White superiority is rearing its ugly head again in state legislatures across the country. Republicans are leading the effort to pass legislation which will suppress voting rights with a disproportionate impact on BIPOC. The Republicans can then recapture legislative leads and preserve white fragility.

Saad reminds us that white superiority can be expressed in violent and ugly ways; however, most white superiority is based on attitudes and values absorbed from social structure and culture.

She writes:

White superiority stems directly from white supremacy’s belief that people with white or white-passing skin are better than and therefore deserve to dominate over people with brown or black skin. The most extreme manifestations of this are the KKK, neo-Nazis, and the ideology behind right-wing nationalism. (Saad, Layla F.. Me and White Supremacy (pp. 60-61). Sourcebooks. Kindle Edition.)

The idea of whiteness being “of higher rank, quality, or importance” begins before you are even consciously aware of it. And because you are unaware of it, it goes largely unchallenged and becomes an internal truth that is deeply held even though it was not intentionally chosen. (Saad, Layla F.. Me and White Supremacy (p. 64). Sourcebooks. Kindle Edition.)

Because the idea of your superiority is the very foundation of white supremacy. You continue to perpetuate white supremacy to the extent that you believe in your own and other white people’s superiority over BIPOC. Again, it is important to stress that this belief is not necessarily a consciously chosen one. It is a deeply hidden, unconscious aspect of white supremacy that is hardly ever spoken about but practiced in daily life without even thinking about it. (Saad, Layla F.. Me and White Supremacy (p. 65). Sourcebooks. Kindle Edition.)

We need to ask ourselves how we have been enculturated into white superiority.

Today is the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter in. the Roman Catholic Lectionary. In the Episcopal Lectionary it is Monday in the first week of Lent. The scripture is the Final Judgment from Matthew 25. If Jesus were separating the sheep from the goats today, he certainly would have condemned racism. He would tell the sheep, you treated BIPOC as equal to you because everyone is created in the image and likeness of the Holy One.

This would be a good feast day for the Roman Pontiff to renounce the papal doctrine of discovery by which popes gave nations the ability to suppress indigenous peoples because they were inferior to white European Christians.