How White Supremacy Gets To Tell Its Own Story (Patreon)

By Sam (@StuffFromSam)

A big part of why so many white liberals were shocked by Trump and his turn out is because of the false reality of media.

Movies and TV shows, even the news, portray racism as isolated, not reflective of the norm. The underlying mainstream belief is: if you're an "average" white American with no affiliation with the Klan, you can't be racist. But even a TV writer doing research for a TV show tackling racism will see this is not the case. However, if they tell the truth, they'll alienate a vast portion of Americans (and customer base). So they distort it and make racism abnormal (while making non-Klan members feel better about themselves). It is no wonder many white Americans don't believe Black people about their racist experiences because racism is presented as strange and rare. They conclude: "How can so many Black people have this experience? How can it be so common? It must not be true."

Even with 70 million-plus voting for Trump, racism will not be portrayed as indicative of that number or anywhere near it. Because media needs their audience to make their money. Capitalism does not seek to tell the truth; it seeks to make money. Even if you think that's too harsh of a criticism, at the very least, capitalism is an unreliable narrator based on its incentives.

The narrative never recalibrated after Jim Crow, after the Civil Rights movement, after the LA Uprising, and it'll remain distorted because the money from 70 million-plus Americans is too hard to resist (not to mention the pearl-clutching non-Trumpers who don't want to feel guilty or complicit).

But Hollywood and the rest of media will pat themselves on the back for talking about racism at all or using representation to show that nonwhite Americans exist. They talk AROUND white supremacy rather than directly addressing the ideology. In fact, this only reinforces white supremacy because it makes the white narrative the default. White supremacy gets to tell its own story because it has the power to do so. And according to them, things aren't all that bad, and racism rarely occurs. It's not American because if it were, it would be admitting that's the norm, and that's a story they will never tell you.