-date=August 14, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220713223948/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/08/14/jews-will-not-replace-us-why-white-supremacists-go-after-jews/ |archive-date=July 13, 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=How Anti-Semitism Is Tied To White Nationalism |url=https://www.npr.org/2018/10/30/662253632/how-anti-semitism-is-tied-to-white-nationalism |website=National Public Radio |access-date=October 30, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220713225139/https://www.npr.org/2018/10/30/662253632/how-anti-semitism-is-tied-to-white-nationalism |archive-date=July 13, 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Antisemitism Is Driving White Supremacist Terror In The United States |url=https://www.thedailybeast.com/antisemitism-is-the-root-of-all-white-supremacist-terrorism |website=The Daily Beast |date=January 19, 2022 |access-date=January 19, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220713225140/https://www.thedailybeast.com/antisemitism-is-the-root-of-all-white-supremacist-terrorism |archive-date=July 13, 2022|last1=Ali |first1=Wajahat }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Why Are So Many White Nationalists 'Virulently Anti-LGBT'? |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/why-are-so-many-white-nationalists-virulently-anti-lgbt-n794466 |website=National Broadcasting Company |date=August 21, 2017 |access-date=August 21, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220713223944/https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/why-are-so-many-white-nationalists-virulently-anti-lgbt-n794466 |archive-date=July 13, 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Why are white nationalist groups targeting LGBTQ groups? |url=https://www.npr.org/2022/06/19/1106125400/why-are-white-nationalist-groups-targeting-lgbtq-groups |website=National Public Radio |access-date=June 19, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220713223943/https://www.npr.org/2022/06/19/1106125400/why-are-white-nationalist-groups-targeting-lgbtq-groups |archive-date=July 13, 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=White supremacy's rigid views on gender and sexuality |url=https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/15/us/white-supremacy-anti-lgbtq-bigotry/index.html |website=Cable News Network |date=June 15, 2022 |access-date=June 15, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220713224702/https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/15/us/white-supremacy-anti-lgbtq-bigotry/index.html |archive-date=July 13, 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Knoxville Pridefest parade: White nationalists to protest |url=https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/crime/2018/06/13/knoxville-pridefest-parade-white-nationalists-protest/697812002/ |website=Knoxnews |access-date=June 13, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220713225915/https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/crime/2018/06/13/knoxville-pridefest-parade-white-nationalists-protest/697812002/ |archive-date=July 13, 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Smith|first=Andrea|editor1-first=Daniel Martinez|editor1-last=HoSang|editor2-first=Oneka|editor2-last=LaBennett|editor3-first=Laura|editor3-last=Pulido|chapter=Indigeneity, settler colonialism, white supremacy|title=Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VFj15NlQUS0C|publisher=University of California Press|date=1 September 2012|isbn=978-0-520-95376-5|via=Google Books}}</ref>

In academic usage, particularly in [[critical race theory]] or [[intersectionality]], "white supremacy" also refers to a social system in which white people enjoy structural advantages ([[Privilege (social inequality)|privilege]]) over other ethnic groups, on both a collective and individual level, despite formal legal equality.<ref name="ansley1">{{cite journal |last=Ansley |first=Frances Lee |year=1989 |title=Stirring the Ashes: Race, Class and the Future of Civil Rights Scholarship |journal=Cornell Law Review |volume=74 |pages=993ff}}</ref><ref name="ansley2">{{Cite book |last=Ansley |first=Frances Lee |title=Critical white studies: Looking behind the mirror |date=June 29, 1997 |publisher=Temple University Press |isbn=978-1-56639-532-8 |editor1=Richard Delgado |page=592 |chapter=White supremacy (and what we should do about it) |editor2=Jean Stefancic}}</ref><ref name="Mills2003" /><ref name="Hooks2000" /><ref name="Gillborn2006" />

==History==
White supremacy has ideological foundations that date back to 18th-century [[scientific racism]], the predominant paradigm of human variation that shaped international relations and racial policy from the latter part of the [[Age of Enlightenment]] until the late 20th century.<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Curran |first=Andrew |date=2020-07-10 |title=Facing America's History of Racism Requires Facing the Origins of 'Race' as a Concept |url=https://time.com/5865530/history-race-concept/ |access-date=2025-05-22 |magazine=Time |language=en}}</ref>

===United States===
{{Main|White supremacy in the United States}}

==== Early history ====
White supremacy was dominant in the United States both before and after the [[American Civil War]], and it persisted for decades after the [[Reconstruction era]].<ref>{{cite book | last = Fredrickson | first = George | author-link=George M. Fredrickson | title = White Supremacy | publisher = Oxford University Press | location = Oxford Oxfordshire | year = 1981 |isbn=978-0-19-503042-6 | page = [https://archive.org/details/whitesupremacy00geor/page/162 162] | url = https://archive.org/details/whitesupremacy00geor/page/162 }}</ref> The [[Virginia Slave Codes of 1705]] socially segregated white colonists from black enslaved persons, making them disparate groups and hindering their ability to unite. Unity of the commoners was a perceived fear of the Virginian [[Planter class|planter gentry]], who wished to prevent repeated events such as [[Bacon's Rebellion]], occurring 29 years prior.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Fenelon |first1=James V. |title=INDIAN, BLACK AND IRISH: indigenous nations, african peoples, european invasions, 1492-1790 |date=2023 |publisher=ROUTLEDGE |location=S.l. |isbn=9781003315087}}</ref> Prior to the Civil War, many wealthy white Southerners [[Slavery in the United States|owned slaves]]; they tried to justify their economic exploitation of black people by creating a [[Scientific racism|"scientific" theory of white superiority and black inferiority]].<ref name=Boggs>{{cite journal |jstor=41202851 |title=Uprooting Racism and Racists in the United States |last=Boggs |first=James |author-link=James Boggs (activist) |journal=The Black Scholar |publisher=Paradigm Publishers |date=October 1970 |volume=2 |number=2 |pages=2–5|doi=10.1080/00064246.1970.11431000 }}</ref> One such slave owner, future president [[Thomas Jefferson]], wrote in 1785 that blacks were "inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind."<ref>[[Paul Finkelman]] (November 12, 2012). [https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/opinion/the-real-thomas-jefferson.html?pagewanted=all "The Monster of Monticello"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220409233132/https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/opinion/the-real-thomas-jefferson.html?pagewanted=all |date=April 9, 2022 }}. ''The New York Times''. Retrieved July 14, 2020.</ref> In the [[antebellum South]], four million slaves were denied freedom.<ref>{{cite news|last=Harris|first=Paul|date=2012-06-16|title=How the end of slavery led to starvation and death for millions of black Americans|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/16/slavery-starvation-civil-war|url-status=live|access-date=2022-01-28|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130914160449/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/16/slavery-starvation-civil-war|archive-date=2013-09-14}}</ref> The outbreak of the Civil War saw the desire to uphold white supremacy being cited as a cause for [[Secession in the United States|state secession]]<ref>[http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_texsec.asp A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110811013053/http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_texsec.asp |date=August 11, 2011 }}: "We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable. That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states."</ref> and the formation of the [[Confederate States of America]].<ref>[http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=76 The controversial "Cornerstone Speech", Alexander H. Stephens (Vice President of the Confederate States), March 21, 1861, Savannah, Georgia] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071117085333/http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=76 |date=November 17, 2007 }}: "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition."</ref>

[[File:Discovery-statue (cropped).JPG|thumb|upright=1.1|''[[The Discovery of America (sculpture)|The Discovery of America]]'' (1844) sculpture, depicting a triumphant Columbus and a "female savage" (Native woman), which stood outside the [[U.S. Capitol]]]] 
[[Image:duluth-lynching-postcard.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|White men pose for a photograph of the [[1920 Duluth lynchings|1920 Duluth, Minnesota lynchings]]. Two of the black victims are still hanging while the third is on the ground. [[Lynching in the United States|Lynchings]] were often public spectacles for the white community to celebrate white supremacy in the U.S., and photos were often sold as postcards.<ref>{{cite news |title=History of Lynching in America |url=https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-lynching-america |access-date=March 14, 2022 |agency=NAACP |archive-date=January 3, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230103133929/https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-lynching-america |url-status=live }}</ref>]] 
[[File:Ku Klux Klan parade7 crop.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|[[Ku Klux Klan]] parade in Washington, D.C. in 1926]]

[[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]] had been dehumanized as "merciless Indian savages" in the [[United States Declaration of Independence]],<ref>{{cite news |title=Facebook labels declaration of independence as 'hate speech' |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/05/facebook-declaration-of-independence-hate-speech |access-date=February 28, 2026 |newspaper=The Guardian}}</ref> and in [[Martin Luther King Jr.]]'s 1964 book ''[[Why We Can't Wait]]'' he wrote: "Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Rickert |first1=Levi |title=Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: Our Nation was Born in Genocide |url=https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-nation-born-genocide/ |website=Native News Online |access-date=February 28, 2026 |date=January 16, 2017 |archive-date=November 26, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181126092832/https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-nation-born-genocide/}}</ref> Two sculptures reflecting the view of the Natives espoused in the declaration were commissioned by the [[Federal government of the United States|U.S. government]] and stood outside the [[U.S. Capitol]] from 1844 to 1958: ''[[The Discovery of America (sculpture)|The Discovery of America]]'', which depicted a triumphant Columbus and a "female savage" according to the Pennsylvania senator [[James Buchanan]] who proposed the sculpture,<ref>''Congressional Globe'', April 28, 1836, p. 1316.</ref> and ''[[The Rescue (sculpture)|The Rescue]]'', whose sculptor [[Horatio Greenough]] wrote that it was "to convey the idea of the triumph of the whites over the savage tribes".<ref>[[Albert Boime|Boime, Albert]] (2004), ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=24Hgr0U8K3QC&dq=Rescue+AND+Greenough&pg=PA527 A Social History of Modern Art, Volume 2: Art in an Age of Counterrevolution, 1815–1848]'', (Series: Social History of Modern Art); [[University of Chicago Press]], p. 527.</ref> In an 1890 editorial about the Natives and the [[American Indian Wars]], author [[L. Frank Baum]] wrote: "The Whites, by [[Right of conquest|law of conquest]], by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.northern.edu/hastingw/baumedts.htm |title=L. Frank Baum's Editorials on the Sioux Nation |access-date=December 9, 2007  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071209193251/http://www.northern.edu/hastingw/baumedts.htm |archive-date=December 9, 2007 }} Full text of both, with commentary by professor A. Waller Hastings</ref>

The [[Naturalization Act of 1790]] limited U.S. citizenship to whites only.<ref>{{cite book|last=Schultz|first=Jeffrey D.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WDV40aK1T-sC&q=African+Americans+discriminated+by+Naturalization+Act+of+1790&pg=PA284|title=Encyclopedia of Minorities in American Politics: African Americans and Asian Americans|year=2002|isbn=978-1-57356-148-8|page=284|publisher=Oryx Press|access-date=March 25, 2010|archive-date=March 7, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240307150238/https://books.google.com/books?id=WDV40aK1T-sC&q=African+Americans+discriminated+by+Naturalization+Act+of+1790&pg=PA284|url-status=live}}</ref> In some parts of the United States, many people who were considered non-white were [[disfranchisement|disenfranchised]], barred from government office, and prevented from holding most government jobs well into the second half of the 20th century. Professor Leland T. Saito of the [[University of Southern California]] writes: "Throughout the history of the United States, race has been used by whites for legitimizing and creating difference and social, economic and political exclusion."<ref>Leland T. Saito (1998). "Race and Politics: Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb". p. 154. University of Illinois Press</ref>

'''19th century'''

A belief in racial purity and white supremacy were among the reasons for the [[anti-miscegenation law]]s in the U.S, with [[Abraham Lincoln]] stating in an 1858 speech, "I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to [[Interracial marriage|intermarry with white people]]. I as much as any man am in favor of the superior position assigned to the white race."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Abraham Lincoln |title=Speeches and Writings 1832–1858: Speeches, Letters, and Miscellaneous Writings: the Lincoln-Douglas Debates |publisher=Library of America |year=1989 |volume=1 |page=638}}</ref> By the late 1800s, 38 [[U.S. states]] had laws banning interracial marriage.<ref name="Race" /> 

[[Benjamin Tillman]] was a white supremacist former U.S. governor and senator who participated and boasted about the [[Lynching in the United States|lynchings]] of Black Americans, and defended on the floor of the U.S. Senate.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kantrowitz |first=Stephen David |title=Ben Tillman & the reconstruction of white supremacy |date=2000 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-0-8078-2530-3 |series=The Fred W. Morrison series in Southern studies |location=Chapel Hill}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.anb.org/articles/05/05-00784.html?a=1&n=Tillman,%20Benjamin%20Ryan&d=10&ss=0&q=1 |access-date=2025-12-29 |website=American National Biography|title=Tillman, Benjamin Ryan|date=1999|last=Burton|first=Orville Vernon|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Simkins |first=Francis Butler |date=May 1937 |title=Ben Tillman's View of the Negro |url=https://doi.org/10.2307/2191880 |journal=The Journal of Southern History |volume=3 |issue=2 |pages=161–174 |doi=10.2307/2191880 |jstor=2191880 |issn=0022-4642|url-access=subscription }}</ref> [[Rebecca Latimer Felton]], a white supremacist and the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate, gave a speech calling for the lynching of Black men.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Mallonee |first=Laura |title=The Nation's First Woman Senator Was a Virulent White Supremacist |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-nations-first-woman-senator-was-a-virulent-white-supremacist-180981150/ |access-date=2025-12-29 |website=Smithsonian Magazine |language=en}}</ref>

==== 20th century ====
A series of U.S politicians continued to advocate and agitate towards White supremacy. An example being an Elected Governor of Mississippi, [[James K. Vardaman]], who used the term White Supremacy verbatim when he said "If it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy."<ref>{{Cite web |title=James K. Vardaman {{!}} American Experience {{!}} PBS |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/flood-vardaman/ |access-date=2025-12-29 |website=www.pbs.org |language=en}}</ref>

[[Eugene Talmadge]] was a white supremacist who was elected four times as the governor of Georgia. His opponent, Ellis Gibbs Arnall, once noted that nobody could beat Talmadge in what he cynically called the "nigger-hating contest".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Anderson |first=William |title=The wild man from Sugar Creek: the political career of Eugene Talmadge |date=1975 |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |isbn=978-0-8071-0088-2 |location=Baton Rouge}}</ref> Both were white supremacists and [[Anti-Black racism|anti-black]], but Arnall was less crude about it.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Anderson |first=William |title=The wild man from Sugar Creek: the political career of Eugene Talmadge |date=1975 |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |isbn=978-0-8071-0088-2 |location=Baton Rouge}}</ref>

The denial of social and political freedom to minorities continued into the mid-20th century, resulting in the [[civil rights movement]].<ref>{{Cite press release |url=https://www.archives.gov/kansas-city/press/2013/13-29.html |title=50th Anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom Panel Discussion at the Black Archives of Mid-America |access-date=October 3, 2015 |publisher=The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration |date=August 7, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151004044615/http://www.archives.gov/kansas-city/press/2013/13-29.html |archive-date=October 4, 2015 }}</ref> The movement was spurred by the lynching of [[Emmett Till]], a 14-year-old boy. David Jackson writes it was the image of the "murdered child's ravaged body, that forced the world to reckon with the brutality of American racism."<ref>{{Cite web |title=How The Horrific Photograph Of Emmett Till Helped Energize The Civil Rights Movement |url=http://100photos.time.com/photos/emmett-till-david-jackson |access-date=2017-08-05 |website=100 Photographs {{!}} The Most Influential Images of All Time |archive-date=July 6, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170706123149/http://100photos.time.com/photos/emmett-till-david-jackson  }}</ref>

Sociologist Stephen Klineberg has stated that U.S. immigration laws prior to 1965 clearly "declared that [[Northern European]]s are a superior subspecies of the white race".<ref name="Immigration law" />{{Efn|This quote is by Klineberg in the NPR story, not from the text of any US law.}} The [[Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965]] opened entry to the U.S. to non-Germanic groups, and significantly altered the demographic mix in the U.S. as a result.<ref name="Immigration law">{{cite news |title=1965 immigration law changed face of America |author=Jennifer Ludden |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5391395 |work=[[All Things Considered]] |publisher=[[NPR]] |access-date=April 6, 2018 |archive-date=October 21, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161021143552/http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5391395 |url-status=live }}</ref> The last 16 states in which interracial marriage was banned had such laws in place until 1967 when they were invalidated by the [[Supreme Court of the United States]]' decision in ''[[Loving v. Virginia]]''.<ref>[[Earl Warren|Warren, Earl]]. Majority opinion. ''Loving v. Virginia''. ''Documents of American Constitutional and Legal History'', edited by Urofsky and Finkelman, Oxford UP, 2002, p. 779.</ref> These mid-century gains had a major impact on white Americans' political views; segregation and white racial superiority, which had been publicly endorsed in the 1940s, became minority views within the white community by the mid-1970s, and continued to decline in 1990s' polls to a single-digit percentage.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations|last1=Schuman|first1=Howard|author-link1=Howard Schuman|last2=Steeh|first2=Charlotte|last3=Bobo|first3=Lawrence|author-link3=Lawrence D. Bobo|last4=Krysan|first4=Maria|date=1997|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0-674-74568-1|pages=103ff|quote=The questions deal with most of the major racial issues that became focal in the middle of the twentieth century: integration of public accommodations, school integration, residential integration, and job discrimination [and] racial intermarriage and willingness to vote for a black presidential candidate. ... The trends that occur for most of the principle items are quite similar and can be illustrated ...using attitudes toward school integration as an example. The figure shows that there has been a massive and continuous movement of the American public from overwhelming acceptance of the ''principle'' of segregated schooling in the early 1940s toward acceptance of the ''principle'' of integrated schooling. ... by 1985, more than nine out of ten chose the pro-integration response.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book| publisher = Pine Forge Press|isbn=978-1-4129-4107-5| last1 = Healey| first1 = Joseph F.| last2 = O'Brien| first2 = Eileen| title = Race, Ethnicity, and Gender: Selected Readings| date = May 8, 2007 | quote = In 1942 only 42 percent of a national sample of whites reported that they believed blacks to be equal to whites in innate intelligence; since the late 1950s, however, around 80 percent of [[white Americans]] have rejected the idea of inherent black inferiority.}}</ref> For sociologist [[Howard Winant]], these shifts marked the end of "monolithic white supremacy" in the United States.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Winant|first=Howard|author-link=Howard Winant|date=1997|title=Behind Blue Eyes: Whiteness and Contemporary US Racial Politics|journal=New Left Review|issue=225|page=73|article-number=1921 |doi=10.64590/hcc |quote=white racial attitudes shifted dramatically in the postwar period. ... So, monolithic white supremacy is over, yet in a more concealed way, white power and privilege live on.|via=Google Books: «Off White: Readings on Power, Privilege, and Resistance»|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MpLnnmp3IGgC&q=%22Behind+Blue+Eyes%3A+Whiteness+and+Contemporary+US+Racial+%22|isbn=978-0-415-94964-4|access-date=October 21, 2020|archive-date=March 7, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240307160233/https://books.google.com/books?id=MpLnnmp3IGgC&q=%22Behind+Blue+Eyes%3A+Whiteness+and+Contemporary+US+Racial+%22#v=snippet&q=%22Behind%20Blue%20Eyes%3A%20Whiteness%20and%20Contemporary%20US%20Racial%20%22&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref>

After the mid-1960s, white supremacy remained an important ideology to the [[Radical right (United States)|American far-right]].<ref>{{Cite book| publisher = Guilford Publications|isbn=978-1-4625-3760-0| last1 = Berlet| first1 = Chip| author-link1 = Chip Berlet| last2 = Lyons| first2 = Matthew N.| title = Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort| date = March 8, 2018 | quote = While the [[New Right]] and [[Christian Right]] flourished in the 1970s and 1980s, the Far Right also rebounded... The Far Right—encompassing Ku Klux Klan, neonazi, and related organizations—attracted a much smaller following than the New Right, but its influence reverberated in its encouragement of widespread attacks against members of oppressed groups and in broad-based scapegoating campaigns}}</ref> According to [[Kathleen Belew]], a historian of [[Historical race concepts|race]] and [[racism in the United States]], white militancy shifted after the [[Vietnam War]] from supporting the existing racial order to a more radical position (self-described as "[[White Power|white power]]" or "[[white nationalism]]") committed to overthrowing the [[Federal government of the United States|United States government]] and establishing a white homeland.<ref name=belew>{{Cite book|isbn=978-0-674-28607-8| last = Belew| first = Kathleen| author-link=Kathleen Belew |title = Bring the war home: The white power movement and paramilitary America| date = 2018 | quote = The white power movement that emerged from the Vietnam era shared some common attributes with earlier racist movements in the United States, but it was no mere echo. Unlike previous iterations of the Ku Klux Klan and white-supremacist vigilantism, the white power movement did not claim to serve the state. Instead, white power made the state its target, declaring war against the federal government in 1983.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite magazine |url=https://www.thenation.com/article/declaration-of-war/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190407121624/https://www.thenation.com/article/declaration-of-war/ |archive-date=April 7, 2019 |title=Declaration of War: The violent rise of white supremacy after Vietnam (How Did Vietnam Transform White Supremacy?) |last=Blanchfield |first=Patrick |date=June 20, 2018 |magazine=[[The Nation]] |access-date=March 12, 2024 |issn=0027-8378}}{{cbignore}}</ref> Such [[Militia organizations in the United States#Opposition to the government|anti-government militia]] organizations are one of three major strands of violent right-wing movements in the United States, with white-supremacist groups (such as the [[Ku Klux Klan]], [[Neo-Nazism in the United States|neo-Nazi]] organizations, and [[White power skinhead|racist skinheads]]) and a [[Fundamentalism|religious fundamentalist]] movement (such as [[Christian Identity]]) being the other two.<ref>{{Cite conference|last=Perliger|first=Arie|date=2012|title=Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America's Violent Far-Right|location=West Point, NY|publisher=Combating Terrorism Center, US Military Academy}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/u-s-sees-300-violent-attacks-inspired-far-right-every-year|title=U.S. sees 300 violent attacks inspired by far right every year|date=August 13, 2017|work=PBS NewsHour|access-date=August 11, 2018|archive-date=August 11, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180811063804/https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/u-s-sees-300-violent-attacks-inspired-far-right-every-year|url-status=live}}</ref>

==== 21st century ====
The presidential campaign of [[Donald Trump]] led to a surge of interest in white supremacy and [[white nationalism]] in the United States, bringing increased media attention and new members to their movement; his campaign enjoyed their widespread support.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2016-04-11 |title=Why White-Nationalist Thugs Thrill to Trump |url=https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2016/04/11/donald-trump-white-supremacist-supporters/ |url-access=subscription |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180824100325/https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2016/04/11/donald-trump-white-supremacist-supporters/ |archive-date=2018-08-24 |access-date=2022-07-17 |website=National Review |language=en-US}}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Smith |first=Candace |title=The White Nationalists Who Support Donald Trump |url=https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-nationalists-support-donald-trump/story?id=37524610 |access-date=2022-07-17 |website=ABC News |language=en |archive-date=July 17, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220717215621/https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-nationalists-support-donald-trump/story?id=37524610 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2016-03-07 |title=How Trump Is Inspiring A New Generation Of White Nationalists |url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-white-nationalists_n_56dd99c2e4b0ffe6f8e9ee7c |access-date=2022-07-17 |website=HuffPost |language=en |archive-date=July 17, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220717215621/https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-white-nationalists_n_56dd99c2e4b0ffe6f8e9ee7c |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="theatlantic20170815" />

Some academics argue that the outcome of the [[2016 United States presidential election]], and the many controversies which surrounded it, reflect the ongoing influence of white supremacy in the United States.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Inwood |first1=Joshua |year=2019 |title=White supremacy, white counter-revolutionary politics, and the rise of Donald Trump |url=http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2399654418789949 |journal=Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space |volume=37 |issue=4 |pages=579–596 |doi=10.1177/2399654418789949 |bibcode=2019EnPlC..37..579I |issn=2399-6544 |s2cid=158269272 |access-date=January 3, 2021 |archive-date=February 25, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225200807/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2399654418789949 |url-status=live |url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bobo |first1=Lawrence D. |author-link1=Lawrence D. Bobo |date=n.d. |title=Racism in Trump's America: reflections on culture, sociology, and the 2016 US presidential election |journal=The British Journal of Sociology |volume=68 |issue=S1 |pages=S85–S104 |doi=10.1111/1468-4446.12324 |issn=1468-4446 |pmid=29114872|s2cid=9714176 |doi-access=free }}</ref> Educators, literary theorists, and other political experts have raised similar questions, connecting the [[scapegoating]] of disenfranchised populations to white superiority.<ref>{{Cite web |date=December 1, 2016 |title=Cornel West on Donald Trump: This is What Neo-Fascism Looks Like |url=https://www.democracynow.org/2016/12/1/cornel_west_on_donald_trump_this |website=[[Democracy Now!]] |access-date=March 25, 2018 |archive-date=March 25, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180325233311/https://www.democracynow.org/2016/12/1/cornel_west_on_donald_trump_this |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=December 13, 2016 |title=Politics of Gender: Women, Men, and the 2016 Campaign |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/live/events/the-politics-of-gender-2016/2016/  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210309021849/https://www.theatlantic.com/live/events/the-politics-of-gender-2016/2016/ |archive-date=March 9, 2021 |access-date=March 25, 2018 |website=[[The Atlantic]]}}</ref>

===British Commonwealth ===
{{Further|Racial views of Winston Churchill}}
There has been debate whether [[Winston Churchill]], who was voted "the greatest ever Briton" in 2002, was "a racist and white supremacist".<ref name="Heyden" /> In the context of rejecting the Arab wish to stop [[Aliyah|Jewish immigration]] to [[Mandatory Palestine|Palestine]], he said:
<blockquote>I do not admit that the [[The Dog in the Manger|dog in the manger]] has the final right to the manger, though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race or at any rate a more worldly-wise race ... has come in and taken their place."<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-4BbDwAAQBAJ&q=andrew+roberts+dog+in+the+manger&pg=PR106|title=Churchill: Walking With Destiny|last=Roberts|first=Andrew|date=2018|publisher=Allen Lane|isbn=978-0-241-20564-8|location=London|pages=414–15|author-link=Andrew Roberts (historian)|access-date=12 May 2021|archive-date=March 7, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240307150158/https://books.google.com/books?id=-4BbDwAAQBAJ&q=andrew+roberts+dog+in+the+manger&pg=PR106|url-status=live}}</ref></blockquote>

British historian [[Richard Toye]], author of ''Churchill's Empire'', concluded that "Churchill did think that white people were superior."<ref name="Heyden">{{cite news|first=Tom|last=Heyden|title=The 10 greatest controversies of Winston Churchill's career|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29701767|work=BBC News|date=January 26, 2015|access-date=January 27, 2019|archive-date=January 22, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210122120902/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29701767|url-status=live}}</ref>

====South Africa====
{{Further|Apartheid|Baasskap}}
A number of Southern African nations experienced severe racial tension and conflict during global [[decolonization]], particularly as [[white Africans of European ancestry]] fought to protect their preferential social and political status. Racial segregation in South Africa began in colonial times under the [[Dutch Empire]]. It continued when the British took over the [[Cape of Good Hope]] in 1795. [[Apartheid]] was introduced as an officially structured policy by the [[Afrikaners|Afrikaner]]-dominated [[National Party (South Africa)|National Party]] after the [[South African general election, 1948|general election of 1948]]. Apartheid's legislation divided inhabitants into four racial groups – "black", "white", "coloured", and "Indian", with coloured divided into several sub-classifications.<ref>Baldwin-Ragaven, Laurel; London, Lesley; du Gruchy, Jeanelle (1999). ''An ambulance of the wrong colour: health professionals, human rights, and ethics in South Africa.'' Juta and Company Limited. p. 18</ref> In 1970, the Afrikaner-run government [[Separate Representation of Voters Amendment Act, 1968|abolished non-white political representation]], and starting that year [[black people]] were deprived of South African citizenship.<ref>John Pilger (2011). "Freedom Next Time". p. 266. Random House</ref> South Africa abolished apartheid in 1991.<ref>{{cite web |title = abolition of the White Australia Policy |url = http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/08abolition.htm |publisher = Australian Government |date = November 2010 |access-date = October 13, 2011 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20060901105340/http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/08abolition.htm |archive-date = September 1, 2006  }}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia | url = http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/555568/South-Africa/259494/The-apartheid-years | title = Encyclopædia Britannica, South Africa the Apartheid Years | encyclopedia = Encyclopædia Britannica | access-date = October 13, 2011 | archive-date = October 28, 2011 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20111028155947/http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/555568/South-Africa/259494/The-apartheid-years | url-status = live }}</ref>

====Rhodesia====
In [[Rhodesia]] a predominantly white government issued its own [[Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence|unilateral declaration of independence]] from the United Kingdom in 1965 during an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to avoid majority rule.<ref name="africapolitics">{{cite book|last=Gann|first=L.H.|title=Politics and Government in African States 1960–1985|pages=162–202}}</ref> Following the [[Rhodesian Bush War]] which was fought by [[African nationalism|African nationalists]], Rhodesian prime minister [[Ian Smith]] acceded to biracial political representation in 1978 and the state achieved recognition from the United Kingdom as [[Zimbabwe]] in 1980.<ref name="zimstudy">{{cite book|last=Nelson|first=Harold|title=Zimbabwe: A Country Study|pages=1–317}}</ref>

===Germany===
{{Further|Aryanism}}

[[Nazism]] promoted the idea of a superior [[Germanic people]] or [[Aryan race]] in Germany during the early 20th century. Notions of white supremacy and Aryan racial superiority were combined in the 19th century, with white supremacists maintaining the belief that white people were members of an Aryan "[[master race]]" that was superior to other races, particularly the Jews, who were described as the "Semitic race", [[Slavs]], and [[Names of the Romani people|Gypsies]], who they associated with "cultural sterility". [[Arthur de Gobineau]], a French racial theorist and aristocrat, blamed the fall of the [[Ancien Régime|''ancien régime'']] in France on racial degeneracy caused by racial intermixing, which he argued had destroyed the "purity" of the Nordic or Germanic race. Gobineau's theories, which attracted a strong following in Germany, emphasized the existence of an irreconcilable polarity between Aryan or Germanic peoples and Jewish culture.<ref>Blamires, Cyprian; Jackson, Paul. "[https://www.proquest.com/docview/217900153 World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia]": Volume 1. Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC-CLIO, Inc, 2006. p. 62.</ref>

As the [[Nazi Party]]'s chief racial theorist, [[Alfred Rosenberg]] oversaw the construction of a human racial "ladder" that justified [[Racial policy of Nazi Germany|Hitler's racial and ethnic policies]]. Rosenberg promoted the [[Nordic theory]], which regarded [[Nordic race|Nordics]] as the "master race", superior to all others, including other Aryans (Indo-Europeans).<ref>Though Rosenberg does not use the word "master race". He uses the word "Herrenvolk" (i. e., ruling people) twice in his book ''The Myth'', first referring to the [[Amorite]]s (saying that [[Archibald Sayce|Sayce]] described them as fair skinned and blue eyed) and secondly quoting [[Victor Wallace Germains]]' description of the English in "The Truth about Kitchener". ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") – Pages 26, 660 – 1930</ref> Rosenberg got the racial term ''[[Untermensch]]'' from the title of [[Klansman]] [[Lothrop Stoddard]]'s 1922 book ''The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man''.<ref>{{cite book| author = Stoddard, Lothrop| author-link = Lothrop Stoddard| year = 1922| title = The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under Man| publisher = [[Charles Scribner's Sons]]| location = New York| url = https://archive.org/details/revoltagainstciv00stoduoft}}</ref> It was later adopted by the Nazis from that book's German version ''Der Kulturumsturz: Die Drohung des Untermenschen'' (1925).<ref>{{cite journal| author = Losurdo, Domenico| author-link = Domenico Losurdo| others = Translated by Marella & Jon Morris| year = 2004| title = Toward a Critique of the Category of Totalitarianism| journal = [[Historical Materialism (journal)|Historical Materialism]]| volume = 12| issue = 2| pages = 25–55, here p. 50| issn = 1465-4466| doi = 10.1163/1569206041551663| url = http://www.pssp.org/bbs/data/document/1/Losurdo___Critique_of_Totalitarianism_%282004%29.pdf| format = PDF, 0.2 MB| access-date = June 21, 2017| archive-date = March 26, 2023| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230326025911/http://www.pssp.org/bbs/data/document/1/Losurdo___Critique_of_Totalitarianism_(2004).pdf| url-status = live}}</ref> Rosenberg was the leading Nazi who attributed the concept of the East-European "under man" to Stoddard.<ref>{{cite book| author = Rosenberg, Alfred| author-link = Alfred Rosenberg| year = 1930| title = Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts: Eine Wertung der seelischgeistigen Gestaltungskämpfe unserer Zeit| trans-title = The Myth of the Twentieth Century| publisher = Hoheneichen-Verlag| location = Munich| page = 214| url = https://www.scribd.com/doc/2628285/Der-Mythus-des-20-Jahrhunderts-Alfred-Rosenberg| language = de| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20121104014921/http://www.scribd.com/doc/2628285/Der-Mythus-des-20-Jahrhunderts-Alfred-Rosenberg| archive-date = November 4, 2012}}</ref> An advocate of the U.S. immigration laws that favored Northern Europeans, Stoddard wrote primarily on the alleged dangers posed by "[[colored]]" peoples to white civilization, and wrote ''[[The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy]]'' in 1920. In establishing a restrictive entry system for Germany in 1925, Hitler wrote of his admiration for America's immigration laws: "The American Union categorically refuses the immigration of physically unhealthy elements, and simply excludes the immigration of certain races."<ref>[http://www.timesofisrael.com/american-laws-against-coloreds-influenced-nazi-racial-planners/ "American laws against 'coloreds' influenced Nazi racial planners"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170827054238/http://www.timesofisrael.com/american-laws-against-coloreds-influenced-nazi-racial-planners/ |date=August 27, 2017 }}. Times of Israel. Retrieved August 26, 2017</ref>

German praise for America's institutional racism, previously found in Hitler's ''[[Mein Kampf]]'', was continuous throughout the early 1930s. Nazi lawyers were advocates of the use of American models.<ref name="Whitman"/> Race-based U.S. citizenship and anti-miscegenation laws directly inspired the Nazis' two principal [[Nuremberg Laws|Nuremberg racial laws]]—the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law.<ref name="Whitman">{{cite book|last1=Whitman|first1=James Q.|author-link1=James Whitman|title=Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law|date=2017|publisher=Princeton University Press|pages=37–43}}</ref> To preserve the Aryan or [[Nordic race]], the Nazis introduced the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which forbade sexual relations and marriages between Germans and Jews, and later between Germans and [[Romani people|Romani]] and [[Slavs]]. The Nazis used the [[Mendelian inheritance]] theory to argue that social traits were innate, claiming that there was a racial nature associated with certain general traits, such as inventiveness or criminal behavior.<ref>[[Henry Friedlander]]. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. p. 5.</ref>

According to the 2012 annual report of Germany's interior intelligence service, the [[Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution]], at the time there were 26,000 right-wing extremists living in Germany, including 6,000 [[neo-Nazis]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.verfassungsschutz.de/de/oeffentlichkeitsarbeit/publikationen/verfassungsschutzberichte/vsbericht-2012|title=Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz – Verfassungsschutzbericht 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150321183652/http://www.verfassungsschutz.de/de/oeffentlichkeitsarbeit/publikationen/verfassungsschutzberichte/vsbericht-2012|archive-date=March 21, 2015}}</ref>
{{clear left}}

=== Australia and New Zealand ===
Fifty-one people died from [[Christchurch mosque shootings|two consecutive terrorist attacks]] at the [[Al Noor Mosque, Christchurch|Al Noor Mosque]] and the [[Linwood Islamic Centre]] by an Australian white supremacist carried out on March 15, 2019. The terrorist attacks have been described by Prime Minister [[Jacinda Ardern]] as "One of New Zealand's darkest days". On August 27, 2020, the shooter was sentenced to [[Life imprisonment|life without parole]].<ref>{{Cite news|date=August 27, 2020|title=Christchurch killer to stay in jail until he dies|language=en-GB|publisher=BBC News|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53919624|access-date=August 27, 2020|archive-date=August 9, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210809002613/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53919624|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Brenton Tarrant: White supremacist sentenced to life without parole for killing 51 Muslims in New Zealand mosque attacks|url=https://news.sky.com/story/brenton-tarrant-white-supremacist-sentenced-to-life-without-parole-for-killing-51-muslims-in-new-zealand-mosque-attacks-12057417|access-date=August 27, 2020|website=Sky News|language=en|archive-date=August 27, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200827211151/https://news.sky.com/story/brenton-tarrant-white-supremacist-sentenced-to-life-without-parole-for-killing-51-muslims-in-new-zealand-mosque-attacks-12057417|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|last=Staff|first=Our Foreign|date=August 27, 2020|title=New Zealand mosque shooting: 'Wicked and inhuman' Brenton Tarrant sentenced to life without parole|language=en-GB|newspaper=The Telegraph|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/new-zealand-mosque-shooting-wicked-inhuman-brenton-tarrant-sentenced/ |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220111/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/new-zealand-mosque-shooting-wicked-inhuman-brenton-tarrant-sentenced/ |archive-date=January 11, 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|access-date=August 27, 2020|issn=0307-1235}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

In 2016, there was a rise in debate over the appropriateness of the naming of [[Massey University]] in [[Palmerston North]] after [[William Massey]], whom many historians and critics have described as a white supremacist.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2016-09-29 |title=Massey Uni named after racist PM, lecturer says |url=https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/314507/massey-uni-named-after-racist-pm,-lecturer-says |access-date=2023-08-25 |website=[[RNZ]] |language=en-nz |archive-date=August 25, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230825071726/https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/314507/massey-uni-named-after-racist-pm,-lecturer-says |url-status=live }}</ref> Lecturer Steve Elers was a leading proponent of the idea that Massey was an avowed white supremacist, given Massey "made several anti-Chinese racist statements in the public domain" and intensified the [[New Zealand head tax]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Tuckey |first=Karoline |date=2016-09-29 |title=Massey racism provokes call for university name change |url=https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/84753337/massey-racism-provokes-call-for-university-name-change |access-date=2023-08-25 |website=Stuff |language=en |archive-date=August 25, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230825071717/https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/84753337/massey-racism-provokes-call-for-university-name-change |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Elers |first=Steve |date=2018-07-01 |title=A 'white New Zealand': Anti-Chinese Racist Political Discourse from 1880 to 1920 |url=https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&issn=1556889X&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA549658147&sid=googleScholar&linkaccess=abs |journal=China Media Research |language=English |volume=14 |issue=3 |pages=88–99 |access-date=August 25, 2023 |archive-date=March 7, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240307150150/https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&issn=1556889X&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA549658147&sid=googleScholar&linkaccess=abs&userGroupName=anon%7E4cd52eab&aty=open-web-entry |url-status=live }}</ref> In 1921, Massey wrote in the ''[[The Evening Post (New Zealand)|Evening Post]]:'' "New Zealanders are probably the purest Anglo-Saxon population in the British Empire. Nature intended New Zealand to be a white man's country, and it must be kept as such. The strain of Polynesian will be no detriment". This is one of many quotes attributed to him regarded as being openly racist.<ref>{{Cite web |title=William Massey was a Racist |url=https://www.massivemagazine.org.nz/articles/william-massey-was-a-racist |access-date=2023-08-25 |website=Massive Magazine |language=en-US |archive-date=August 25, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230825071717/https://www.massivemagazine.org.nz/articles/william-massey-was-a-racist |url-status=live }}</ref>

==Ideologies and movements==
Supporters of [[Nordicism]] consider the "Nordic peoples" to be a superior race.<ref>{{cite web|title=Nordicism|url=http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nordicism|website=Merriam Webster|access-date=August 9, 2015|archive-date=September 10, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150910012037/http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nordicism|url-status=live}}</ref> By the early 19th century, white supremacy was attached to emerging theories of racial hierarchy. The German philosopher [[Arthur Schopenhauer]] attributed cultural primacy to the white race:

{{Blockquote|The highest civilization and culture, apart from the ancient [[Hinduism|Hindus]] and [[Ancient Egypt|Egyptians]], are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, the [[Brahmin]]s, the [[Inca Empire|Incas]], and the rulers of the [[Polynesia|South Sea Islands]]. All this is due to the fact that necessity is the mother of invention because those tribes that emigrated early to the north, and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want and misery, which in their many forms were brought about by the climate.<ref>{{cite book | last = Schopenhauer | first = Arthur | author-link = Arthur Schopenhauer | title = ''Parerga and Paralipomena'' | year = 1851 | pages = Vol. 2, Section 92| title-link = Parerga and Paralipomena }}</ref>}}

[[File:Good Citizen Pillar of Fire Church July 1926.jpg|thumb|''[[The Good Citizen]]'' 1926, published by [[Pillar of Fire International|Pillar of Fire Church]]]]

The [[eugenics|eugenicist]] [[Madison Grant]] argued in his 1916 book, ''[[The Passing of the Great Race]]'', that the Nordic race had been responsible for most of humanity's great achievements, and that [[Miscegenation|admixture]] was "race suicide".<ref>{{cite book | last = Grant | first = Madison | title = The Passing of the Great Race | publisher = C. Scribner's sons | year = 1921 | edition = 4 | page = xxxi | url = https://archive.org/stream/passingofgreatra00granuoft/passingofgreatra00granuoft_djvu.txt}}</ref> In this book, Europeans who are not of Germanic origin but have Nordic characteristics such as blonde/red hair and blue/green/gray eyes, were considered to be a Nordic admixture and suitable for [[Aryanization (Nazism)|Aryanization]].<ref name="Grant1916">[[Madison Grant|Grant, Madison]] (1916). ''The Passing of the Great Race''. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.</ref>

[[File:Klan-in-gainesville.jpg|thumb|left|Members of the second [[Ku Klux Klan]] at a rally in 1923]]

In the United States, the groups most associated with the white-supremacist movement are the [[Ku Klux Klan]] (KKK), [[Aryan Nations]], and the [[White American Resistance]] movement, all of which are also considered to be [[Antisemitism in the United States|antisemitic]]. The [[Proud Boys]], despite claiming non-association with white supremacy, have been described in academic contexts as being such.<ref name="Kutner2020" /> Many white-supremacist groups are based on the concept of preserving genetic purity, and do not focus solely on discrimination based on skin color. The KKK's reasons for supporting [[racial segregation]] are not primarily based on religious ideals, but some Klan groups are openly [[Protestant]].{{citation needed|date=August 2022}} The 1915 silent drama film ''[[The Birth of a Nation]]'' followed the rising racial, economic, political, and geographic tensions leading up to the [[Emancipation Proclamation]] and the Southern [[Reconstruction era]] that was the genesis of the Ku Klux Klan.<ref>{{Cite web |author=Armstrong. Eric M. |date=February 6, 2010 |title=Revered and Reviled: D.W. Griffith's 'The Birth of a Nation' |url=http://themovingarts.com/revered-and-reviled-d-w-griffiths-the-birth-of-a-nation/  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100529224316/http://themovingarts.com/revered-and-reviled-d-w-griffiths-the-birth-of-a-nation/ |archive-date=May 29, 2010 |access-date=December 9, 2018 |url-status=usurped |website=[[The Moving Arts Film Journal]]}}</ref>

[[Nazi Germany]] promulgated white supremacy based on the belief that the [[Aryan race]], or the Germans, were the ''[[master race]]''. It was combined with a [[Nazi eugenics|eugenics programme]] that aimed for [[racial hygiene]] through compulsory sterilization of sick individuals and extermination of ''[[Untermensch]]en'' ("subhumans"): [[Anti-Slavic sentiment|Slavs]], Jews and [[antiziganism|Romani]], which eventually culminated in [[the Holocaust]].<ref>{{interlanguage link|Janusz Gumkowski|lt=Gumkowski, Janusz|de}}; {{interlanguage link|lt=Leszczynski, Kazimierz|Kazimierz Leszczyński|de}}; Robert, Edward (translator) (1961). Hitler's Plans for Eastern Europe (Paperback). [https://archive.org/details/PolandUnderNaziOccupation/page/n7 Poland Under Nazi Occupation (First ed.)] (Polonia Pub. House). ASIN B0006BXJZ6. Retrieved March 12, 2014. at Wayback machine.</ref><ref>[[Peter Longerich]] (April 15, 2010). Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews. Oxford University Press. p. 30. {{ISBN|978-0-19-280436-5}}.</ref><ref name="USHMM">{{cite web | url=http://digitalassets.ushmm.org/photoarchives/detail.aspx?id=10049&search=EUTHANASIA+%28PATIENTS%2FVICTIMS%29&index=25 | title=Close-up of Richard Jenne, the last child killed by the head nurse at the Kaufbeuren-Irsee euthanasia facility. | publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | access-date=July 29, 2011 | archive-date=March 21, 2012 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120321002326/http://digitalassets.ushmm.org/photoarchives/detail.aspx?id=10049&search=EUTHANASIA+(PATIENTS%2FVICTIMS)&index=25 | url-status=live }}</ref><ref>[[Ian Kershaw]], ''Hitler: A Profile in Power'', Chapter VI, first section (London, 1991, rev. 2001)</ref><ref>Snyder, S. & D. Mitchell. Cultural Locations of Disability. University of Michigan Press. 2006.</ref>

[[Christian Identity]] is another movement closely tied to white supremacy. Some white supremacists identify themselves as [[Heathenry (new religious movement)|Odinists]], although many Odinists reject white supremacy. Some white-supremacist groups, such as the South African [[Boeremag]], conflate elements of Christianity and Odinism. [[Creativity (religion)|Creativity]] (formerly known as "The World Church of the Creator") is [[atheism|atheistic]] and it denounces Christianity and other [[Theism|theistic religions]].<ref name="Atheistic">{{cite book|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=HB1wyFPRGm4C&q=atheistic&pg=PA23|title = The new white nationalism in America: its challenge to integration|publisher = [[Cambridge University Press]]|quote = For instance, Ben Klassen, founder of the atheistic Church of the Creator and author of ''The White Man's Bible'', discusses Christianity extensively in his writings and denounces it as a religion that has brought untold horror into the world and has divided the white race.|access-date = March 27, 2011|isbn = 978-0-521-80886-6|date = June 10, 2002|archive-date = March 7, 2024|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20240307150141/https://books.google.com/books?id=HB1wyFPRGm4C&q=atheistic&pg=PA23#v=snippet&q=atheistic&f=false|url-status = live}}</ref><ref name="Atheism">{{cite book|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=rBgn3xB75ZcC&q=competing+atheistic+white+racist+movement&pg=PA493|title = The World's Religions: Continuities and Transformations|publisher = [[Taylor & Francis]]|quote = A competing atheistic or panthestic white racist movement also appeared, which included the Church of the Creator/ Creativity (Gardell 2003: 129–34).|access-date = March 27, 2011|isbn = 978-1-135-21100-4|date = May 7, 2009|archive-date = March 7, 2024|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20240307150203/https://books.google.com/books?id=rBgn3xB75ZcC&q=competing+atheistic+white+racist+movement&pg=PA493#v=snippet&q=competing%20atheistic%20white%20racist%20movement&f=false|url-status = live}}</ref> Aside from this, its ideology is similar to that of many Christian Identity groups because it believes in the [[List of conspiracy theories#Antisemitic conspiracy theories|antisemitic conspiracy theory]] that there is a "Jewish conspiracy" in control of governments, the banking industry and the media. [[Matthew F. Hale]], founder of the World Church of the Creator, has published articles stating that all races other than white are "mud races", which is what the group's religion teaches.{{citation needed|date=August 2022}}

The white-supremacist ideology has become associated with a racist faction of the [[skinhead]] [[subculture]], despite the fact that when the skinhead culture first developed in the United Kingdom in the late 1960s, it was heavily influenced by black fashions and [[Black music|music]], especially Jamaican [[reggae]] and [[ska]], and African American [[soul music]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://ska.about.com/musicperform/ska/library/1999/aa081699a.htm |title=Smiling Smash: An Interview with Cathal Smyth, a.k.a. Chas Smash, of Madness |access-date=February 19, 2001  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010219175613/http://ska.about.com/musicperform/ska/library/1999/aa081699a.htm |archive-date=February 19, 2001 }}.</ref><ref>[http://www.reggaereggaereggae.com/Special%20Articles.htm Special Articles<!-- Bot generated title -->] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081217000127/http://www.reggaereggaereggae.com/Special%20Articles.htm|date=December 17, 2008}}.</ref><ref name="skinheads">{{cite book |last=Old Skool Jim |title=Trojan Skinhead Reggae Box Set liner notes |publisher=Trojan Records |location=London |id=TJETD169}}</ref>

White-supremacist recruitment activities are primarily conducted at a [[grassroots]] level as well as on the Internet. Widespread access to the Internet has led to a dramatic increase in white-supremacist websites.<ref name="Adversity">{{Cite journal|last1=Adams |first1=Josh |first2=Vincent J. |last2=Roscigno |title=White Supremacists, Oppositional Culture and the World Wide Web |journal=Social Forces |volume=84 |issue=2 |pages=759–778 |date=November 20, 2009 |doi=10.1353/sof.2006.0001 |jstor=3598477|s2cid=144768434 }}</ref> The Internet provides a venue for open expression of white-supremacist ideas at little [[social cost]] because people who post the information are able to remain anonymous.

=== White nationalism ===
{{Main|White nationalism}}

=== White separatism ===
{{anchor|White separatism}}
[[File:Northwest Territorial Imperative map.svg|thumb|right|A map showing the suggested boundaries of the [[Northwest Territorial Imperative]] in red]]
White [[separatism]] is a political and social movement that seeks the separation of [[white people]] from people of other [[race (human categorization)|races]] and [[ethnicity|ethnicities]]. This may include the establishment of a [[white ethnostate]] by removing non-whites from existing communities or by forming new communities elsewhere.<ref>{{Cite journal |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3719/is_200607/ai_n16855771/pg_9/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071203033702/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3719/is_200607/ai_n16855771/pg_9  |archive-date=December 3, 2007 |title=The Strategy of White Separatism |journal=Journal of Political and Military Sociology |date=Summer 2006 |last1=Dobratz |first1=Betty A. |last2=Shanks-Meile |first2=Stephanie L. |name-list-style=amp|volume=34 |number=1 |pages=49–80 }}</ref>

Most modern researchers do not view white separatism as distinct from white-supremacist beliefs. The [[Anti-Defamation League]] defines white separatism as "a form of white supremacy";<ref name="ADL">{{cite web |title=White Separatism |url=https://www.adl.org/resources/glossary-terms/white-separatism |publisher=ADL |access-date=April 4, 2019 |archive-date=September 20, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220920171106/https://www.adl.org/resources/glossary-terms/white-separatism |url-status=live }}</ref> the Southern Poverty Law Center defines both white nationalism and white separatism as "ideologies based on white supremacy."<ref name="SPLC">{{cite web |title=SPLC reacts to Facebook policy on white nationalism |date=March 27, 2019 |url=https://www.splcenter.org/news/2019/03/27/splc-reacts-facebook-policy-white-nationalism |publisher=SPLC |access-date=April 4, 2019 |archive-date=September 20, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220920171357/https://www.splcenter.org/news/2019/03/27/splc-reacts-facebook-policy-white-nationalism |url-status=live }}</ref> Facebook has banned content that is openly [[white nationalism|white nationalist]] or white separatist because "white nationalism and white separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organized hate groups".<ref name="Facebook">{{cite web |title=Standing Against Hate |date=March 27, 2019 |url=https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/03/standing-against-hate/ |publisher=Facebook |access-date=April 4, 2019 |archive-date=November 11, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191111184252/https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/03/standing-against-hate/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Facebook to ban white nationalism and separatism |work=BBC News |date=March 28, 2019 |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47728471 |access-date=April 4, 2019 |archive-date=September 20, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220920170809/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47728471 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Use of the term to self-identify has been criticized as a dishonest rhetorical ploy. The Anti-Defamation League argues that white supremacists use the phrase because they believe it has fewer negative connotations than the term ''white supremacist''.<ref name="ADL"/>

Dobratz and Shanks-Meile reported that adherents usually reject [[Interracial marriage|marriage "outside the white race"]]. They argued for the existence of "a distinction between the white supremacist's desire to dominate (as in [[apartheid]], [[slavery]], or [[Racial segregation|segregation]]) and complete separation by race".<ref>Dobratz, Betty A. & Shanks-Meile, Stephanie L. (2000) ''The White Separatist Movement in the United States: "White Power, White Pride!''. Baltimore: JHU Press. pp.vii, 10</ref> They argued that this is a matter of pragmatism, because, while many white supremacists are also white separatists, contemporary white separatists reject the view that returning to a system of segregation is possible or desirable in the United States.<ref>{{Cite book | last1=Dobratz |first1=Betty A. |last2=Shanks-Meile |first2=Stephanie L. |name-list-style=amp|year=1997 |title=The White Separatist Movement in the United States: White Power, White Pride! |location=New York |publisher=Twayne Publishers |isbn=978-0-8057-3865-0 |oclc=37341476 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r59bGyH4lOAC|pages=ix,12}}</ref>

==Academic use of the term==
The term ''white supremacy'' is used in some academic studies of racial power to denote a system of structural or [[societal racism]] which privileges white people over others, regardless of the presence or the absence of racial hatred. According to this definition, white racial advantages occur at both a collective and an individual level (''[[ceteris paribus]]'', {{Nowrap|i. e.}}, when individuals are compared that do not differ relevantly except in ethnicity). Legal scholar Frances Lee Ansley explains this definition as follows:

{{Blockquote|By "white supremacy" I do not mean to allude only to the self-conscious racism of white supremacist [[hate group]]s. I refer instead to a political, economic and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings.<ref name="ansley1"/><ref name="ansley2"/>}}

This and similar definitions have been adopted or proposed by [[Charles W. Mills]],<ref name="Mills2003">{{Cite journal |last=Mills |first=C.W. |author-link=Charles W. Mills |year=2003 |title=White supremacy as sociopolitical system: A philosophical perspective |journal=White Out: The Continuing Significance of Racism |pages=35–48}}</ref> [[bell hooks]],<ref name="Hooks2000">{{Cite book |last=Hooks |first=Bell |author-link=bell hooks |title=Feminist theory: From margin to center |date=2000 |publisher=Pluto Press |isbn=978-0-7453-1663-5}}</ref> [[David Gillborn]],<ref name="Gillborn2006">{{Cite journal |last=Gillborn |first=David |author-link=David Gillborn |date=September 1, 2006 |title=Rethinking White Supremacy Who Counts in 'WhiteWorld' |url=http://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/23036 |journal=Ethnicities |volume=6 |issue=3 |pages=318–40 |doi=10.1177/1468796806068323 |issn=1468-7968 |s2cid=8984059 |access-date=March 27, 2020 |archive-date=September 22, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220922010421/https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/23036 |url-status=live |hdl=2262/52591 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> Jessie Daniels,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Daniels |first=Jessie |title=White Lies: race, class, gender and sexuality in white supremacist discourse |date=1997 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-91289-1}}</ref> and Neely Fuller Jr,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fuller |first=Neely |title=The united-independent compensatory code/system/concept: A textbook/workbook for thought, speech, and/or action, for victims of racism (white supremacy) |publisher=SAGE |year=1984 |page=334 |asin=B0007BLCWC}}</ref> and they are widely used in [[critical race theory]] and [[Intersectionality|intersectional feminism]]. Some [[anti-racism|anti-racist]] educators, such as Betita Martinez and the Challenging White Supremacy workshop, also use the term in this way. The term expresses historic continuities between a pre–[[civil rights movement]] era of open white supremacy and the current racial power structure of the United States. It also expresses the visceral impact of structural racism through "provocative and brutal" language that characterizes racism as "nefarious, global, systemic, and constant".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Davidson |first=Tim |title=Critical perspectives on bell hooks |date=February 23, 2009 |publisher=Taylor & Francis US |isbn=978-0-415-98980-0 |editor1=Jeanette Davidson |page=68 |chapter=bell hooks, white supremacy, and the academy |editor2=George Yancy}}</ref> Academic users of the term sometimes prefer it to ''racism'' because it allows for a distinction to be drawn between racist feelings and white racial advantage or [[white privilege|privilege]].<ref>"Why is it so difficult for many white folks to understand that racism is oppressive not because white folks have prejudicial feelings about blacks (they could have such feelings and leave us alone) but because it is a system that promotes domination and subjugation?" {{Cite book |last=hooks |first=bell |title=Black Looks: Race and Representation |date=February 4, 2009 |publisher=Turnaround Publisher Services Limited |isbn=978-1-873262-02-3 |page=12}}</ref><ref>Grillo and Wildman cite hooks to argue for the term ''racism/white supremacy'': "hooks writes that liberal whites do not see themselves as either prejudiced or interested in domination through coercion, and they do not acknowledge the ways in which they contribute to and benefit from the system of white privilege." {{Cite book |last1=Grillo |first1=Trina |title=Critical white studies: Looking behind the mirror |author2=Stephanie M. Wildman |date=June 29, 1997 |publisher=Temple University Press |isbn=978-1-56639-532-8 |editor1=Richard Delgado |page=620 |chapter=The implications of making comparisons between racism and sexism (or other isms) |editor2=Jean Stefancic}}</ref><ref name="theatlantic20170815">{{cite web |last1=Pollock |first1=Nicolas |last2=Myszkowski |first2=Sophia |title=Hate Groups Are Growing Under Trump |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/536793/hate-groups-are-growing-under-trump/ |access-date=April 28, 2018 |website=The Atlantic |archive-date=September 21, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220921225433/https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/536793/hate-groups-are-growing-under-trump/ |url-status=live }}</ref> [[John McWhorter]], a specialist in language and race relations, explains the gradual replacement of "racism" by "white supremacy" by the fact that "potent terms need refreshment, especially when heavily used", drawing a parallel with the replacement of "chauvinist" by "sexist".<ref>{{Cite web |last=McWhorter |first=John |author-link=John McWhorter |date=June 22, 2020 |title=The Dictionary Definition of 'Racism' Has to Change |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/dictionary-definition-racism-has-change/613324/ |access-date=July 22, 2020 |website=[[The Atlantic]] |language=en-US |archive-date=September 20, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220920172623/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/dictionary-definition-racism-has-change/613324/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Other intellectuals have criticized the term's recent rise in popularity among leftist activists as counterproductive. John McWhorter has described the use of "white supremacy" as straying from its commonly accepted meaning to encompass less extreme issues, thereby cheapening the term and potentially derailing productive discussion.<ref name="left language">{{cite news |title=Left Language, Right Language |newspaper=Wnyc |url=http://www.wnyc.org/story/left-language-right-language/ |access-date=December 3, 2016 |archive-date=September 21, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220921224339/https://www.wnyc.org/story/left-language-right-language/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="McWhorter">{{cite magazine |last1=McWhorter |first1=John |title=The Difference Between Racial Bias and White Supremacy |url=https://time.com/4584161/white-supremacy/ |magazine=Time |access-date=December 3, 2016 |archive-date=December 2, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161202104713/http://time.com/4584161/white-supremacy/ |url-status=live }}</ref> Political columnist [[Kevin Drum]] attributes the term's growing popularity to frequent use by [[Ta-Nehisi Coates]], describing it as a "terrible fad" that fails to convey nuance. He claims that the term should be reserved for those who are trying to promote the idea that whites are inherently superior to blacks and not used to characterize less blatantly racist beliefs or actions.<ref name="MotherJ">{{cite web |title=Let's Be Careful With the "White Supremacy" Label |url=https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/11/lets-please-kill-white-supremacy-fad |access-date=December 4, 2016 |website=Mother Jones |archive-date=September 22, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220922101050/https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/11/lets-please-kill-white-supremacy-fad/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Friedersdorf">{{Cite news |last=Friedersdorf |first=Conor |author-link=Conor Friedersdorf |title='The Scourge of the Left': Too Much Stigma, Not Enough Persuasion |language=en-US |newspaper=The Atlantic |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/the-scourge-of-the-left-too-much-stigma-not-enough-persuasion/508961/ |access-date=December 4, 2016 |archive-date=September 20, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220920171526/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/the-scourge-of-the-left-too-much-stigma-not-enough-persuasion/508961/ |url-status=live }}</ref> The academic use of the term to refer to [[systemic racism]] has been criticized by [[Conor Friedersdorf]] for the confusion that it creates for the general public, inasmuch as it differs from the more common dictionary definition; he argues that it is likely to alienate those that it hopes to convince.<ref name="Friedersdorf" />

==See also==
{{div col|colwidth=30em}}
* {{annotated link|Afrophobia}}
* {{annotated link|Antisemitism}}
* {{annotated link|Basking in reflected glory}}
* {{annotated link|Black supremacy}}
* {{annotated link|Boreal (politics and culture)}}
* {{annotated link|Christian Identity}}
* {{annotated link|Creativity (religion)}}
* [[Eurocentrism]]
* {{annotated link|Frances Cress Welsing}}
* ''{{annotated link|Heroes of the Fiery Cross}}''
* {{annotated link|Kinism}}
* ''{{annotated link|Me and White Supremacy}}''
* {{annotated link|Race and intelligence}}
* {{annotated link|Racism against Black Americans}}
* "{{annotated link|The White Man's Burden}}"
* {{annotated link|Western Supremacy (book)}}
* {{annotated link|List of white nationalist organizations|White nationalist organizations}}
* {{annotated link|White power skinheads}}
* {{annotated link|White power symbol (disambiguation)}}
* {{annotated link|White pride}}
* {{annotated link|White nationalism}}
* {{annotated link|Racism on the Internet}}
* {{annotated link|Anti-Black racism}}
* {{annotated link|Racism against African Americans}}
* {{annotated link|Jewish supremacy}}
{{div col end}}

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
* Almaguer, Tomás. (2008) ''Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California''. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1994.
* Brooks, Michael E. and [[Bob Fitrakis|Fitrakis, Robert]] (2021). ''A History of Hate in Ohio: Then and Now.'' The Ohio State University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-8142-5800-2}}
* {{cite news
|title=The invention of whiteness: the long history of a dangerous idea
|first=Robert P.
|last=Baird
|date=April 20, 2021
|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]
|url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/20/the-invention-of-whiteness-long-history-dangerous-idea}}
* [[Sophie Bessis|Bessis, Sophie]] (2003) [[Western Supremacy (book)|''Western Supremacy: The Triumph of an Idea'']]. Zed Books. {{isbn|9781842772195}} {{isbn|1842772198}}
* Dobratz, Betty A. and Shanks-Meile, Stephanie (2000) ''"White Power, White Pride!": The White Separatist Movement in the United States''. Johns Hopkins University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-8018-6537-4}}
* [[Gerald Horne|Horne, Gerald]]. (2017) ''The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery White Supremacy and Capitalism in Seventeenth-Century North America and the Caribbean''. New York: Monthly Review Press; {{ISBN|978-1-58367-663-9}}.
* [[Gerald Horne|Horne, Gerald]]. (2020). ''The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery White Supremacy Settler Colonialism and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century''. New York: Monthly Review Press. {{ISBN|978-1-58367-872-5}}.
* MacCann, Donnarae (2000) [https://books.google.com/books?id=xj_T3QCgNgsC&q=%22White+supremacy%22+juvenile ''White Supremacy in Children's Literature: Characterizations of African Americans, 1830–1900'']. New York: Routledge. {{isbn|9780415928908}}
* [[Kees van der Pijl|Van der Pijl, Kees]], ''The Discipline of Western Supremacy: Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy, Volume III'', Pluto Press, 2014, {{ISBN|978-0-7453-2318-3}}
* {{cite book |last=Williams |first=Robert B. |date=2025|title=Funding White Supremacy |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/funding-white-supremacy/46727E66675991F2C6F8F70FE971E1C3 |location= |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |page= |isbn=978-1009367868 |access-date=}}

==External links==
{{Wikiquote}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20180221095938/https://www.docsonline.tv/documentary/heart-of-whiteness ''Heart of Whiteness'']—A documentary film about what it means to be white in South Africa
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20161221114743/https://www.ushmm.org/confront-antisemitism/antisemitism-podcast/frank-meeink "Voices on Antisemitism"]—Interview with Frank Meeink from the [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum|U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum]]
* [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/08/14/russell-moore-white-supremacy-angers-jesus-but-does-it-anger-his-church/ "Russell Moore: White supremacy angers Jesus, but does it anger his church?"]—The president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention
* [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/exterminate-all-the-brutes-reviewed-a-vast-agonizing-history-of-white-supremacy/ "Exterminate All the Brutes, Reviewed: A Vast, Agonizing History of White Supremacy"] (HBO Series), by Richard Brody, April 9, 2021, ''[[The New Yorker]]''

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