Since the nation is finally talking about white supremacy after the events in Charlottesville, now is a good time to talk about all the ways that white supremacy is manifested. In order to do that, there are some hard, painful truths that need to accompany this discussion—for example, the fact that it took an extreme demonstration of violence in which a white woman was killed before many in this country started to actually believe that white supremacy wasn’t something that was just a fiction or outdated concept invented by angry people of color.
Another realization that must come with this moment of reckoning is that white supremacy is not just a man’s game. White women have long played a role in maintaining racial superiority in this country, despite protestations to the contrary. Heather Hayer’s death was tragic. She is now one of countless people who have been murdered in the fight against hate. But we need to understand that reactions to her death are complex. A lot of white progressives have been lauding Heather’s death as an example of how white allies are showing up for racial justice. While this is true, it is also true that black and brown death at the hands of white supremacy does not receive the same kind of widespread attention that Heather’s death has received. It is also true that Heather’s death doesn’t erase the history of white women’s participation in white supremacy. This conversation must be met with a both/and approach.
As evidence of the above point, this weekend, two white teenagers visited the campus of Howard University in Washington, DC, wearing Make America Great Again hats. They were not warmly received. And they took to social media to tell their story.
Two teenagers stirred up controversy at Howard University — a historically black college, or HBCU — on Saturday when they arrived at the campus wearing Make America Great Again paraphernalia, drawing a sharp response from the college's students and prompting a Twitter thread from the university.
The high school students said Howard students approached them and criticized their Trump gear as they waited in line at the cafeteria — with one Howard student grabbing their hats and another saying "Fuck y'all." [...]
The two white students, from Union City High School in Pennsylvania, told BuzzFeed News they were among a group of 30 teenagers on an organized trip to see sites in Washington, DC, where the college is based. They arrived at the campus around lunchtime, and headed for the cafeteria with their school chaperones.
This doesn’t make any sense. Howard isn’t located in a tourist area of DC so it’s unlikely that you’d randomly stumble upon the campus and decide to hang out—least of all for lunch, on a weekend. And are we really expected to believe that out of an entire group of students and adults, absolutely no one knew that Howard was a black school? Millennials can’t even go to the bathroom without Googling it, yet no one used an app or technology to figure out where they were? And the presence of multiple black bodies on campus wasn’t a clue?
Allie Vandee, 16, was one of the students wearing a MAGA hat and a Trump T-shirt. She complained about the incident on Twitter soon after leaving campus.
"We were not even through the front door to get through the cafeteria, and a man, a black man, walked, had walked through and took my friend Sarah’s hat right off her head," Vandee said in a phone interview with BuzzFeed News.
"We were getting dirty looks and were completely harassed by these Howard students," she said.
This was a week after the white supremacist rally at University of Virginia in Charlottesville in which Deandre Harris, a black man, was beat savagely in a parking lot by white supremacists. Black people and people of color have been terrorized in unimaginable ways over the last few weeks (and months and decades and centuries) by the rampant racism and white supremacy in our country. Many students attend HBCUs as safe havens so that they can learn in an environment free of microagressions and white supremacy. This was incredibly triggering for the students on campus. And let’s be real—these girls and their chaperones knew what they were doing.
[Essence Dalton, a student at Howard] later told BuzzFeed News that she mainly holds the adult chaperones who were with the high schoolers responsible for the incident.
"My personal concern isn't the young girls, it's the adults who should have better informed the girls of the history of our university and why the Trump paraphernalia might be inappropriate in light of recent racial tensions especially coming from non POCs [people of color]," she said. "Tensions are extremely heavy between POC and non-POCs and Trump is much to blame for that."
So here’s an important question worth asking: Why is it that the default here is to assume that the adults are responsible but not the girls? Because of their age, right? They are teenagers, sure. And yet black teenagers are never afforded the luxury of being innocent. Even black pre-teens and toddlers are not even afforded innocence. Tamir Rice was 12 years old when he was shot and killed by police and the officer who killed him was fired—not because he killed a child without cause but because he lied on his job application.
Studies tell us that we see black girls as less innocent than white girls—starting at age 5. So the assumption that these white teenage girls are unknowing participants in acts of racial terror is not accidental. In contrast, black children are often held responsible for their innocent actions, even when those actions lead to their deaths. In the age of Black Lives Matter, Colin Kaepernick and heightened awareness about racial injustice all around us, we are expected to believe these girls would think that young black people would have no reaction to their wearing Trump paraphernalia in a majority black space. This fact alone should give us all reason to reflect about white women’s supposed innocence and lack of complicity in white supremacy.
But more importantly, this story has gained traction on social media and is being used by hateful trolls as evidence of the fictional “Alt-left.” So again, it’s really hard to believe this was accidental rather than some coordinated plan to both exert white dominance over the black students at Howard and a way to fan the flames of racial hatred among Trump’s white supremacist base.
Now would be the time to call a spade a spade. And to come to terms with the fact that white women are often socialized to embody racial superiority. This does not mean they are all taught at home to be racist. But you cannot be white in this society and not get subconscious and outright messages that you are superior to black people and people of color. These messages are so powerful that you can be a teenage girl and walk right onto an HBCU campus wearing a Make America Great Again hat and not care about the consequences or who it might impact.
Case in point, the Twitter account of the student who was interviewed is not that of what you might expect of a typical teenager. It is filled with retweets of right-wing hatred directed at liberals, people of color and Black Lives Matter activists. Apparently, she’s a big fan of Tomi Lahren and thinks diversity and political correctness are our nation’s biggest problems. She is absolutely entitled to those opinions—as sad, angry and divisive as they may be. But she also appears grown enough to defend her actions and the consequences of them. Call these girls innocent all you want, but their actions most definitely weren’t harmless and they weren’t an accident.