This may sound like a strange way to start blogging once more—especially on a site more closely linked to my practice as a psychologist—but I’m beginning here because something I’ve said and written in other contexts requires clarification. If I am taking on the role of a psychologist who cares for and applies insights from cultural psychology, I need to do this to link together where I have been to where I think I am going.
In the years since the Black Lives Matter movement reignited (has it ever really gone away?) and brought racial reconciliation once more to the fore, and the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic shortly after, I was left with bundles of mingled fear and anger at the state of racial reconciliation in North America. Frustration over my perception that institutions around me were tepid in their response to rising anti-Asian sentiment led to my labeling institutions with whom I had been affiliated as “white supremacist.” This labeling caught the attention of people who took offense to that term, as it maybe evoked for them images of burning crosses and enslavement. But in the quiet since that tumult, I’ve begun to see that much of my reaction came from a myriad of sources, not just a coldly analytical observation of facts.
When anti-Asian racism first exploded during the early stages of the pandemic, I began to remember all the ways in which I’d been made to feel less wanted, an outsider, and an accessory to mainstream Canadian culture. Whether it was name-calling on the playground or on the streets, the disgust of teammates, classmates, or colleagues, or the inner rending of not being “Chinese” or “Canadian” enough to considered native to either Hong Kong or Canada, I recalled a lifetime of feeling invisible except as an object of derision. Then, when combined with shock over my adult discovery of the fetishization of Asian women, the “head tax” on Chinese immigrants coming to Canada, and the memory of the internment of primarily Japanese people during World War II, I did not and do not think that we are so advanced and enlightened as a species to have moved beyond the impulses that undergird those actions. Fear of unlike others runs deeply within us, and it isn’t easily rooted out.
Although it wasn’t necessarily available to me as a conscious thought during the pandemic, I realized that despite decades of prosperity and peace within our borders, I had been harbouring a great deal of distrust in a government that was founded in white supremacist principles that were then carried out in subsequent segregationist policies. If Japanese Americans and Canadians could be thrown into concentration camps and have everything taken away from them, would the view that a “dirty Chinese virus” now unleashed on a “clean and pure West” lead to similar responses? The verbal and physical assaults of Asian people in North American streets seemed to suggest that the “othering” that can fester into institutional hatred was well underway. Our vaunted status as model minority was useful cover until a scapegoat was needed.
Fortunately, we didn’t go all the way down that road. The pandemic receded, but the fragility of our people’s position remains exposed. Truth be told, the majority are perhaps busy frying more obvious fish in the form of political division and the prospect of war. But many of us North American Asians still tread rather lightly, perhaps wondering when our time as model minority will end and we will once more be “othered” into a yellow peril. The stress of the moment revealed an evil rooted in fear that had only been papered over with politeness—a harrowing realization that can’t easily be forgotten. The hard thing we all must do now is to hold the fear of the bottom falling out of the idea of ethnocultural equity in Canada while repairing, where we can, relationships with those who may still be faint from the fear of being called “racist.”
But white supremacy isn’t mere racism. Every culture has racists, and every person harbours in them a fear of unlike others that if left unchecked, can become hatred and even violence. Yet he fact of the matter is that we live in a world where the most recent and “successful” round of colonization was not accomplished by the Chinese or Aztec or Nubian empires, but by mostly white Europeans. And because we do not live in an alternate timeline where other cultures claimed whole continents as theirs, we live with the legacy of European powers systematically elevating themselves as superior to the indigenous peoples they murdered, raped, enslaved, and dispossessed.
It may be obvious to most, but it bears bringing to mind that centuries of colonialism have had a profound effect upon the psychology of the conquered. We most often see this in the idea, however embryonic, that white people and their ways are just “better.”
And so, it’s not always that white people perpetuate white supremacy in this day and age. Perhaps this is controversial to say, but non-whites from colonialist backgrounds are also those who uphold white supremacy by way of the unconscious belief that their former conquerors are just “better.” Even if an unconscious belief in whites being better doesn’t exist, the reality is that being associated with white people has generally been socioeconomically beneficial for non-whites. This is seen through the welcome of non-whites into predominantly white cadres such as certain schools or professions because of behaviour that is familiar to the ruling class. Being and behaving as “white” as possible is generally seen even by non-whites as an indicator of higher education, socioeconomic status, and desirability. Witness to the fact that speaking English with a British accent is still coveted in most former British colonies. In North America, speaking with a British accent lends one the air of being “more intelligent” and “higher class.”
St. Augustine and then Martin Luther following him spoke about incurvatus in se, which is the idea that we are so naturally “bent inward” and “bent towards sin” that everything we do and participate in is touched by evil. Maybe a good number of modern day theologians have differences with this idea, but as for me, old habits die hard and I think it’s a helpful way of conceiving of how evil—dare I say sinful?— tendencies like white supremacy can taint our post-colonial lives. So who upholds white supremacy? We all do. Such is the legacy of colonialism. It has reached down into our expectations of ourselves and others, and sits at the root of many of our intercultural interactions.
But what, then, should we do about it?
My experience with white people and white supremacy is that the mere mention of it results in recoiling from the term as though I am on the verge of calling them “racist.” But in order to learn and grow, it may be best that those who may be offended listen to critique while holding their fear in hand. Not every white person has power to effect change in the systems in which they participate, but leaning into humility and curiosity instead of defensiveness is a good start towards justice and ultimately, right-relatedness.
For us non-whites, it’s contingent upon us to learn and hold what is good and beautiful from our ancestral heritages, even and especially when majority culture ignores or even denigrates it. I recognize that many of us who were born and raised in majority white countries maybe don’t have access to everything we should, like those whose ancestors were enslaved. But an incomplete picture is better than no picture at all, and it’s essential for us to be curious about where our forebears come from, and to find our place in the stories of our families. This is vital work for those who are easily “othered” and thereby regarded as sub-human. If we flag or fail in constructing our identity sometimes in opposition to majority reckoning, we risk becoming subject to the ever-changing whimsical gaze of others, and at one moment may find ourselves glorying in being a favoured pet, and the next, hating ourselves for not being like our masters. And may I remind you as well as myself, neither one of these is reflective of our worth. Holding our worth in the face of sometimes degrading circumstances is so very hard—maybe impossible— but it is that kind of action that truly reflects what it means to “turn our cheek” and shame the powers that seek to shame us.