Soooo remember that old flash drive I found the other day? You know the one that led to me posting, “Grooming The New Slave?” The one that had all my old shit from 5 years ago? Well, congrats. I decided to bring it back for one more blog piece. If you don’t know the back story about my “infamous” flash drive, just consider it to be a “lost arch” of old writings I did back in 2014. It’s honestly crazy reading the things I was writing just 5 years ago. Looking form the outside in you can tell I’ve been trying to tackle these subject matters for some time now. After reading this you’ll notice that this piece can honestly be seen as a continuation of my, “Whiteness,” piece even though I wrote it 5 years ago haha. So, just like before, here’s another piece from my lost arch of writings! However, instead of giving it to you guys unedited like last time, this time I’ll make a few formatting edits and add some additional quotes for support!

The American Hierarchy

This is a touchy subject. Chances are if you’re the average white American reading this, then this is most likely going to sound unfamiliar to you and somewhat unbelievable, but if you happen to be a person of color then you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about when I say America has a “hidden” racial hierarchy.

I put hidden in quotes because if you know what words to look for then the American racial hierarchy isn’t so secretive. – Side note, the reason why I said that if you’re the average white American reading this you might not believe or fully understand what the American racial hierarchy is because as a white American living in America you have all the benefits of white supremacy or better known as white privilege. As a white man/woman in America, you don’t really understand what it’s like to live life in a society that has systematically oppressed people who look like you for generations upon generations solely because of your skin color.

Black people in America have had to face centries of misinformation, propaganda, and racially motivated terrorism all in order to maintain the constant flow of exploitation that built the very foundation of this country. Of course, this history and these experiences are “shielded” from the majority of people living in American so all of the information that I’m about to discuss may be completely new and informational to you.

White Supremacy

“White privileges have enforced the myth of racial superiority, and that fact has been central to maintaining ruling-class domination over ordinary working people of all colors throughout American history.” – Theodore W. Allen

The hierarchy was set up by an ideology of white supremacy and justified the use of deceit, exploration, intimidation, and exclusion to keep Afro-Americans and other minorities “in their place.” This ideology was taught in the infant years of America and still continues to be implemented in present-day America. Throughout the era of slavery, every major societal establishment offered legitimacy to the racial hierarchy.

Religion

Ministers preached that God and Jesus Christ were both white men, (Still do to this day. To the point to where most Americans believe that Jesus is white, even though Jesus was born in the Middle East which would make him a man of color almost by default. But don’t take my word for it just ask Megyn Kelly) and condemned Afro-Americans to be slaves & servants using bible verses such as Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT, Ephesians 6:5 NLT, and 1 Timothy 6:1-2 NLT to support their theory.

Science

Scientists like Christoph Meiners practiced scientific racism by measuring Afro-American skulls, brains, faces, and genitalia, seeking to prove that whites were genetically superior to Afro-Americans. In Christoph’s most revered work, “The Outline and History of Mankind,” Christoph qualitatively compared people by race. Through Phrenology (the scientific study of measuring human skulls) he came to the conclusion that whites were “clearly superior” to all other races both intellectually and morally. He went on to say that Afro-Americans aren’t just “inferior” to whites in every mental aspect, but that Afro-Americans are, “incapable of any mental feelings or emotions at all.”

Education

White teachers, teaching only white students due to the fact that slaves weren’t allowed to be educated and until the famous court case Brown Vs. The Board of Education in 1954 Afro-Americans weren’t even allowed in the same classroom as whites, taught that Afro-Americans were less involved cognitively, psychologically, and socially. Some of these teachings and beliefs still echo in today’s “free” America, but in today’s era of colorblindness, the racial hierarchy is maintained through a code, almost like a second language. Take the entertainment media for example. Hollywood, portrays Afro-Americans as docile servants (Driving Miss Daisy), happy-go-lucky idiots (Cuba Gooding Jr. in Radio), and dangerous thugs (Colors). But I must admit no one has mastered the second language of America’s racial hierarchy better than the American news media, and American Politics.

The Media

“It uses the press skillfully to feed statistics to the public to make it appear that the rate of crime in the Black community, or community of nonwhite people, is at such a high level. It gives the impression or the image that everyone in that community is criminal. And as soon as the public accepts the fact that the dark-skinned community consists largely of criminals or people who are dirty, then it makes it possible for the power structure to set up a police-state system.” – Malcolm X

Let’s take the Trayvon Martin case as an example. News media agencies like Fox News spent the majority of their time defending George Zimmerman (who racially profiled an unarmed Afro-American teenager, chased him down, shot him at point-blank range, but was acquitted on all charges under the protection of the Stand Your Ground Law in Florida) by using code words and phrases like, “Trayvon was dressed as a thug,” to justify his murder. Or let’s rewind the clocks back to Hurricane Katarina when the famous “looters Vs. finding” articles were published, and how many news agencies labeled the Afro-Americans who lost their homes due to Katarina as refugees even though the term refugee is only used to describe individuals who were forced to leave their native home, or nation.

The Politics of Dog Whistling

Nixon’s advisers recognized that they could not appeal directly to voters on issues of white supremacy or racism. White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman noted that Nixon “emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognized this while not appearing to.”

In today’s American politics, one can find traces of America’s racial hidden code language once you learn the true meaning behind each codeword. Take this quote from Congressman Paul Ryan, “We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.”

Or take this quote from the former governor of Massachusetts and ex-president candidate Mitt Romney, “There is 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there is 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. … My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Words like “entitlement, takers, inner cities and thug” are code words/phrases politicians use when they want to discuss their opinion on racial issues while maintaining the American racial hierarchy, but avoiding being openly racists by saying words like lazy good for nothing niggers. Notice how both Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney imply that Afro-Americans are a bunch of lazy people who depend on the government to provide for their every need? This isn’t a new strategy though.

Politicians in southern states, since Nixon’s presidency (1969), have adopted this “hidden language,” and created what is known today as the Southern Strategy. According to Wiki, “in American politics, the Southern strategy refers to a Republican Party strategy of gaining political support for certain candidates in the Southern United States by appealing to racism against African Americans.”

This strategy has helped manifest radical parties/movements like the Tea Party movement that has many hidden, and in some case blatant, racist beliefs like, “We need to take our country back from this socialist Muslim dictator.” If it wasn’t for the major amendments and changes in our government’s campaign financial process (like Citizens United, and the ruling that money = free speech) our current political system would be almost completely racially motivated and would reflect the teachings and ideology of the American racial hierarchy.

True Revolution

In general, the ultimate goal of the racial hierarchy in America is to set up and maintain white supremacy in America and keep all other minorities in their place by using deceit, exploitation, intimidation, and exclusion. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that this hierarchy must be destroyed in order for our children, and our children’s children to all have a fair chance at opportunity and success in America. So how do we destroy a system that has been intact and implemented since the birth of this nation?

The answer to this dilemma isn’t a simple one, nor is there just one solution. The first step in solving any problem, regardless of the situation, is first admitting that there is a problem. With that being said America must come together and discuss the realness of its racial hierarchy, and the travesty it has inflicted on America’s minorities. To be honest, this may be the hardest step in destroying the racial hierarchy.

Many people who benefit from this hierarchy don’t want things to change and disbelieve the realness of the hierarchy. These people often say people who bring attention to America’s racial hierarchy and want to build a constructive open dialog concerning its realness are simply pulling the “race card” and are playing victims of an imaginary system. Once the dialog is initiated we must then, as a nation, disassemble the learnings and misguided beliefs the racial hierarchy used to deceive, intimate, and exclude Afro-Americans and other minority groups from reaching equal class citizenship. This then brings us to the final and most important step in destroying the American racial hierarchy, which also happens to be the antidote to the poison that is spreading rapidly in America’s society and in the black community; education.

Thanks again for reading! Like I said this was written 5 years ago, and many things have changed since then. The biggest change I must point out is code-switching in today’s politics. Trump has taken the Southern Strategy and put that bitch on steroids. This, in turn, has made calling out racism in today’s politics much easier but has also made code switching more discreet.